Pancakes and Princes

Let's talk about the best pancake place in the world. I went there today with my girl friends from high school. Pancakes the size of your face and over 100 types to choose from. It's where the girls from Sex and the Suburbs would go.

Firefighter Friend and I went to see Prince of Persia last night. Last minute he tried to persuade me to go see Sex and the City instead. I refused. The whole point of going to the movies with boys is to see those flicks your girl friends won't go see. And did he honestly want to go up to the box office and say, dressed in his firefighter's t-shirt, "Two for Sex and the City please"? I don't think so.

I know that it's the third weekend for Prince of Persia, but the movie theatre was virtually empty. There couldn't have been ten people there. When FF and I went to go see Robin Hood, he tricked me into not getting to the movie theatre as early as I would have liked for seats by slowing me down with ice cream. Since there always seem to be plenty of seats when we go to the movies, I no longer have a reason to show up to the movie theatre early other than I like movie theatres.

Prince of Persia was fun. It was just - so - long. I think it was longer than Robin Hood. And FF and I had the "surprise" bad guy pegged three minutes in. Still was glad to go see it.

Happy about the US-England tie, since I support both teams. Wish our goal had been more about our skill and less of the goalkeep's blunder though.

I leave in two and a half weeks. Well guess who has two thumbs, speaks two words of French, and has done zero packing.

Mio.

Future Plans

Last week, the Librarian read my students a book about wombats. Since most of my second graders don't know what the Australian creature is like, he started off with a description. "Wombats," he said, "are small, hairy bear-like creatures that are actually pretty friendly. They'll walk up to humans, let you pet them and feed them. However, after about a month or so they get bored. Just when you think you're starting to get to know the wombat, starting to develop a relationship and have a bond, he'll just wander off." Then he told the students they would take a test to see if they were wombats. I passed the test. Several of the boys I've gone out with would not.

So please be advised -- one day, Best Friend D and I will write a hilarious book on disastrous relationships. It will be called "XXX: and other secrets for getting the wrong guy." I can't tell you the real title. I'm not cool enough to be that unPC in public yet.

Strong, weak, we're not even that picky.

There are some interesting posts on women in film that have been going around the blogosphere lately. I find this whole sphere of theory interesting, but instead of writing anything of my own, I'm going to be lazy and just give you some links.

I like this article, "Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women."

John August has a great post on the Bechdel Test:



In my mind, the Bechdel Test is not only interesting in of itself, but also in looking at it in reverse. How rarely do you find a film with two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than men? On the OTHER hand, how often do you find a film with two named male characters who talk to each other about something other than women? In runs the two extremes. On the women's side, movies barely manage to meet these requirements, whereas nearly EVERY movie meets the requirements if they're applied to male characters.

You know what really starts to bend my mind? When I start comparing these requirements and theories to my own screenplays. Yikes. Even as a female screenwriting, sometimes I suck at getting a woman's voice out there. Just yesterday I was doodling out ideas for a children's story, and I instinctively made the main character male. Why is my go-to character male?

I could start listing reasons why, and they WOULD be interesting and thought-provoking. But then you'll be listening to a liberated woman from the 70s, and you didn't come here to see that.

Out with the Old

One of the unspoken agreements between my parents and I when I moved back in was, I think, that I could live here rent free as long as when I moved out I did something about the gov't grade storage mess I have upstairs in the attic. To give you a picture of what a disaster zone it is up there, let me just say that for each time I have moved, I've put at least one box - usually more - in the attic --

The time we moved from one NJ house to another. The time I moved from Indiana to England. The time I redid my room after coming home from Michigan last summer. When I came back from camp. And the time I moved from Michigan back home. Those are the ones I remember. I have more stuff in the attic than I do in my room.

This weekend I started - not finished, just started - the long, arduous process of making that mess disappear. Or at least get it better organized. Going through boxes, redistributing, marking what's in each and, come July, where each should be. Still in the attic, in Michigan with me in my sublease, in Michigan in storage until I get my apartment in the fall. This is actually really difficult to do, not only because my thrifty family has instilled in me a gag-reflex to throwing out anything I might one day need or use, but because of the number of things that held sentimental value.

I'm a sentimental person. That doesn't really surprise anyone, does it? I went through boxes and boxes of things that held incredible importance for me at one time or another. I found my childhood jewelry box with a set of costume jewelry rings from Lord and Taylor that can only fit on my pinky now but were probably my most valued possession when I was eight. I have a box for high school yearbooks and awards and stories. Letters I received from when I was involved in the Adopt a Soldier project. Letters I never sent. A whole box of CDs (those I threw out pretty easily. Especially since mostly they were just empty cases of albums already on my computer). Fliers from the short film I was in at Michigan. The tiara I wore to the Winter Banquet my sophomore year in high school. My Miss America sash from England. The gnome air freshener my friend from camp sent me. Books, pictures, and boxes and boxes and boxes of notebooks. I'm starting to believe that I was never more prolific than I was between the ages of twelve and nineteen.

What to do with all this stuff?

"Digitize," my brother said. Except that doesn't work with most 3D objects.

I threw away a lot of it. Relatively. I mean, no matter what sort of emotional value it has, what good is it if it's going to spend most of its time in a box in the attic? Still, it was crazy difficult throwing some things away, even if they were as insubstantial as a piece of paper. I'm not the sum of my stuff, but my things certainly come from a part of me.

And it was overwhelming. But it was also sort of cool. Because I've lived a lot of places, and I've met a lot of people. And it's true that not all of those people are still in my life, but it's also true that I've been doused in an insane amount of love.

I threw out those magazines I discovered with interviews with Hayden Christensen. He's still hot, but they're about a decade old and they made me feel like a creep.

Blip

Posts will be short and sweet. And probably unrelated to writing. I'm moving in a month, and trying to get my life in order (ie, see as many doctors as possible before my insurance slips away) is all consuming. Or completely exhausting, in which case I do what I did yesterday, which was watch movies all day long. "Research," DR. It's all research.

Oh no

I'm flying during the LOST finale. Which means that my plane will probably crash on a remote time traveling electromagnetic island in the middle of Lake Eerie and I'll be caught in an epic supernatural battle between good and evil.

Wish me luck.

Take that

My sister gave me my birthday presents this weekend. My birthday was in January. That's all cool, though, because I'm probably the worst gift giver ever, so I expect a little karma here.

One of the books she got me is awesome. It's by Kevin DeYoung, and it's called "Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will OR How to Make a Decision without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc."

I'm only halfway through, and I'm loving it. For anyone who's ever struggled with "finding God's will," I super recommend this book. I know it's put some sizable dents in lies I believe about God and His will. And for anyone who's ever felt stressed about finding God's will, who's felt a burden of discovery on them, DeYoung's points are liberating.

One of my fav passages so far (and there are a few of them) -- "Just to be clear, God does not hide things from His people. There are lots of scenarios we don't know, lots of mysteries we can't figure out. There is a will of decree that is not usually known to the people of God (Deuteronomy 29:29). But He is not trying to confuse us or hide truth. In the conventional view of God's will, however, we get the impression that He not only hides His will from us, but He then expects us to find it. So we obsess over God's will of direction, eventually getting frustrated with God for not showing us what He wants. We end up disappointed with ourselves or angry with God because we can't seem to figure out how to find God's will for our lives (46)... We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God (48)."

So if you're interested in God, His will, or theology in general, pick up this book. If only because he has some hilarious things to say about relationships too. Or feel free to disagree with me.

And yes, I did decide what I'm doing next year. :)

At the Theatre

About a month ago I saw a couple of movies that I was pretty excited about, Date Night and the Joneses. Mostly because they were not 1. remakes, 2. sequels, or 3. franchise spinoffs. I meant to blog about them weeks ago, but - obviously - I did not. However, if they're playing near a theatre near you still, I'd recommend going to see them. The Joneses especially. I hadn't heard about it before we went to see it, but it's an interesting dramedy about consumer culture. And David Duchovny's in it.


On the other hand, over the past two weeks, I've seen two major summer tentpoles. I went to see Iron Man 2 last week with my brothers, and Firefighter Friend and I went to see Robin Hood this past Friday. So, 1. a sequel and 2. a franchise.


Iron Man 2 was awesome. I haven't heard a negative thing about it from anyone else either. I love the characters. And Scott Myers has linked to an interview with screenwriter Justin Theroux here.


I was probably more excited about seeing Robin Hood than I was about Iron Man 2. But you guys didn't see that coming, right?

Any reason...

And it was good, but it was way different than I thought it was going to be. I didn't realize how much of the story they were rewriting or that they were starting their story before Robin became an outlaw. I don't want to say I was disappointed, because it was a great movie and I would recommend it and will definitely see it again myself at some point, but it didn't really match my expectations. I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil anyone else's expectations. Loved Crowe and Blanchett though, more than I expected I would. Ok, I'll stop.


However, it's nice to be able to recommend the last four movies I've seen in theatre. That could be because I've stopped letting people drag me to movies like Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2.

Another kind of deadline

Last week we got our contracts for next year. We're supposed to have them returned by Friday.

So now a decision I've been pondering and rationalizing and hypothesizing about for the past three months has to be made in three days. I like to think I'm closer to figuring out what happens next.

I used to think that, for a change, I'd like to take the easy way out for a while. But every single one of my options is a mixture of pros and cons. There is no right answer, which is both liberating and terrifying. The most difficult part is making the choice. Once a course of action has been plotted, it's just a matter of how you make it work, not whether you will make it work. So whatever amount of gumption I have, I have to get it together by the end of this week.