Winter blahs

Today while waiting to be swiped in at the gym, I encountered an older man who my family knows from our synagogue. He commented to me that I looked like I'd gained a few inches, and I was taken aback - first of all because I haven't, and second of all, because who is he to make that kind of comment to me?!

"In height?" I asked uncertainly, trying to save the situation.

"Yeah, yeah, in height," he replied.

I've been the same height since eighth grade.

Also, I need someone to come over here with a shovel and dig my dignity out of this pit it's in. It started with reading Sherlock Holmes fanfic, which progressed to BBC Sherlock fanfic, which ultimately turned into 'Why the hell am I reading Sherlock/Harry Potter Crossovers and enjoying them."

Well, it's this or watch another ten episodes of Community. I can't help myself. It's hilarious.

What will she have in her pockets?

A list of things that I would hypothetically want for Hannukah but will probably not receive, in no particular order, and aimed at relatives who may be considering asking. :

• A Decemberists Hoodie. Unisex large (they say they run small.)
• A notebook with lined paper, full size, not spiral bound, possibly with some kind of art print on the cover, maybe Monet or Van Gogh or Mucha? I used to do all of my writing in books like these and I've been craving one all semester.
• iTunes money.
• A new pair of red flats, or else permission to buy a new pair of red flats.
• Slippers! Something like these that are both cozy and warm and that it would not be a tragedy to get stuck outside in during a fire alarm (because those happen. Because I live in a dorm.)
• A new cover for my laptop keyboard. These things are wonderfully cheap and I have what is considered a 13-inch aluminum macbook pro even though it actually technically isn't one.
• A belt. Just a simple leather one of average width and a not-flashy buckle will do. I hate belts but my pants don't stay up. 
• Books and other things to read. I like post-apocalyptic novels. I like regular novels. I am stupidly fond of magical realism. I would love it if someone would find me a cosmonaut biography I haven't read (astronauts are okay too). 
• I would love if people would return my cosmonaut biographies that I have leant to them to me. I need my copy of Two Sides of the Moon back. I think Ilan has it? Wrap it up and put a bow on top and we'll call ourselves even. :P

I don't think I'm asking for too much, and this may save some people the trouble of asking. Or not. 

45 minutes before my play is due, and I am zen.

I recognize that there are things wrong with this draft. There are things wrong with this draft that I cannot fix in the time I have remaining and I am just going to let them be. With that in mind, I recognize that I have basically written eighty pages with limited grabbing from my previous draft in about four days, and that is no small feat.

I recognize that there is language in this play that is "inelegant." There are monologues that I felt like I needed a shower after writing. Someone gets called a "cum-dumpster," which I think is a terrible phrase and one I would never,  ever use; but I recognize that it is in character. I recognized that my biggest weakness as a writer last week was my reluctance to "go there" and let sex and violence be explicit. I recognize that this play represents an attempt to overcome this weakness. It might not be there yet, but I forced myself to write the monologues and I forced myself to leave them and if nothing else I learned how to push my boundaries this semester.

I recognize that this is not a final draft. I will revise this play. But I have made improvements in the rewrite that justify that I only slept four hours last night.

And I am zen.

Unexpected themes

1. The desire for children to be taken seriously by their elders. Done twice: Lou to Carson, wanting him to stop using childish nicknames for her, and Carson to the Commander, wanting to not be called by his sidekick name.

• At the same time, rejection of the idea of a "responsible adult." Being an adult doesn't free you from the insecurities you faced growing up. Issues of upbringing impact adult personas.

2, Everyone is a little bit incompetent.

• Some people are more incompetent than others, or in different ways, but everyone has a weakness and it comes from within. No kryptonite in this universe.

I will edit in more as I realize them. It's never good to force a theme onto a play.

Fresh drafts and alternate character interpretations

One of my aunts has a fridge magnet that claims she is "Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult." Carson is that relative (not literally based on my aunt) pumped up to eleven. His responsible adult costume is paper thin. Marcus treats him more like a younger sibling than an estranged friend, which is much closer to what I originally envisioned their dynamic. Honorary "Uncle Carson" just creates a much more comfortable and friendly relationship with Lou, as well, and the degree of transparency that all of these characters have with each other is really freeing.

There's no longer layers of secrets - there's only one, and it's the most important secret. 

But back to Carson. He's the free-wheeling uncle who blows into town when the wind pushes him that way. He's thirty-six, but retains a boyishness and refusal to grow up and face responsibility that likens him to Peter Pan. He owns neither a dependent animal nor a coffee table. He has never been married - in fact, any attempts at all to probe into his romantic life prove utterly fruitless: it is either so non-existent or so convoluted that it will never come to light. 

(When Lou is twenty-four she will run into Carson at some family function and suddenly understand ever aspect of his psychology in a single epiphanic flash.)

Carson is erratic, a little bit manic depressive, a lot of an optimist. He anticipates every plan ending in success, puts justice first... and still, after all of his hospitalizations and rehabilitations and the abuse he's been put through, believes that people are fundamentally good. Carson remains a Hero not only because it's the only thing he knows how to do but because he believes in the work.

I like the airiness and the energy this new draft is giving me. I was told to let the play breathe - and I hope I'm doing that.

I would like to know what alternate universe Rick Perry comes from where Christians are a persecuted minority.

So there's this asinine campaign ad:

And this brilliant parody that manages to point out a lot of reasons why Governor Perry is a xenophobic jackass while making me exceptionally proud of my co-religionist.

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a Jew -- Heck, I'm even a Rabbi... but you don't need to be in shul on every Shabbos to know there's something wrong in our country when gays can serve openly in the military and yet they still can't get married legally in most U.S. States.
Our Jewish kids in public school have to watch as their peers celebrate Christmas -- a holiday they don't observe. They have to sit quietly as the Christian students pray in school. That just seems uncomfortable.

As President, I will fight to end this crazy talk that there's a war on religion. And I will fight anyone who discriminates against others simply because of their sexual orientation.Intelligence made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I'm Rabbi Jason Miller and I think it's too cold to film a video outside in Michigan in the winter. Who approved this?

YES. THANK YOU, RABBI MILLER.


I have been head-desking since Perry’s ad went up both about his blatant homophobia and also his subtle-as-a-ton-of-bricks implication that Christianity is the only valid religion in the United States. Which it isn’t. There is no war on Christmas, Christians are still the religious majority, and that is likely not going to change. However, this perceived sense of “persecution” that the far right feels is dangerous to every religion that actually is discriminated against. 

The United States of America were founded on the principle that every religion is free and equal under the law. However, by creating an imaginary war on Christian values, the Far Right stands to sway a tremendous number of xenophobic voters to push legislation that seriously impedes on the rights of practitioners of every other religion in this country, including those that practice no religion at all. 

There is no “war on Christianity.” There is not a “War against Christmas.” The Democratic party does not have a kill list with Jesus and Santa Claus right at the top.

All this imaginary war does is perpetuate the real war on religion that is going on in this country - the discrimination and sometimes outright hatred that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Athiests, and all other groups perceived by the far right as being a “threat” face. 

Christian Values are not American Values. 

“One Nation, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” is. 

Stop the hate. 

Also? Same jacket.

The end is nigh

No, seriously, it is.

TWO WEEKS UNTIL WINTER BREAK! TWO WEEKS UNTIL WINTER BREAK! Except between now and then I need to revise a full length play, outline the revision for another, write a book report, turn in a term paper (already written, thank the lord) and do a final project for FSA.

I'm expanding Like a Dog in Space back out to a full, two-act length play as part of an Emerging Jewish Artist Fellowship I got through Bronfman center. This involves getting to explore a lot of themes in ways I didn't get to explore in the first draft. This also involves deciding once and for all who the fuck these characters are, besides just ambiguously supernatural.

In fact, fuck ambiguously supernatural.

You heard it here first, Mister Papers is god. Because I am perfectly allowed to do that because, you know what, this is my play and it's a fairy-tale and in fairy tales god is allowed to be a bird or an old man or a woman or a soviet bureaucrat in a cheap suit. Also because it opens so many awesome doors.

Also sometimes I wish my name was, like, Sarah or Cathy or Cecelia or Annie or Virginia because no one ever writes songs about girls named Aliza.

OKAY THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, BACK TO WRITING.

Questionable practices by college theater majors that I find totally abhorent, pt 1 of ?

SECOND ACTING.

I had a roommate last year who introduced me to this one, which I don't understand and think is pretty awful. Second Acting is the process of sneaking into a show at intermission without a ticket. This girl justified it by "I've seen the show before, and it's terrible," but even when you're sneaking into The Addams Family... NO. STOP IT.

Theatre is both an art and a business. When you second act a show, you are stealing a product - that is, the performance. You are stealing from the actors, the musicians, the director, the stagehands, the designers, the producers, and the playwright. This is bad juju, ESPECIALLY if you're any kind of theater major! Would you want audience members to steal from you?

Basically, Second Acting a show is the fastest way to steal from as many people as possible, without actually being Bernie Madoff.

I used that line earlier and was REALLY REALLY proud of myself but no one laughed.

Oh Lou, I underestimated you.

I said you had no angst.

You have so much angst. You're so tired of being lied to and I promise it's going to stop but you just have to let me get to page fifty before I can start giving you some answers.

You are such a lost little girl.

I am so sorry for misjudging you.

World building...

Just some things I need to set in stone... thought I'd share them.

Now with 100% more Batman comparisons.

The American Superhuman League, chartered by Then-President Gerald Ford at the behest of The Commander and several other Superhuman veterans of the Vietnam war in 1975. The League receives government funding and League members have formal ranks and titles in the US military: in times of war, active-duty members of the League will be called upon to serve the United States to the best of their abilities. However, the League is self-regulating and has its own rules and conditions that exempt its members from US certain US laws. The League has always differed from the military in that it does not categorize or divide its members based on gender, race, or sexuality. It is open to anyone of significant ability and drive, and all members are expected to fulfill tasks based on their individual skill set.

Super-powers follow a mendelian inheritance pattern, but there are some complicated masking genes known to exist, hence super-powered children can be born of apparently mortal parents. For any given couple in which both parents are super-powered, the chances of them having a child without powers range from zero to one in four. For a superpowered/mortal pairing, the chance is between zero and one in two. There is no correlation between heterozygous/homozygous status for the Superhuman allele and overall strength of powers.

The exact manifestation of powers is highly subjective based on the individual. Powers of children do not have to reflect those of their parents. Powers can flux later in life, usually due to physical or psychological trauma. For example, a former speedster who finds themselves paralyzed after an accident may develop telekinesis.

Powers solidify by the age of ten. Formal League training begins at age ten. Young heroes begin a "Sidekick" apprenticeship with an experienced hero at the age of twelve [Batman and Robin], although their formal schooling continues until a high school equivalency degree, usually earned at the age of sixteen. Sidekicks remain apprenticed with their mentors until the age of twenty, and although legal adulthood in the united states is considered to be age eighteen, Sidekicks are obligated by league charter to remain subordinate to their teachers until they complete their apprenticeships.

At the conclusion of an apprenticeship, Sidekicks may choose to remain as an "assistant" hero to their mentor,  or may contract with a League-organized team stationed in the United States or abroad. Sidekicks do not retain their hero titles from their apprenticeships, graduating to a new name that marks their status as an adult hero [Robin becomes Nightwing, Batgirl becomes Blackbat]. Usually these titles are chosen by the mentor and agreed upon by the sidekick, but sometimes sidekicks choose their own titles. Heroes will also sometimes change their titles later in life if they feel their previous title no longer fits [Batgirl becoming Oracle].

If a hero is killed in action or dies of natural causes, it is acceptable and even expected that their closest apprentice assume their mantle [Nightwing becoming Batman].

Hero/Sidekick relationships are expected to retain a Teacher/Student dynamic, but are typically unmonitored. Abuse is rare but does occur, but is almost never reported.

Superhero teams are created based on diversity and dynamic. A team will seldom have two heroes with the same power set unless those powers are somehow linked. Teams are created with gender balance and diversity in mind - the League has occasionally come under fire for tokenism, but they'll be damned if their teams don't reflect the diversity of their proud nation. A range of personalities are favored in drafting a team, although there will almost always be a clear leader.

Some heroes operate independently of an overal team, but are still contracted with the League. Vigilantism is frowned upon, and heroism without a license is punishable by law and by the League.

The incidence of powers is about 1% of the general population. The trait knows no racial or economic boundaries. A billionaire playboy is as likely to be born with super-powers as is the child of poor, immigrant parents. Heroes tend to be over-represented in media - most superhumans who do not find work contracting with the League find themselves involved in the entertainment industry, as actors, stuntmen, technicians, acrobats, etc.  Superhumans who choose fields outside of the League or entertainment tend to be quiet about their abilities, as there is a degree of suspicion held by the general population, as well as a sentiment that they ought to not waste their abilities.

Religious acknowledgement of heroes tends to differ from denomination to denomination. A comparable debate may be Evolution vs Creationism, whether powers are the result of god or the result of evolution. (Evolution is winning, as powers are genetically linked). Heroes are not well-recognized in the historical record until the 1800s and did not formally organize until the 1970s, but much speculation exists about various historical figures prior to that.

Heroes exist openly, although those contracted with the league tend to maintain a secret identity. Those working in the entertainment industry generally go by their own names. The important thing here is that people know they exist. Heroes do not live in fear of discovery or persecution. They are protected as a minority by the US government and generally viewed favorably.

It is possible to draw a great many allegories between superhumans and any minority group that you like, but the fact is that they themselves are not the metaphor, simply background for my storytelling.

Well, I'm 20.

Even the best of us have to grow up sometime, I guess.

Who am I kidding? I brought my Playwriting II class cupcakes today.

Oh, how awkward for you.

The next time I hear my roommate's friend specify that the girl in his project group is a "Jewish White Girl" as if her Jewishness is a factor of her bitchiness, I am going to march downstairs and punch him in the face. In describing the rest of his group, he didn't once specify anyone else's ethnicities or religions.

He has seen me around. He knows I'm home and he knows I can hear him - I don't think he realizes that I'm Jewish, but this is extremely uncomfortable for me to sit here and listen to him complain about this girl. Like, I have heard the whole story and agree that she's being an unreasonable bitch? But I don't see what her religion has to do with her behavior.

And I was in such a good mood after NY Comic Con.

So much for that.

Back to space nerdiness

I'm starting to think that Valentina Tereshkova doesn't age.

1963

2002

2011

IN GLORIOUS RUSSIA, WE HIDE SECRET OF IMMORTALITY FROM PITIFUL USA.

(She will always be one of my heroes.)

The Commander

There's something really refreshing about writing a villain.

Not a good guy with a sinister side, but an honest to god villain. A character who makes your skin crawl. A smug bastard who you want to punch in the face. A manipulative sleaze who even the most innocent sentences have some vague undertone of horror when they come out of his mouth.

The Commander is that villain.

(Or, at least, I hope he is.)

Marcus and Carson's old mentor wasn't originally going to be included in the play, but I got talked into it and I'm in a better place for it. In fact I sort of dread to think what I was going to do before I put him in because the play needed an antagonist and here he is.

He's meant to be a pastiche of every franchise headliner ever, but mostly Captain America (his theme), Superman (his powers), and Batman (his tendency towards taking pubescent male sidekicks). His introductory paragraph introduces him as "More Jor-El than Superman at this point in his life," which is also accurate - the Commander's in his late sixties. He's on the verge of retirement and everyone knows it and that's why they're so keen to shower him with accolades and awards.

The dark side of this is, of course, that he's an unrepentant child molester and Carson and Marcus's varying degrees of disfunction are almost certainly a result of apprenticing with him. Trying to make him repent is a huge action of the play, and I can't really say more about that without spoiling massively but the Commander has a lot up his sleeves. You don't make it in the hero business as long as he has without being ruthless.

There are certain lines I write for his character that seem perfectly tame at first - but become suddenly sinister when considered with the rest of his character. As I discussed with my roommate, "Anyone who can mention visiting a children's hospital and make the audience squirm is probably villainous gold."

I haven't written a proper villain in a really long time - probably not since sophomore year of high school. So this is going to be really fun, I think. Villains are fun to write. It's fun to make everyone around them uncomfortable and I'm going to have a blast.

Even if the Commander is a wretched human being.

Especially because the Commander is a wretched human being.

I went to a protest.

There was a big march from campus down to the Occupy Wall Street protests today, and I hopped on because one of my professors gave us an assignment to attend. I felt sort of conspicuous being a "protest tourist," but with so many people there I don't think I stuck out. We walked really far but it didn't seem like it - all the way from west fourth to south of City Hall, and there was a lot of just queuing around waiting for the police to let us through. No one was arrested or roughed up where I was - one of the friends from class who walked down with me has been to the protests something like six times working on a photography project, and she explained that a lot of the police in the blue-shirted uniforms feel like they should be walking the protest but their supervisors (white shirts) are keeping them in line.

Some of the people there didn't seem clear on what they were protesting. I wasn't entirely clear on what they were protesting. Mostly I was just amazed by the sheer number of people. I'd hazard to say that there's a lot of anger in America, but it's not particularly focused - there's no clear idea of how to go about making things better short of nebulous things like "Tax the rich," "Nationalize healthcare," and other things the corporations will never let happen. There was a lot of anger about the bank bailouts and I think the lack of jobs? 

I have other pictures but this is the only one I have handy. I took it while we were standing on the steps outside City Hall. 

I'll be frank and admit that there probably wasn't any real reason for me to be at that protest. I've had a comfortable, financially-secure childhood. But at the same time I had every reason to be at that protest, because I'm a college student and I don't want to have to live off my parents forever and in a year or two... that's the world I'm walking out into. But I'm also a privileged white girl who shouldn't be complaining but who knows. 

I'm glad I went. I'm glad I was there. I'm glad I saw what it was about, even if I don't entirely understand what it was really about.

Just gonna toss a Regina Spektor song here and quietly sneak out the back.

-Leez

I was a gender-confused four-year-old.*

*Part one in a series of 'Things that have no bearing in my adult life and really don't give a shit about one way or another but continue to talk about because I think they're hilarious.

So. I went to a Jewish private dayschool from the age of two through eighth grade, and anyone who has any experience with the world of Jewish dayschools will know... there is a lot of pageantry involved. Little mock festivals where every kid has one or two lines of dialogue, and you sit in a row and basically go down the row and say your line. Fun times. Your parents go and pretend to like it but really, they're wondering why they're paying ridiculous tuition so their progeny can mumble badly-written verse about the Founding Fathers/The Pilgrims/The Ten Commandments/Whatever Have You.

My pre-k class did one called Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat where, as the name might suggest, everyone's grandparents were invited and a lovely time was had by all. We made teddy-bear cutouts with a Hershey's Hug in one hand and a Hershey's Kiss in the other and it was all rather adorable, right? (Why do I still remember this in such vivid detail? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know.)

Well, it wasn't adorable if you were me. You see, Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat was themed around figures from the old testament. Every kid was assigned one and then you had a line about it. So there was an Adam and an Eve, a Noach, an Abraham and a Sarah etc etc etc all the way down the line to Moses/Miriam/Aaron. The girls had these really pretty brightly colored shawls that, in retrospect, were just chiffon handkerchiefs but god damn it I wanted one.

Except I was a twin, so I didn't get to be one of the four mothers or Eve or Miriam or even Dinah. No,  when pre-kindergarden Judaica teachers get ahold of a pair of twins, their year is basically made. Said Twins will be constantly referred to in relation to Jacob and Esau. When Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat rolls around, those twins are definitely going to be Jacob and Esau. Even if one of those twins is a girl (even if both of those twins are girls, I bet).

So, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, good. Esau, bad. Jacob, pretty. Esau, ugly. Jacob, sweet. Esau, bad tempered rhinoceros. Jacob's costume was, like, a bathrobe and a shepard's crook. Esau got an itchy red shearling vest, because Esau, as everyone knows, was a hairy redheaded brute. I mean, let's not even kid ourselves, the guy was a temporally-displaced Viking.

Guess who was Esau. I'll give you three chances but you only need one.

She's got two thumbs and she's sitting right in front of you. That's right, Leez was Esau in her pre-kindergarden Bubbe-Zeyde shabbat! I was not happy about this serious case of miscasting. Why didn't I get to be a pretty girl? Didn't they know my brother and I weren't identical? I definitely sat through the whole pageant with a sour look on my face. There wasn't a temper-tantrum involved that I recall, but there should have been. I wanted a goddamn scarf!

But there I was, stuck next to my brother who got to be the good twin and was just so satisfied with his lot in life and I was the only villain on the whole line-up. I got to be the idiot who traded their birthright for a bowl of soup. But for some reason, the worst injustice to me wasn't being forced to crossdress in a school play at the age of four, wasn't that I had to play the biggest dumb brute in the whole Torah, wasn't that I didn't get a pretty scarf (although the pretty scarves were a close second) - it was that they got our birth orders wrong. I'm the younger twin. I should have been Jacob!

I don't know how I ever grew into a functional adult. But somehow I managed.

/sarcasm mode off.

I think I must have been really over-tired and kind of loopy last night, because when my roommate handed me a packet of cold meds I apparently proceeded to look up every single active ingredient, proclaim, "THEY ALL DO MAGICAL THINGS," go downstairs to take my pills, and sing about how "Advil is my one true love, it always makes me feel better."

I also dimly recall proclaiming, earlier in the night, "OH LADY GAGA, YOU ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY HOW I FEEL," which I can only hope made more sense in context.

I also didn't notice that we had a huge new television in our common room until after I'd been watching spanish talk shows on it with my roommate, who was explaining to me who the hell all these people were, for ten minutes.

"WAIT WHERE DID THIS TELEVISION COME FROM?!"

At least the cold seems less terrible today.

On the downside, they're testing the fire alarm so it's been turning off and on since roughly 7 AM. :|

There's a torch day skit responsible for this, I swear.

And then I single-handedly managed to dress like a twelve-year-old. Would not be surprised if I get mistaken for a freshman. Because this.

Lou.

Lou Lou Lou Lou. This name is just so right for her. There's something in the abruptness about it that fits her so perfectly - almost like it's been abridged, like there's a piece of it missing, but it's not any weaker for it. Lou doesn't sound like a nickname - it just is. Truncated but no less whole.

I write a lot of motherless girls, and I'm sure there's a real Freudian reason behind this but really... I rarely find a mother character who is interesting to me. It feels like there's more tension in writing fathers and daughters (which is probably Freudian in its own right) and this isn't to say that I've never written a mother character - there has been one in and out of different drafts of Other People's Garden Gnomes, and All The Pretty Hipsters certainly had one. My screenplay project last semester had a mother-protagonist, but that felt like something distinctly different. I guess the issue is that I'm reluctant to write an abusive mother, because I worry that it might make people think badly of my mother, who is nothing if not amazing - but if I wrote a mother-daughter relationship like what I have with my mom, there'd be no tension.  So I avoid the topic altogether and write motherless girls.

What I like about Lou already, even so early in the writing process, is that she has very little angst. I think she has a fair degree of anger and frustration, and a drive to rebel and to succeed, but I don't think she spends a large amount of time pondering her lot in life or moping about feelings - she just does things. On of the things I'm really trying to do is have her be a character who moves in a straight line. She's the kind of person who walks into a room and knows exactly what she came into it for. A little bit manipulative, yes, because she only asks questions that she thinks she's capable of getting answers to - hence why she's never asked Marcus much about super powers, because she doesn't think she'll get an answer.

I'm still toying with her first proper scene with Carson, and how she acts in front of her dad as opposed to when he's not around, but I get a sense that there's a fair bit of difference. Just like Marcus has a facade, so does Lou, and they play them against each other. Initially Carson probably sees a good deal more of their "true selves" than either sees of each other's, which is something I would like to play up, because it's a loving and familial relationship but it's one built on lies and presumed ignorance.

Anyways, that's just a sort of introductory idea of the character. I'll probably put something up for Marcus and for Carson later one, although most likely not this weekend. I'm doing a 24-hour play festival - which is something I've really wanted to do for a long time - but it will be sort of hectic. Fun and hectic and just the way I like my life.

So that's Lou. More on her later.

And we're back

Starting tap over from the beginning has actually been a really good experience. I never really realized how weak some of my fundamental technique was (also I'm out of practice), and it's been fun and going well so far. Even the fact that it's at 8 AM is pretty good because it wakes me up. And I'll be ahead of things when we get to stuff like drawbacks and perrididdles, but for now I'm just really impressed (in a bad way) in my inability to do slap-toe drops with my left foot.

It reminds me of something my tap teacher in high school used to say... "Left foot is retarded." :)

I've started real work on my full length play for this semester. It's a project I'm really excited about and have done a lot of drafting/planning on, so it's good to finally be working on it in earnest. I didn't have a title when I pitched it last Tuesday, but since then I've hit on something that I really like... So unless I think of something better, it's going to be Boy Wonders (and I'm starting a tag for that). At first I thought it might be a bit too camp, but I tried it out with a few different people and got a good response... and it's not like it isn't fitting, since most of the drama revolves around things that happened to my leads when they were superhero sidekicks!

I'll probably admit some plot details as I get further into the writing process - it's not really good to put stuff all on the table when you're just starting. So in the next few weeks I'll probably toss up some character summaries and such.

This is going to be so fun, though!

YAY.

This is what I made for dinner and it was amazing.

Onions/green bell pepper/cucumber/mushrooms/black beans sauteed in olive oil, with goat cheese for variety.

YUM.

(This is kind of one of my go-to recipes.)

So it's about ten at night...

And I am finally settled in to my dorm! A lot of people thought I was crazy when I described my place for this year as a "Single Bedroom Triple" but it's really not so bad! It's bigger than any room I've lived in so far and is super-quiet and has AMAZING VIEWS. WINDOWS ON TWO SIDES. SO MUCH NATURAL LIGHT. It took me longer to get unpacked than I would have liked because I wound up helping my friend try to assemble an IKEA shelf unit at his new apartment and... we were not handy enough. But the place is literally the size of a shoebox so it doesn't surprise me that we didn't have room to maneuver. Also he's probably paying more a month than I am and besides the part where I have two roommates I think I definitely win, because his place is dark and awkward and basically a glorified hallway. I mean it has windows but they're airshaft-view. :|

So that's just me checking in! Had a really delicious dinner at a little Japanese place in St. Marks - a big Buddha's Delight style udon soup with like a metric ton or mushrooms and sliced carrots and tofu and scallions - even had enough left over to take some home to eat tomorrow (which is good because I haven't bought groceries yet! Oops!)

Let's not talk about the nervous breakdown I nearly had moving my stuff over from storage, ok?

:)

-Leez

One sleep and then I'm there~

So I head back to NYC tomorrow! This is terrifically exciting except it reminds me that I never typed up my pitch for my play idea and class is on tuesday and I really ought to probably do that tonight. I'm really looking forward to this year, though. I'm excited about basically every single class I'm taking - the pair of anthro courses should be awesome because basically the earlier back in human history it is the more I like it and one is paleolithic archeology and one is human evolution so COME ON THIS SHOULD BE AMAZING. And also Playwriting II is going to be the most incredible thing ever, not even exaggerating, and FSA should be cool, and I AM TAKING A TAP DANCE CLASS, HOORAY.

Got my hair cut two days ago... it wound up too dark and my bangs are still kind of uneven and a little too short but it's better than the shaggy shaggy sheepdog look I was rocking. They'll grow out and look a bit better, whereas before it was just sort of like "Well, okay, I can't see."

So, what else...

I got the disk drive in my MacBook replaced because the original stopped reading things, and since it boots the disk drive when the computer starts up my computer makes a completely different noise when it boots now?

I need to email the internship I was trying to get and find out what's up?

I need to get on the ball with AUSA stuff?

And etc.

OKAY COOL.

NEW SCHOOL YEAR GO.

Puttering along in my little white minivan.

It's not that the drive to Tallahassee is particularly difficult, just that it's LONG AS BALLS. (Do not question that simile.) Nearly three hours if you factor in that you're going to have to stop at least once. But the trip was rewarding, and the drive back was really kind of zen.

Tallahassee is an interesting part of Florida, because it has GEOGRAPHY. Hills and stuff. I mean I'm not impressed but I'm impressed. (Total flatlander here.) Around 7:45 or 8:00 on my drive back, my car crested a really high hill and in the light of the setting sun I could see what seemed like the whole world laid out in front of me, stretching towards an infinite horizon. The sky on Florida highways can feel really small because it's basically a two-lane road cut through a corridor of trees, but for about 45 seconds while I coasted down the hill I could enjoy that.

And then all I had to look forward to was the ridiculously dark stretch of road around 8:45 where I started hallucinating overpasses where there were none. That was fun. I started to suspect I was in the twilight zone for a while there but then the lights of the nearest gas station pulled me out of it.

Also I drove 150 miles on a quarter of a tank in my minivan. CRUISE CONTROL IS A MAGICAL INVENTION.

Had a conversation in which I was informed that it's nearly impossible for a girl to wind up in the friend zone. Clearly, I've been doing something wrong because it's the only place I'm capable of landing. Anyone have any thoughts on my improbable aiming skills? (Get me out of the friend zone. It's lonely here. That doesn't make me sound desperate, does it?)

Back to NYC in like five days. Bring it on. Can't wait to get back.

Doldrums

I feel like I hit this kind of blogging doldrums every summer where there's nothing terribly exciting going on in my life, so there's nothing terribly exciting for me to write about. Or else if there is stuff (which I guess there is?), it's nothing I feel is particularly appropriate to post on here. So it's really Catch-22.

I don't go back to NYC until September 3rd, but I'm practically counting down the days. I guess I picked a sort of inconvenient time to leave and there are some things I had to drop for three weeks that I really hope I can pick back up from where I left off. And if not?

Phbbt, well, that was dumb of me.

Sometime in the next week and a half I need to type a summary of the play I want to write next semester, and maybe one other. I feel like I'm kind of copping out because every semester I go in /knowing/ which idea I'm going to actually pursue, and I still need to put in another one, so I have the same play that I keep pitching over and over again that I never, ever plan to write because there's so much about the world I haven't figured out and don't want to figure out but its' one of those ideas that is roughed out in such a way that it sounds like I actually put work in...?

But really I just want to write about superheroes next semester.

Time to get back to the city, but it's still a week and a half away.

Also my mom called the house at 7:40 this morning and woke me up and I generally can't get back to sleep if I get woken up after 7 AM so grrrr. :|

An intermission about Dinosaurs

And in the fading light, the long shadows looked like Dinosaurs brought back to life for a single moment - and then turning disappearing into the gathering dusk.

------------

Started work on something new (NOT about dinosaurs). Need to do revisions on Dog in Space but figure I have a few weeks until school starts. Back in Jacksonville which is actually a relief although mostly because it means I'm out of that horrible dorm room.

Moving back up on September third... and then exciting things will happen. (I hope.)

I went to the AMNH on my last day in NYC because a friend really wanted to see the exhibit about "The Largest Dinosaurs." So we did and it was pretty sweet! And there were also fossils and taxidermy walruses for all. Because what else do you need than taxidermy walruses and fossilized ground sloths? Nothing, I tell you!

Also it was pointed out to me that the life-size blue whale is suspended from the ceiling by a single point on its back. WHAT. WHAT. DEVIL MAGIC.

Okay, off to more doctors appointments, because that seems to be all I do when I'm home in Jacksonville. :|

More thoughts on female characters in superhero movies

SPOILERS AHOY.

Dear Captain America,

THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE. You know how back in my Green Lantern review I was like "Carol is an awesome character when she's first introduced but sometime during act two/act three she gets turned into someone completely useless" ? Well, I see your supposedly-competent romantic interest and I raise you one badass british science officer. Peggy Carter is what all superhero movie love interests hope they can be. The people at the Bechdel Test can argue all they want about the dancing girls and their upskirt shots (which I honestly saw as an homage to the time period), but my primary focus on this blog when I get to ranting is love interests who are or are not fully developed characters in their own right. The Nostalgia chick has a term for it with a witty acronym and it's something like Love Interest Superfluous to Plot (LISP?) but here, I'm just going to go down the list and think of all the reasons why Peggy is such a cool character (or at least I thought so).

1. She's smart.
2. She's a woman in a male-dominated profession... and still gets shit done. Even in the military during world war II. Like, it's one thing to tell us your female character is an officer. It's another to actually have her go toe-to-toe with a superior and get what she wants because of sheer pluck and determination and not because she flashed him her tits.
3. She is more than capable of Punching You In The Face.
4. She knows how to handle a firearm, and rather than sitting back at base moping manages to help storm the Big Bad's base as part of a fucking assault team.
5. Her and Steve/Captain America's love story is really sweet. Someone got their ratios right, because it doesn't feel like a romantic plot tumor. This was actually something I really thought was kind of refreshing, was the total lack of emphasis on sex in this movie. It's been pointed out that nowhere between 98-lb weaking Steve and (SPOILERS) Down With the Plane Captain America does the hero find time to bed his love interest - and that's okay, because they spend most of the movie playing on this awesome romantic tension where he's still this awkward kid from Brooklyn at heart and she's too classy a dame to throw herself at him, which goes a long way to show that just because he's got the body of a hunk he's still the same person deep down. I really enjoyed that Captain America really has these "Greatest Generation" values and not this modern idea of oversexed masculinity, because that would have probably just turned him into another super-powered douchebag (CoughGreenLanternCough)
6. The way she's written, there's a lot of things she does that could just as easily been filled by some kind of male supporting character, even with very little changes made to the overall script (Well, at the expense of the love story, which would be a pity to lose). However, I don't think the movie would work as well if she were just another soldier - there's the Men In Uniform Maximum, and once you go over that line all of your characters get kind of muddled. Probably why all of the Captain's strike team have such distinct appearances - they get ethnicities instead of names because if he had a platoon of white guys, we'd never learn their names AND we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Stock the hero's team full of tokens, and they're still tokens but at least we can have a favorite character and get attached to them because we can TELL THEM APART.  The fact alone that Peggy is the only woman in this male-dominated environment... and she's there as a capable member of the team, whose capableness is never for a second diminished... is a huge part of her character.
7. The actress is listed next to a picture of Rosie the Riveter in the credits. Which given they were using old War Propaganda posters for their credit design in general was a nice touch. I'm sure someone out there is rolling their eyes, but seriously.

Basically, it's not enough to present a female character in a male occupation to make the audience buy her competence - it's all about what you do with the character, and really it seems like there are two directions to go with this: turn her into a screaming damsel, or continue to prove her competence. She is in that position because she earned it, and she probably had to work harder to get there than the men she's working with. Your female lead is not just a pair of tits, and if you're writing her as such it's probably indicative of a much bigger problem.

There's also the matter of emotional investment in a love story. What I think makes the romantic subplot in Captain America work so well is that it's always there, but at the same time it's seamless. In the final action sequence, who is the captain talking to? Peggy. And it makes the emotional stakes of the scene so much higher than if he were just talking to one of his commanding officers. Why? Because we're invested in this relationship, and we want them to get their dance. If we weren't invested in it, the movie's last line wouldn't have any emotional resonance at all. But then you realize... Peggy is probably dead of old age, and you're like, "Holy fucking shit, this is tragic" and want to hug Captain America.

Contrast this to Green Lantern where Blake Lively just disappears for the whole final act of the movie and you can probably understand why no one had any kind of emotional reaction to Green Lantern besides "I spent my money to see this shit?"

I caved and cleaned it up.

The smell made me gag multiple times.

This is unacceptable.

Behave like an adult.

Also you stole my spoon out of the sink, kept it in your room for four days, and just put it back today. Our silverware looks nothing alike.

And people wonder why I keep my dishes in my room.

No love.

The pot is still on the counter.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Eeeeeeeew

So let's talk about disgusting things in this dorm room kitchen. Like that there's less than a square foot of usable counter space, and less than a square foot of room in the fridge, and I keep my dishes in my bedroom.

Or we could just talk about this.

This is a pot of greasy noodles, old cheese, and rancid meat that my suitemate cooked for herself four dinner AT LEAST four days ago. It sat on the stovetop for at least four days, and then she came home earlier today and MOVED IT but did not dump it out. I dared to SMELL this shit earlier and it has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

HELLO, HAVE YOU NOT BEEN LIVING IN A DORM FOR TWO YEARS. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT THIS STUFF NEEDS TO BE REFRIGERATED OR IT SPOILS? 

I AM DISGUSTED.

EVERY DAY THAT IT SITS OUT, I AM JUDGING YOU.

I CANNOT WAIT TO MOVE OUT ON SATURDAY, BECAUSE AT LEAST I WILL NOT BE LIVING IN THIS STYE THAT THESE GIRLS CREATED BEFORE I EVEN GOT HERE.

Radio silence

Because I have a ten to fifteen page term paper due thursday.

Or because I have to be completely moved out of my dorm room by noon on saturday, even though my flight home isn't until 8:59 that night.

Or because I have a final later this week.

Or because my cousin had a baby and I'm spending all my time looking at pictures on facebook and grinning.

Or because tumblr is addicting.

Or because I've been trying to write.

Or because I can't think of anything worthwhile to document on my blog.

Or because I swear I really am planning to get back to this later I just don't know when.

In which: my nerd flag flies

So I was telling a friend about how I'm working on a project for this archeology course I'm in, and she, jokingly, asks, "Do you have an Indy hat yet?"

And I'm about to say no, when all of a sudden I realize.... Actually, yes. I do have an Indiana Jones hat. I bought it in high school before I was even remotely interested in Anthropology.

Luckily she thought it was awesome. Even if I was slightly embarrassed to admit I own such a thing. (I wore it all week at International Thespian Festival one year. My drama teacher, upon seeing it, either called me "a dork" or "hopeless" or both. I don't quite remember.)

I might just have to dig it out and wear it more often. :< Let the nerd flag fly, right?

Wheeee

Summer classes are fun! :) I'm doing well in both and we're going to Governor's Island tomorrow to learn about oysters. Should be fun! I just hope they don't expect us all to eat them because, uh, I don't. But did you know Manhattan used to be famous for its oysters? No? Well it's hard to imagine anything that spends 100% of its life imbibing water from NY Harbor these days, but they used to be some of the most sought-after oysters in the world.

I was waiting to post until I had maybe acquired some photographs from persons with cameras and could make a proper post about my Great Uncle Maury's 100th birthday, but so far I haven't managed to acquire any just from facebook stalking. Oops! So I guess right now you'll have to settle for a link to the Florida Times Union Article  about the event. Just know that he's an incredible, incredible man and one of these days I'm going to take the videos I recorded of his war stories and edit them into something useable. 

I've been really busy, but I'm trying to do a bit of work on Like a Dog in Space when I have time. It's weird that I spent most of June mooning around feeling like I didn't know where to begin on corrections and then opened it up a few days ago and realized I was basically up to a point where I just needed to start adding previously-deleted stuff back in because it's Mister Papers and when it's a 45-minute script Mister Papers needs to learn to shut up but when it's a full length he is allowed to talk as much as he wants and Mister Papers loves to talk. All the other characters in the play are pretty reticent but Mister Papers is enamored with the sound of his own voice and it makes him fun to write. There's just so much going on with his character and the concept behind him that I want to fit into the play and it's actually a struggle to reel him in, because he has this tendency to run away with every scene he's in. He's a great dramatic foil, and writing other characters is just so easy when they're in conversation with him. 

(At this point I need to probably take a deep breath and remind myself that Ivan is my protagonist.) 

I'm also wondering if I ought to go through and apply proper Russian naming conventions to my characters (patronymics, standardized nicknames, etc). I almost want to aim for a tone bordering on a folktale in terms of telling, but I'm not sure how it would go over. 

THAT'S NOT MY NAME AND I'M GOING TO STOP ANSWERING TO IT.

In the last hour I have been called:

Eliza

Alice

Uhliza

Eleza

Eluza

Elaza

And basically every other combination of consonants and vowels that sounds vaguely like my name without actually being it. I have also been interrogated about my belief in ghosts, the afterlife, and Michael Jackson (as my lord and savior, amen?).

Anyways I have a midterm tomorrow and then I get to go home to celebrate my great (fantastic!) uncle's hundredth birthday and hang out with all my cousins and marvel at how amazing life is.

But right now I have notes to study and the sinking suspicion that no one in this apartment actually knows how to pronounce my name.

Leez out.

Cool Science

Confirmed: All Non-African Humans are Part Neanderthal

I don't know why exactly I think this is so cool. It might be because I've been fascinated by Neanderthals for well over three years, or because we've been talking around this subject in class for three weeks so to see it confirmed is really rewarding. Or because it explains why some of my family (not naming names <3 ) looks so darn paleolithic.

Anyways, stop using Neanderthal as an insult, because it's demeaning to the real Neanderthals, who as it turns out are some of your distant ancestors. Not the majority of your ancestors - we still did all our evolving in Africa - but you've got a drop of ancient eurasian hominin in you.

I've always felt that colonial rape culture is the best evidence for Human-Neanderthal interbreeding. It's clearly ingrained in the human mind that the one of, if not the first thing you do when you meet an unfamiliar group is you have sex with it. If they don't want to have sex with you, you make them have sex with you. And that's that. Who's not to say this wasn't as true 60 kya as it is now? Or that it wasn't working in the opposite direction? Or that humans and neanderthals weren't involved in some big raping-and-pillaging circle of life?

(Additionally, there are weird little anecdotes in Genesis about human women mating with giants. This is about 25 thousand years after the last recorded Neanderthals in the mideast, but could it be cultural memory? Weird folklore?)

Anyways,  I'm starting to put together some play ideas for class next semester. One of them is definitely a family drama about a father and daughter who are incidentally superheroes, but the other one so far all I have is that there's an emaciated man in a cage center stage and all the other characters say he's locked up for his own good because he's a werewolf but we just have to take their word for it. But there's probably a plot that can go with this setup.

Anyways, that's all for now. :)

Except, wait, here's a grainy picture of Roma and I wearing 3D glasses waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to start.

(An hour after this picture was taken, we were both wibbling, bawling puddles of fangirl.)

NO MORE NEGATIVITY

THERE HAS BEEN TOO MUCH NEGATIVITY ON MY BLOG LATELY AND IT IS INTOLERABLE. TO ALLOW THESE PEOPLE ANY MORE SPACE IN MY LIFE THAN THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN IS AN AFFRONT AGAINST MYSELF. IT IS TIME TO FOCUS ON SOMETHING MORE POSITIVE.

FOR EXAMPLE, THE ENTIRE TWO HOURS OF ARCHEOLOGY THIS MORNING WAS ABOUT NEANDERTHALS. IT WAS AMAZING. NEANDERTHALS ARE AWESOME. I NEED TO GIVE MY SCREENPLAY ANOTHER GO.

ALSO I AM GOING TO GO SEE HARRY POTTER AS PART OF A DOUBLE FEATURE (PARTS ONE AND TWO) ON THURSDAY NIGHT. IN NEW JERSEY. WITH ROMA. AND IT WILL BE AWESOME. AND WE WILL BE, LIKE, CRYING.

BECAUSE, MAN, THIS IS THE END OF OUR CHILDHOODS.

AND I WILL FEEL PITY FOR ALL THE FUTURE GENERATIONS THAT DON'T GET TO LITERALLY GROW UP WITH HARRY POTTER AND KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WAIT FOR THE BOOKS.

BUT MOSTLY I WILL JUST CRY AND GRIN AND CRY AND GRIN AND THINK TO MYSELF,

MAN.

LIFE IS JUST AWESOME.

Parts of a whole (the whole is a part)

More orphaned paragraphs, mysterious and intriguing bits of prose I think up while walking places. I am beginning to wonder if these are little teasers of stories I will never write, or if they are stories in and of themselves. Most of it is really too pretentious to ever do full form of.

----------------------

Not one of them was there by choice. Not one of them would have chosen to be anywhere else.

----------------------

For a single, shining moment, everything was perfect. The birds were singing. The traffic noise seemed to go away. Even the sun shining through the trees felt warm without burning, bright without blinding. But then reality snapped back into place and he wondered why he had never noticed the spark of loathing burning behind her eyes.

----------------------

The world ended at five PM on a tuesday, but no one told Tabitha Monroe. And at seven AM on the wednesday after the world ended, she woke up, made coffee, and drove to work on streets no one had told her no longer existed. And she never once thought it odd that there was no one else to be seen. (To tell the truth, she rather liked it that way.)

------------------------

There were occupational hazards to co-parenting with a superhero. This was not supposed to be one of them.

------------------------

"I'm pretty sure my great aunt is the last surviving Neanderthal," said Joshua conversationally. He wasn't lying.

------------------------

He marveled at how she spoke to him like an adult, this once-tiny girl who he had found once more wandering the streets of Paris. She had a vintage hat and a vintage sundress, looked like she'd just stepped out of an Audrey Hepburn movie. She spoke like an adult, but after every other sentence she licked her teeth, and he could hear the once-tiny girl whispering the secrets of the universe to him in the pauses between her words.

"Nothing is ever lost," she seemed to be saying. "It just comes back to you in a myriad of different ways."

"Matter is neither created nor destroyed," he said, and the once-tiny girl gave him a perplexed look.

"I was talking about the Louvre," she said. He nodded. So she was.

--------------------------

No one ever figured out how to get the ship out of the jar. This was for the better, as it saved them the trouble of trying to put it back in afterwards.

More cool stuff in my inbox.

Summer classes have started, which are going to be cool once I get into them. In the meantime, my friend Em drew some stick figures based on Like a Dog in Space characters that ought to be shared with the world.

(I wonder if I can somehow bribe her to do the rest of the cast...)

For now, enjoy Anatoli and Ivan.

A riddle for the ages:

If I ate half of a cream puff, walked like a bazillion blocks, and then went home and ate the other half, does everything come out even, and is my self control and dignity intact?

Had an /amazing/ Fourth of July in the city!!!! Sushisamba miso soup is the best miso soup because it has cilantro in it and that is just amazing. Also their sushi is delicious. Also, have a shaky iphone video of things going kaboom. Otherwise known as the end of the NYC Macy's fireworks display. We couldn't get close enough to see /from/ the river, but we all stood in an intersection at twelfth and twenty-eighth and it was a pretty good view, all things considered.

Breathe in. Hold it.

This is the first time today I've really had a chance to chill out, and I'm about to go see if I can brave the crowds at Trader Joes and Duane Reade in exchange for groceries and toiletries... looks like a daunting task! But I got my bedding and dishes out of storage and feel like a super hero. I also vacuumed my dorm room and threw away a lot of rancid food from the fridge because apparently our suitemates don't understand how to clean up after themselves, but that's not really appropriate to go into on the blog.

Later tonight I'm planning an expedition - either solo or with friends - down to Battery Park City to watch the fireworks. Should be fun, right? More fun if I find friends, but either way.

Okay time to go find groceries.

Leez, over and out.

And sometimes really cool things crash-land in my inbox.

Photo credit goes to my friend Kumo, who found the real Comrade Ivanovich hanging out at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum today. Isn't this neat? He's still around! Thanks so much for remembering me! This is awesome!

Raccoon Eden

We've got a family of raccoons living in our back yard - a mother and three mid-sized juveniles. I'd seen the mother run through a few times (in broad daylight! What?!), but last night was the first time any of us realized she had brought her babies over. They ran right across our back patio while we were eating dinner, stopped dead center, stared at us for about a minute, and then ran off and climbed up the grapefruit tree.

They haven't figured out how to get into our trash cans yet, and our dog doesn't spend time unattended outdoors, so we figure there's no harm in letting them be. While most people consider them pests, they haven't caused us any trouble so far and they're a native species. Maybe if we had a family of Nutrias or Armadillos in our back yard it would be different, but Raccoons don't burrow and they don't chew through wood and when you think about it, fifty years ago when no humans lived out in this part of the city... they were here first.

I can see why they'd like our back yard, though. It's shady, we have a metric ton of fruit trees, and the dog doesn't go poking his nose around where it doesn't belong. So for now, the raccoons get to stay and have their little slice of paradise. :)

Old dogs

This is Barney and he is twelve and a half years old. He is exceedingly fluffy, he smells terrible, does nothing but sleep, and he snores incredibly loudly. He has the kind of life that makes me think it's pretty good to be a housepet. But he's really clearly getting old - just over the last few months I've noticed that he's developed a paranoia about heights. He used to take flying leaps into the back of my mom's mini-SUV, and now he won't even climb into the back of my minivan when it's pulled up to the curb, and that's not a very high climb. He had a kind of rough fall one time when he tried it and now he insists on being carried. Which is only okay because he's only about 35 lbs and it's not very far.

But I love him, and that's why he gets a blog post with two photos today. Because isn't he pretty?

Yes?

I thought so.

Je voudrais aller a Paris, je pense...

For being a proudly Jewish dramatic writing major, I'd never in the past managed to make myself into a fan of Woody Allen. Maybe it's his persistent nebbishness: I never actively disliked him - I just wasn't a fan. I was perfectly ambivalent about Woody Allen movies, as strange as that may be.

And then I went to go see Midnight in Paris tonight, and it was brilliant, and oh, my goodness, you need to go and see this movie. Tomorrow. Do it. Because it is great. I mean, it's not a secret that I love literary inside jokes and time travel and magical realism, and this movie has all of them in droves. And it's lovingly shot. It's a love letter to the city. I want to go to Paris and try to speak what measure of French I have managed to retain. (Un peur, je suppose. Si j'arrete imaginer des mots, un peur plus...?)

Anyway, it's a great movie, and I'm not just saying that because I'm really fond of Owen Wilson.

I also within the last day finished reading Robert Sapolsky's book A Primate's Memoir about his work with baboons in Kenya, and it was fascinating right up to and including the point when all of the baboons got TB and died (although that was also really tragic and terrible). It was a nice change of pace after reading Sarah Gruen's Ape House, a novel which by all means should have been good (acclaimed author, interesting premise) but which was, in reality, just plain terrible.

Swimming Lizards

I went to the zoo yesterday and was wandering around the reptile house when this guy came over and started posing for me, right at the water line in his habitat. He was such a ham! I just had to take a picture!

And then once we got out of the reptile house we got caught in a torrential rainstorm and there were screaming children everywhere and I did not get to see the Bonobos like I wanted to but it was still a blast, because the Jacksonville Zoo is amazing. I mean, it's easily one of the best zoos in the southeast - it makes me wonder why it's not more well known! 

Hidden treasure, I guess! 

Just a quick plug and then I'll shut up~

My friend Abi has started a blog! She is seriously one of the smartest, funniest people I know and people should read her because she's awesome. And because I want her to share her Summer Quinoa Salad recipe with me because it looks delicious. And because she works somewhere that seriously looks like it's part of the set of an X-Men movie (hello radio telescope).

And, uh, this, because it is relevant.

I didn't know what this blog post would be about when I started typing it and I still don't.

So, I'm not really riled up about anything at the moment so this post is going to be more a logging of miscellany. As much as I'd love to do part two of last time's conversation ("Having minority characters does not make you diverse"), I'm going to hold off on it because I had a really good conversation about it in private and... unlike complaining about female characters, when I start talking about race people start looking at me like "You're white, shut up." So it's going to wait. Along with a discussion on why claiming certain people don't have the "right" to write certain character types is bullshit. All that and more... in another post.

I'm kind of amused that, two weeks later, most of my pageviews are still coming from links posted on fansites... but also mildly weirded out. Are you guys reading the rest of my posts? Or are you just looking at that same post, OVER AND OVER AND OVER again??? Because, um, if you're just using that link to get back to the blog so you can read other stuff... I have two separate methods of following in my sidebar that don't involve inflating the pagecounts on one post. And if you are just reading that post over and over again... is it really that fascinating???

I finally actually started to do some serious revision work on Like a Dog in Space yesterday, figuring out where I can add things back in and what I need to do to get it back to somewhere around its original length. Because I cut so many characters, I've got significantly less to work with in general, and changing the structure for the better means my opening moves faster - but also that I've just got stuff that used to take fifteen pages to happen happening in about seven. Which is good, because it gives me more time to mess around once that does happen... I just have to think of things to put there! Ivan and Valeri can only have so many awkward conversations, and the biggest thing I need to bulk up is their connection... which I actually think I need to build up before Ivan even comes to life.

The other thing I can do to take it back out to full length and put some coherency and world background in is add some of Mister Papers's long speeches back in, but that's easy. He likes to talk and even if I had to start over from scratch, he'd be easy. I could write that character forever. He'll probably turn up in another play given enough time. He can do that.

(Sometimes I try to think about how any of my plays would be connected/in the same universe. But there's no overlap between Florida and an unspecified town in New England, so it's like... even if Other People's Garden Gnomes and Allan Chang is a Totally Bogus Ghost were in the same universe... who would ever know?)

Anyways, I'm planning to do a more work on that today (Lies. When I don't have deadlines, nothing gets done.) and also figure out what kind of cool adventure we're going to have on Friday. I've wanted to go down to the Space Center for a long time, but I went in fifth grade and after looking at their website I'm not so sure if it's worth it... it kind of looks like it has't changed much since 2002. I think they're even still playing the same IMAX movies. But the price has gone up! So... maybe it'll be the Alligator Farm again. We haven't been there in a while. Or perhaps the Zoo.

Unless anyone has any suggestions about adventures? :)

Also this amuses me.

Having female characters does not make you a feminist.

Watch out, I'm about to make another misguided post about feminism and Hollywood gender standards. Also, we might start talking about superheroes and race, because, you know what? When I was a little kid, The Green Lantern was a black dude. I know that the Hal Jordan is the "original" character to hold the title, but John Stewart is the guy I watched on Justice League when I was a wee little nerdling.

SO, LET'S TALK ABOUT SUPERHERO MOVIES.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT, LEEZ?

LET'S TALK ABOUT X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

So, in general, X-Men as a franchise is pretty good about providing interesting, strong female characters. I mean, this is the series that brought us Rogue and Jean Grey and Storm and Kitty Pryde. Which is nothing to laugh at, because they're badass, but they're not in this movie. First Class has four main female characters, which is already more than most superhero films which will typically just have a love interest (we'll talk about that when we talk about Green Lantern. We're getting there.) And it passes the Bechdel Test, which is something not many superhero movies do.

So, is it feminist?

Let's look at the four female characters we get:

Angel: stripper.
Emma Frost: High-end stripper, like for governors and stuff.
Moira: FBI agent (masquerades as a stripper).
Raven/Mystique: Hero's sister, ends up naked by the end of the movie, may or may not sleep with Magneto, who may or may not grow up to be Sir Ian McKellen, who may or may not have played the character as militantly, metaphorically homosexual. (But probably did.)

So Angel is a stripper who defects to the bad guys at the soonest sign of a fight. She's not a very deep character and that's okay because she's mostly around to wear skimpy outfits and provide a bit of color to our otherwise pretty damn anglo-looking cast.

Emma Frost is a villainess, who runs around in her underwear, who gets chained to a bed, whose main power is turning herself into an incredibly cheesy diamond effect. Frankly I think January Jones is a really boring actress and the character was really flat beyond just hanging out and being eye candy for Kevin Bacon.

Moira... is in her underwear within five minutes of her first appearance. She is reasonably useful in a fight, but she shoots Charles in the spine and she winds up the butt of a joke that seems like it's trying to emulate Mad Men but the rest of the movie is so unapologetically modern that the 1960s setting feels like an afterthought, like they needed a reason to point nukes at each other.

Raven/Mystique is probably the most interesting female character, but she gets reduced as the plot goes on until she is A) naked and B) sleeps with Erik C) to distract from the fact that he and Charles are basically having the most epic bromance since Kirk and Spock. Or something. Actually, why the fuck did she sleep with him? Because he thinks its sexy that she's blue and Hank just rejected her, so her standards are lowered? I mean, not that Erik isn't good looking or anything, but there's something weird going on in the character motivations there and it seems to cheapen the character.

So what have we got here?

• A token.
• Fan service.
• A woman in a man's job, ultimately proven inferior and susceptible to emotions.
• A teenaged girl who isn't making rational decisions because the boy she liked called her ugly.

Bechdel test passing or not, this isn't actually looking all that good. We've basically got a bunch of stereotypes, and they're not really doing anyone any favors except maybe the fanboys. But at the same time, most stories don't work if you just switch the genders, because then they become all about the gender. Like, a story about a prince who goes on a quest during which he learns all kinds of things about himself and at the end rescues a princess can be about all the things he learns along the way. But if you switch it and make it about a princess who rescues a prince, all anyone is going to focus on is that it's now about a girl.

But moving on to Green Lantern.

I am not going to call this a great movie, but it's a fun movie and it was raining today.

Green Lantern has, like, two female characters. Maybe three because they made one of the masters of the universe a woman. I'm going to zero in on the love interest because, let's face it - here is a compelling character setup... who is of absolutely no relevance to the plot past the midpoint.

The character Carroll is a test pilot. The first time we see her, she's chewing out Hal for being late, and she's already suited up and ready to go. Awesome. She puts in some good moves out in the planes, but she doesn't win the day. But that's because this is character setup - Carroll plays by the rules, Hal showboats. Fair enough. And then she's a business genius - awesome! Good for her!

And then she nearly gets crushed by a bandstand, kidnapped by the villain, and is just totally absent from the final conflict. Wow. Did the writers just forget she existed? At least Mary Jane got to dangle over the Hudson. So, basically, this is a character who just kind of became useless and went away. And she had a promising setup, too.

There's kind of this line between "extraneous love interest" and "female character who happens to love," and Caroll hits the "extraneous" side hard. She serves no purpose to the plot. Her role at the beginning could just as well have been played by another male fighter pilot and it wouldn't have made a difference.

At the same time, though, it's stupid to take two characters who for the duration of the film have had little to no chemistry and throw them together for some misdirected moment of character development. Erik and Mystique? I mean I understood why she would go to him, but their conversation felt rushed and didn't come to any kind of character-appropriate conclusion. First he tells her she's too young, then he tells her he prefers her blue, and then he has sex with her. MAGNETO, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED YOUNG WOMEN SINCE 1962. Congratulations, you're a lech. The logical end to this scene would actually be him talking her out of his bed, instead of her talking him into it, but apparently when a girl sneaks into your bedroom and she's naked and she's blue and she wants someone to tell her she's pretty, the appropriate response is to have sex with her. Yes. Of course. And even though she's had interactions with Erik prior to this and they do have some sexual tension, he's never really built up as a viable romantic rival to Hank and asdfghjk this just really bugs me.

Superheroes and race will have to wait for another day because I wound up having a three-hour discussion about it with Lydia while I was typing up this post and it really does not fit here, but we basically figured out why making Peter Parker in to Peter Park doesn't work but rebuilding Spider-Man from scratch does.

Mysterious amazon deliveries...

There was no note in the box.... Any idea who sent me this? It's perfect and I'd wanted a copy for a while... but who was it???

A secret admirer???

I am really baffled by this... Investigating shortly. That is, right now.

EDIT: Oh. Oh. It was Houman. MYSTERY SOLVED.

The things you miss when you don't live here.

So I was about to walk my dog earlier today (smoke and ash or not, Barney still needs to go outside), but we'd barely gotten out the front door when I noticed a hulking pit-bull looking creature lurking at the edge of the cul-de-sac. Now, I am not the kind of person who is inclined to think that pitbulls are evil by virtue of being pitbulls, and in fact if your pitbull is on a leash and you tell me they are friendly, I will be all over that dog like "Oh my god I am so happy to see you, PUPPY." However this thing was unleashed and huge and wandering around the neighborhood. So I took Barnie out in the back yard and then went to go see where the huge beast had gone off to.

I tracked it back to my neighbor's house, where it had gone back into the back yard on its own but the gate was open. I knocked on the front door.

"Hey, um, do you own a huge pitbull-looking dog?"

"She's a mastiff, but yes."

"Your gate's open, she was down by the cul-de-sac, but she came back on her own, I think."

Which is always a kind of weird thing to be like. I mean, "Your dog's out" is one thing, but "Your dog's out, but she came back, and in fact I don't know what I'm doing here" is another.

And then all 140 lbs of mastiff (named Xena, apparently?!) came lumbering over to say hi and drooled all over me and was generally a sweetheart and it turns out it was kind of dumb that I was scared of her, but probably still good that I didn't let Barnie get near her because he's kind of dog-agressive, and weighs about a sixth as much as her. And I still think it's reasonable to be cautious of a huge dog wandering around by itself, even if you are generally a dog person, because it's not a dog that you know and it could do some serious damage. But I also thought it was interesting how quickly I changed from "stay away!" to "hello come here let me rub your belly" as soon as I was told the dog was friendly.

Anyways, that's about all for the moment.

Break's Over, the Take Over

So, I spent a week or two doing nothing, which I think is perfectly within my rights when I've just finished a production - time to get my thoughts in order, right? But then last night I had a dream about three pretty important people telling me to get off my ass and get back to work, so I think maybe that was the sign I needed. In the name of starting slow (I'm still not feeling up to messing with Dog in Space again... too much of a good thing?) I'm probably just going to spend the next few days getting Other People's Garden Gnomes to a place where I can submit it for possible publication.

God, I shouldn't be nervous about that prospect but I am. Maybe it's because I interned there. It's not even that I'm scared of rejection - I'm scared of putting my work out there. Which is a stupid thing for a writer to be scared of, I mean, I've done it before.

It's begun to ash. Like, as in a verb. The wildfires have been going so long that it's falling from the sky. The smoke is really, really thick. It should be blue out today but it's more white. I can't even see the sun and the light is coming through orange, even at midday. It's almost like an apocalyptic movie if not for the fact that we're all cozy in our air conditioning and the plants are still green. Like, we're not scorched at all... but somewhere the world is burning.

Well, back to work!

Also, my blog hit counts are basically back to what they were pre-YPF. Told you it was temporary. ;)