Tomorrow will be better. See you then.
I have stomach flu and menstrual cramps. I have absolutely nothing to say except maybe "kill me."
Tomorrow will be better. See you then.
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Back on January 8th and 9th , I laid out the criteria needed by a certain form of filmmaking, but there’s a set of movies I neglected to discuss.
So. The Iron Man Trilogy. I feel a tiny bit conflicted about this one. Because while it bends the rules, it still utilizes them. The Patriarch is two people; Yinsen is the father figure whose death we witness, and while we see him in a flashback in the third movie, that cannot really be called a resurrection. But Howard Stark speaking to his son from beyond the grave, in the second movie, certainly can. So between the two of them, that angle is covered. Jarvis, despite his gender, is clearly the Omniscient Goddess; his maleness is fortunately subsumed by his Britishness. And Pepper is the focus of Tony’s Quest, which in every other respect changes from film to film. Where other trilogies have Destroy the Ring/Kill the Emperor/Stab Davy Jones’ Heart, Tony has Keep Pepper Safe. Which is why he has to fail. Tony’s shadow is interesting, though. Based on the third movie, you’d have to call Killian the Shadow, because he is not only a corrupted version of the “genius philanthropist,” his serum is what keeps Pepper alive when she falls. But he’s really a surrogate shadow, because on the whole, in all three movies, Tony’s shadow…is Tony. No man was ever more his own worst enemy. It’s a delicate balance, and it is done well. As far as comedy relief goes, I can’t pinpoint the old Two Pairs. Instead, there’s a sort of free-form comedy all over the place, showing up in Happy and Rhodes and Hammer and The Kid and Greg and Trevor Slattery…and most of all in Tony himself. It’d be risky in any other story, but Iron Man is never too serious for its own good. Most Marvel isn’t. The only real sticking point for me, to be honest, is the fact that it’s not a trilogy at all. IM3 only works if you’ve seen The Avengers, which makes the whole story arc into a (as Ben Stiller once said) Quadruplogy. You can neither disregard Avengers, nor cop out and call it the third movie, because (among other things) Tony DOES manage to save the world in that one; and as we all know, that does nothing for the growth of our Clueless Hero. Apparently, it just gives him PTSD. I love that. In fact, I love everything about these movies, I'm just not sure how to classify them. Mutant Trilogy, perhaps? That seems fitting. . . I prepped the kitchen and bathroom for the tile guy who was supposed to show up this morning. He never came. We have rescheduled for Monday, and I’m feeling jaded. Contractors suck.
Morgan is getting well, but slowly. She stayed home from karate class and we cancelled her weekly sleepover at her grandma’s. Poor girl’s been coughing so hard it makes her nose bleed. Sickness sucks. I’ve hit a wall in my painting, we’ve hit a wall in our househunting. It’s been a day of malaise and discouragement, and I will be happy to put it behind me. Thursday sucks. And yet… When Ave and I played helicopter for half an hour, with his tummy on my feet; and I finally told him my legs were tired and I needed a break, and he gathered up all his crib blankets, arranged them on me, then ran to the kitchen and got me a glass of water... Am I a sappy mommy for preferring to focus on that moment than on all the disappointing and worrying ones? You bet I am. But do I care? The Unicorn Stream is fighting me. Such things happen in the life of a painter; the rocks are cooperating, but the greenery is just not being have, darn it.
Nevertheless, I'd like to go back to it now, in case tonight is Breakthrough Night. So I'll leave you with yet another random quote pulled from a random book from the shelf behind me: My nervous tics shifted into their highest gear, and a small crowd gathered to watch what they believed to be an exotic folk dance. HA! Thank you, David Sedaris, that made my night. I hope others enjoyed it, too. It was on page 87 of Naked. Highly recommended. I'm off to paint. Tove Jansson: Creator of adorable little fictional animals who are somehow so much more real than I am.
Ah, the Moomintroll books. I fell in love with the Moomintroll books when I found them at my tiny local library branch at the age of twelve. The thing is, they're not JUST engaging and charming and wholesome, they're also incredibly archetypal. Each character has plenty of personality traits, and yet is a fair representative of a particular kind of human. There's Snufkin, the quiet wanderer, who is Moomintroll's best friend; there's the Snork Maiden, your classic girly girl, who is a bit vain and damselish but never unnecessarily so. You have an entire cast of Fillyjonks, Mymbles, Gaffsies and Hemulens, several of each, mostly interchangeable. To know one Fillyjonk is to know every Fillyjonk. Pretty much. And they have adventures and goings-on, but our main characters are so cheerful and pragmatic about it all, you find yourself wishing you could be more like them. And eventually all those strange creatures end up inside your head, so when you're worried you can say, "Oh, there's my inner Fillyjonk" or if you've been particularly boisterous you think, "Man, was I a Hemulen today!" Personally, I've always thought Mymble days were awesome, but my favorite thing is when I can say I've acted like Moominmamma. With a house full of kids, this makes sense. Start with Comet in Moominland. Or, if you just want to dabble your toes, go with Tales From Moominvalley, because it's all short stories. And be happy. A trip to Moominvalley is a very happy thing. BUBBLE ART!
We used to do this in 3rd grade. Did you? You water down some tempera paint, add dish soap, blow bubbles in it and drop a piece of paper on top. And then, if you were in Mr. Abbott's class, you would use the scientific method to discover that bubbles naturally intersect in threes. He was that kind of teacher. These days, I'm just trying to make pretties. Good first attempt, you think? Kinda Rorschachian? What do YOU see in the bubbles? Another gem from my amateur wordsmith years! I had two emotions back then, if you go by the poetry I wrote: Angst so dark you could tar a roof with it, and whimsy so surreal you could wear it to mardi gras.
This one was an incarnation of the latter. No date, but the title is Fishbowl listen-can you see me with this knowledge dripping out my ears tiny fins flashing red fish blue fish swim away laughing derisively, even. Good riddance! I don't need them in my fishbowl head transparent, with gaudy green gravel and a tiny porcelain treasure chest-Open it, see a soul pulsing wild free in ignorance, having no word for "cage" singing a resonant renaissance transcending the mundane waters of my brain, listen listen HARD you can hear it, you can join it. The other day the kids were gathered in the living room, and Sebastian was playing a driving game called Need for Speed (Most Wanted). It’s a PS Move game. All of our games are Move games. This is the compromise I insisted on when we got the Playstation, because I cordially loathe video games.
I never played video games as a kid, and nothing I’ve read on child-brain development or the cultivation of the mind has led me to change my low opinion of them. Everyone who writes on the subject agrees, video games are poison to the imagination. And I did hold out against a game system for several years, but eventually I was talked into giving one a chance. Despite my extreme prejudice. Jason is a powerful speaker. Salve to my sensibilities: when they’re Move games, at least the kid’s body is involved, not just his thumbs. So we’ve got Sports Champions, and several Let’s Dance, and a couple of sword ‘n’ sorcery RPGs, and this driving game Sebastian was playing. I was idly listening to the conversation going on around him, and realized that my children were pretending to be in the car with their brother. None of it was even remotely based on anything happening onscreen, either. It was all just them--some of it rather strange, I'll grant you, but it gave me such hope for our world. They were leaning and going “Whoa!” every time he turned; they were describing their made-up identities to each other, and inventing a convoluted backstory about what they wanted, where they were going, and why one of them was riding in the trunk. Video games are the death of the imagination. We all know this. But the imagination is, apparently, a very hard thing to kill. It's been three weeks and two days, and I'm finally going to skip a night. Back tomorrow with bells on. Love to all.
I’m a picky reader.
This is a shameful thing, I know. Educated, openminded people are supposed to gobble up new books, no matter who wrote them. And I’ve tried hundreds of authors out. But there’s only a few I trust to write a story I will love, whose book I will buy before I’ve even opened it. I'm going to tell you about these favorite writers one at a time, with some space in between, so as to give each of them a real encomium. We'll start with my unfortunately deceased friend, Lucy Maude Montgomery I go to the Anne of Green Gables books whenever I need to wallow in late 19th century Prince Edward Island, which is actually fairly often. It's a good place to be. And I read the first six in the Anne series aloud to my kids, who all loved it to pieces; but we stopped before Rilla of Ingleside. I told the kids, I can handle crying once per book while reading aloud--which is the typical Montgomery number--but Rilla is a cry per chapter. It's hell. I can't even think about some of those scenes without tears welling up. It's one of the best WW1 stories out there--all told from the perspective of the women, sending their sons and brothers and lovers off to war. Heartrending. Also genius. Also very accurate, because she was there. And, okay, the Emily books kinda sucked. My theory is that they're too autobiographical to follow a proper narrative--in other words, they're too much like reality. But everything else L.M. wrote was pure gold. Particularly the books that no one has even heard of, like Jane of Lantern Hill and Kilmeny of the Orchard. These are my all-time faves, and they're hard to find. One of the things about Montgomery heroines that makes them all so lovable is how well-read they are. They memorize poetry, and reference Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson in daily conversation, and quote Bible passages at random. I have a long-standing (and unlikely ever to be realized) dream of putting together The Lucy Maude Companion, which would be a compendium of all the things quoted by Anne, in the order in which they appear in her books. It would be ravishing. If you, gentle reader, take this idea and run with it, at least call on me to help choose the page-break quotes and draw the incidental illustrations, okay? Okay. Goodnight. Go read, my friend. |
ArtistHi there! Stick around! Kick off your shoes and have some tea. I'm Robin, and this is my place. Archives
May 2019
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