Movie Review: Brave

There seems to be a deep dichotomy between viewers of Pixar’s 2009 feature Up: those who loved it and those who hated it.  Being a member of the later camp my expectations for Brave were guarded at best.  I think it is because of this that I enjoyed it as much as I did.

This isn’t to say that Brave wasn’t good in it’s own right.  As an animated movie that is marketed to children it’s very enjoyable to an older audience.  It contains a lot of references to timeless fairy tales that I think today’s youth don’t get anymore.  And the overall theme is much more mature than the mindless drivel featured in other children’s films.  My disappointment is based on the fact that Pixar has set the bar so incredibly high with past films like WALL-E (my favorite), Monsters Inc. and the like that they now struggle to reach that bar.

First, here’s what’s good about Brave: it’s definitely catered to a more mature audience.  As an adult, I appreciated the vaguely Hans Christian Anderson feel of the fairy tale.  I understood the message about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters and it hit home on a very real level since I took my mom to see it.  Like all great dramas, the primary conflict is one caused and rectified by the main character herself- there’s no real bad guy in this so the story arc is more meaningful.  And on a simpler level, it’s about damned time that Pixar featured a female protagonist.

And Pixar does treat its first female with the respect she deserves.  Yes- she’s a great archer and she is, of course, brave.  But in the end what shines in her are the same traits that females throughout history have exemplified: her oratory abilities, the care she takes in keeping the family together and her ability to bring peace to the hot-headed men who might start a war without the calming influence of their wives and daughters.  (And her sewing skills prove pretty damned valuable, too!)  She’s a great heroine, not a great girl beating guys at their own macho games.  That's a vitally important distinction that I think other films (Mulan, anybody?) have missed.

Also, as a love song to Scottish culture it does ok.  I loved the Scottish brogues, the music, the kilts, the beautiful countryside, the Highland games, the tapestries (one of which serves as a main plot point), even the infamous haggis makes an appearance.  And will-o’-the-wisps have never looked cuter, I’m just waiting for those stuffed animals to pop up in the Disney store.

But here’s where Brave fails where WALL-E and others have succeeded: it’s forgettable.  It’s not that a robot experiencing human emotions and yearning to be loved was so radical, but the way that WALL-E brought it to life sticks with you in your soul.  And it’s not that a monster with a heart of gold is brand new (though I would argue the universe in which that monster lived certainly was); but Boo and Sulley made a permanent imprint on my heart.  (BTW, how excited was I to see a preview for the prequel featuring Mike and Sulley’s antics in college?!?  I will SO be seeing that!)  These movies made an impact on me that have lasted for years (maybe forever). 

It’s the elusive Pixar magic that other companies have tried and failed to reproduce (though Illumination, the company that created Despicable Me, may be taking the helm on that) and Brave just doesn’t have it.  It was cute, it was whimsical and it had a good message for mature audiences (at least mature audiences who love their mothers but are driven crazy by them).  But it lacked the Pixar magic that made previous movies so amazing and at the end of the day that will confine it to a less stellar line-up of films.  However, to be fair let me conclude by saying this: if the worst thing you can say about a Pixar film is that it wasn't as mind-blowingly wonderful as WALL-E, that's not too bad.

Insert Catastrophe Here

“I told you this was gonna happen.”

“No you didn’t!”

“Yeah, I did I sa-“

“No, you said you had ‘a bad feeling about’ it or some other vaguely ominous sounding bullshit but you most certainly did not tell me that this was going to happen!”

“Whatever.  I warned you, is all I’m saying.”

“Yes, and you can see now how incredibly helpful that was.  I’m so freakin’ indebted to you.”

“I’m just saying-“

“I know what you’re saying and I’m telling you to shut the hell up!”

“Ok, ok, I’m sorry.  Sheesh.  Can’t even say ‘I told you so’ without getting your head bit off around here.”

“Motherfu- Just shut up.”

The Battle of WoW

“Wooooo-hoo!  Yes!  Yeah, man!!  Did you see that?!  Woooo!”

“Uh… dude?”

“That was like, EPIC!  Like myths and folklore and minstrels singing about it EPIC!  Right?”

“Dude.”

“They’re all like ‘Hey!  We’re a mob on infernals come to destroy your entire existence!” and I’m all like, ‘You… shall-not… pass!!!’ Boo-ya!!!”

“DUDE!”

“What?!?”

“Uh, want to take a look at your screen for a second?”

“Oh, shit.  When did you die?”

“Somewhere around the time that you started shouting smack-talk about balrogs- which they so weren’t.”

“Damn dude- what happened?”

“I was casting my ass off and instead of protecting me like you were supposed to you went all berserker and left me to die!”

“Well, you shouldn’t be so… killable.”

“Uh-huh, it was my fault.”

“Look- I was just-“

“Totally ignoring the battle plan and doing whatever the hell you felt like, yeah- I noticed.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.  The least you can do is bury me so I don’t end up as one of the mindless undead.”

“Bury you?  No way, man!  Hell, you’re lucky I don’t skull-fuck your sorry ass into oblivion.”

“That’s it!”

“Woah- what the hell was that?”

“That- was me- haunting you- for being- such- a giant- DICK!”

“Wow!  You’re a ghost!”

“Yup!” 

“Dude, my controller’s vibrating out of my hands!”

“Yep, Suck it!”

“How the hell are you doing this?”

“New expansion pack.”

“Seriously?  So there’s like a whole other bunch of quests and stuff you do as a ghost?”

“Yep.”

“That’s so cool.  I wanna die!”

“You will, I’ve been sucking your health this whole time.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“Dude, I’m totally dead!  Fuck you!”

“Haw-haw!”

Big, Fun and Scary 2012 Update

Last night I did two activities that are both very, very good for me and both of which I haven’t done for a long, long time.  I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to suddenly pack my after-work schedule full of self-care activities but I do know that I felt so drastically better afterwards that it made me think about why it had been so long since I’d done these things.  The most immediate insight was simply that I haven’t been taking very good care of myself lately.

This led me to review my challenge for this year to see how it ties in.  For those of you who don’t remember, it was to accept.  The primary idea being that acceptance would rid me of the judgment which shrouds me in a thick cloak of negativity.

After the night I just had and some other thoughts I’ve been bouncing around lately, I feel that I need to amend that.  Because lately, I have been accepting too much.  I’ve accepted that there’s nothing wrong with a day off from exercising or reading or writing or any of the other activities that are so important to my self care regiment.  I’ve accepted myself for sitting on the couch in front of the tv and just vegging because I had a tough day or was really tired or totally stressed out.  In short, I’ve accepted a whole bunch of things that are not good for me.

The problem with acceptance in the context I’ve been employing it is that it allowed me to shirk my responsibilities.  And that’s what karate and reading and writing and exercise are- responsibilities.  Basic hygiene.  Not for my mouth or my B.O. but for my mental health.  These activities keep me sane, plain and simple.  And when I don’t do them things tend to go very poorly for me.

Now, re-reading that entry on acceptance it’s clear to me that what I’ve been doing is not at all what I intended.  I talked about all of these great activities that I wanted to do with the hope that doing them without judgment would lead me to excel at them.  I didn’t talk about accepting a lack of action on my part and just excusing what is ultimately me being lazy about my own self care.

So I need to clarify the goal for myself.  Acceptance is nothing without accountability.  Because regardless of how tired or pissed off or headachey or just plain-old BLAH I’m feeling I still have to do what I have to do to take care of myself.  I have to hold myself accountable for my own, personal responsibilities.

Accountability is what has kept me at karate year after year when I would far sooner just go home and “relax”.  Accountability is what got 211 blog posts out of me last year.  Accountability is what has gotten me to spew forth word counts greater than I could possibly imagine every November.  Accountability is what has kept me plugging away at my reading challenge for this year.  And in a broader context, accountability is what makes me get my sorry ass out of bed every morning and go to work- it keeps me employed.

So this is me making a new goal for myself in the year to come: To push myself with all my energy and intentions and accept the result of that.  Because things will still go as they go, crap will still happen, there will still be stress and worry and emotionally taxing moments and I have to accept that.  But the basic day to day necessities that keep me mentally and emotionally healthy are prime responsibilities- and if I don’t have them then I don’t have a chance in hell of accepting the rest of it.

Next Up...

Last year one of my top reads was Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore.  I am way overdue to read the sequel.  I am currently working on rectifying this.  Stay tuned.

Book Review: Heat Wave

Heat Wave was not a serious read so I'm not going to give it a terribly serious review.  I will simply say that, much like it's originating series, it was a lot of fun.

A few simple things that I absolutely loved: there is a doppelganger for every series regular and they all have the same quirks, use the same banter, and do the same moves so it feels right at home.  And the Castle doppelganger?  His name is Rook.  How great is that?  It's so obvious but it made me so happy, I can't even tell you.

It doesn't play out exactly like an episode of Castle; there are a few key differences.  Number one: Castle goes a lot quicker so the cases aren't as complicated.  Because this story had an entire book with which to play out the action there was a lot more going on: more suspects, more murders, more cases that end up being involved and more false endings.  The general line-up was the same in that the first suspect you meet is never the person who did it and the climax involves a life-threatening situation that is happily resolved; but there was a lot more detail to this case then you generally find in a Castle ep.  (Though I could easily see it as a two-parter.)

My main beef is that I imagine Castle to be a better writer than the writer of this book seems to be.  Or at least a more crime-focused writer.  This story had the tell-tale signs of a crime novel but it lost me in the romance department.  First off, it took Castle four full seasons just to get a steamy kiss in with his ingenue.  And secondly, the sex scene that the book jumps right into is straight out of a harlequin romance novel complete with firey metaphors and overly dramatic language.  Bleh.  There's also a lot more fluttering hearts and body-tightening glances than I can stomach and I wonder if maybe the series gets away with that better because they're showing rather than telling.  Either way, the series is far batter in that capacity than the book.

But, thankfully there is only the one nausea-inducing sex scene and the bulk of the story is the comical banter and crime drama from Castle that I love so I can forgive the writer and still enjoy the story.  And while I wouldn't recommended this book to everyone I would definitely recommend it to Castle fans (but I would recommend you skip the sex scene).

Strong

She reviewed the checklist in her head.  Laces tied?  Yes.  She inspected the loops- perfectly even.  The black shoes shined with the polish she’d rubbed onto them.  Moving up, her eyes followed the straight lines of his pants.  She’d gotten up 2 hours early to iron and starch them, having learned the hard way that an hour was not enough time to ensure perfection.  Reflexively she reached out and put a hand on Frederick’s shoulder to stop him from fidgeting.  He stilled under her touch.

She pulled on his vest, smoothing the lapel and pulling the sleeves of his jacket straight.  Then up to his tie which she tightened.  His hand went up to pull it open again and she gently pushed it back down. 

“I know, Frederick.  But I need you to play statue now, ok?  Just until we get outside.” 

She picked up his hand and inspected his fingernails.  The cuticles were cut back, the nails perfectly clean from the scrubbing she’d given them.  She gave it a light squeeze before letting it drop back at his side.  Then she straightened herself so she could look over his head.  The part she combed in was a line as straight as the starched pants and his hair gleamed with the oil she’d combed into it.

She smiled weakly, then turned to the mirror and performed the same operation on herself, slightly sped up.  Her uniform showed the same firm lines with razor straight folds in the pleats of her skirt and stockings cutting across her legs just below the knee.  They glowed white, the bleach so strong it had been causing rashes on her unseen legs.  She gave her vest a pull and her breath caught in her throat- one of the buttons was hanging on by a thread.

She held her breath and pushed the button back through the hole, just enough to hold it in place.  If she could keep perfectly still she’d be able to mend it on the ride to school.  Giving her little brother a glance she turned to face the door.  Two swift knocks and waiting.

“Come in,” the deep voice loomed from behind the giant oak door.  She pushed it and lead Frederick inside.

They marched in tandem and she kept her footsteps in synch with his so that their heels beat a steady rhythm on the polished floor.  She had to march in place twice to end in time with Frederick’s short legs.  She held her chest out and head down, looking briefly out of her peripheral vision to make sure he was doing the same.  He was.

She held her body rigid and counted her heartbeats; mentally willing them to slow down.  She breathed deeply and then froze- she could see the loose button at the bottom of her vest threatening to fall out if she expanded her abdomen too much.  So she slowed her breathing and kept it shallow and steady.  She said a silent prayer in her mind: “Just hold on.”

She heard her grandfather stand from behind the giant desk and snapped her eyes away from the vest lest her focus give her away.  His footsteps echoed in the foreboding room as he slowly and deliberately made his way around the desk to them.  She saw the tall shape of him move up in front of Frederick and held her breath the way that she always did when he was being scrutinized. 

“Good, Frederick, my good strong boy,” he said, patting him on the shoulder.  “You will excel in all your studies, ya?” 

“Yes, sir,” she heard her brother answer.

“And you will show all the other boys the strength of the Brandt family?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad.”

A single step to the side and the broad chest that entered her vision was the firm expanse of dark wool she was familiar with.  He said nothing as he stood in front of her inspecting every facet of her appearance.  The silence strengthened the sound of her heart in her ears as she held her breath, waiting for him to give his approval and release them.  Then her heart stopped as she saw his hand move towards her vest.

He pulled on the bottom with one, firm tug and the button popped off and sailed through the air.  The seconds seemed to slow to a crawl as she watched it arch and then fall.  Gravity mocked her by drawing out the agonizing descent and she felt almost relieved when it finally hit the floor.  The sound it made as it bounced echoed in her ears.

“Please,” she prayed, but said nothing.

“Frederick, go wait outside while I talk to your sister.”

She saw him hesitate and moved her head just enough to look at him, darting her eyes towards the door.  For just a second his eyes began to water but he swallowed, turned on his heel and marched out.  She allowed herself to exhale as she heard the door close behind him.

She prepared her apology as a formality, reasoning why her negligence was unforgivable.  She reviewed her weakness, her failure to plan appropriately, her stupidity- all the reasons why she deserved the lesson he was about to teach her.  But the usual question never came.

Thus why the first blow was a surprise.  His fist collided with her chest and knocked the breath out of her in one uncontrolled rush of wind.  The floor rose up to meet her and she embraced it like a long lost friend, spreading herself across it like a cloak.

She didn’t move.  Even if she could she knew that covering herself would only increase his severity.  A second hit connected with her lower back, an open handed smack.  It seemed almost as if he meant to spank her but her body was too low to the ground. The third was higher up, directly across her spine.  He rained pain down on her with his characteristic control- steady beats on a taut skin.  Anger was a sign of weakness, he had beat that lesson into her many times before.  So she clamped her eyes shut against the frenzied panic of her emotions and endured, the way she always had.  It took her a long time to realize that he had stopped.

“Stand, now,” was all he said.

She complied immediately and ignored the screaming protests of her body as she forced herself to stand, picking up the traitorous button as she rose.  She regained the rod-straight posture she had held before.

Her eyes were dry.  Her jaw held firm.  Her face was the calm resignation of a dead man’s.  He would call her weak, he would prove she was.  But in the end she was the one thing he was unknowingly training her to be.  Strong.

My Read for June

I discovered Nathan Fillion when my dear friends introduced me to Firefly- a show so brilliant that I was destined to worship its existence long before I saw the first episode.  The combination of the sheer genius of Joss Whedon combined with the delectable joy that Nathan Fillion brings to all his roles was heaven.  While my love affair with Joss Whedon is no less strong without the added delight of Mr. Fillion; I loved him too much not to follow his Whedon-less exploits.  Thus came Castle.

It is the perfect mix of sitcom humor, crime drama, and that magical tension between two lead characters who just won’t get together no matter how much you want them to (I.E. The X-Files factor).  And Nathan Fillion is no less adorable, wonderful and squeal-worthy as Richard Castle than he was as Malcolm Reynolds (or Captain Hammer, for that matter).

However, to give credit where credit is way overdue I will say that Castle wouldn’t be Castle without the truly fantastic writers crafting every episode.  Their ability to walk the tight rope of drama vs. comedy is staggering and the characters that they’ve created in this show are just amazing.

One of those writers decided that having the show wasn’t enough and went ahead and started writing the series of books that Richard Castle wrote.  For those of you who aren’t fans of the show, I will briefly explain the plot: Richard Castle is a mystery writer who writes best-selling crime novels.  In order to do research for his new books he gets himself assigned to follow a tough female detective in the NYPD’s 12 precinct.  (He’s friends with the mayor.)  He then creates a character based on this detective whom he calls Nikki Heat and starts a new series of novels about her and her exploits as a homicide detective.  In the show, the first book in the series is called Heat Wave and it does well enough that he gets permission to continue following this detective until he gets tired of writing the series.

Having the book featured in the episodes is one thing.  Having a physical copy of it with the author’s name (Richard Castle) plastered across the front cover is quite another.  The fan girl in me gets giddy just looking at the thing.  And if the writing in the book is anything like the writing in the series I have a feeling this is going to be a very fun read for me.

Book Review: Cruel Shoes

I didn’t take philosophy in college.  The little exposure I’ve had to philosophical ideas has made my brain hurt.  So I don’t know nearly enough about it to think that knowing anything about philosophy would have made reading Steve Martin’s early work funny to me.  I also don’t know that not knowing anything about it is what made it not funny.  But based on what I’ve been reading in my research on this manuscript I’m guessing that may be the case.

I picked up this book thinking that it fell into the humor genre.  Not necessarily low-brow comedy, but simple enough that laugh out loud moments would be plentiful and I could knock out a few micro-stories without much effort.  Having finished this book I would now categorize it as surreal humor.  There were so many non-sequiturs, absurd situations and plain old nonsense that most stories left me in a state of confusion.  The end result is that instead of the “hah!” I was expecting I was most often left with a “huh?” instead.

Being so thoroughly confused by all this, I looked into this book in particular and Steve Martin’s early work in general.  I came across a very telling quote that Wikipedia copied from a 1982 Rolling Stones interview with Steve.  When discussing his history Steve brought up the fact that he studied philosophy in college and that it changed the way he thought about everything.  He said “In philosophy, I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff, because all you have to do is twist everything hard—you twist the punch line, you twist the non sequitur so hard away from the things that set it up".  That quote explains this book better than I ever could.

I’ve seen clips of Steve Martin’s stand up and laughed uproariously.  I read countless articles that list him as one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time.  I’ve been a fan of his movies for my entire life and loved the Jerk so much it makes me want to cry.  And there are elements in all of those that are very similar to the style of this book- the absurd, the out of nowhere twists, the uncomfortable laughing moments.  But for some reason that I don’t understand it just didn’t translate in this book.

Perhaps years from now when I’ve learned more through further reading and other endeavors I shall take to try to keep myself from the black hole of stupidity I will re-read this book and find the humor.  But as of now I think I’m too stupid to get it.

The Rise and Fall of a Supermarket Reunion (A Story In Five Parts)

Chapter One

Browsing through the fruit and vegetable isle you’re lost in squeezing tomatoes and trying to figure out what to get for dinner when you hear a long, exaggerated “Ohhhh myyy Gaaawd!”  You look up and see a face you haven’t seen since high school: Annie Jacobs.  The hair is highlighted and chopped short in a wave and there are crows feet and an unnatural orangey glow to the skin but it’s definitely her.  There is a heartfelt if awkward hug and you almost tear up when sharing brief stories about your lives over the past twenty years.  Of course she got married, and remarried now and her husband is a doctor and boy was it great catching up and before you can even think you’re parting ways.  You find yourself roaming the aisles aimlessly, having forgotten your shopping list in a flood of memories.

Chapter Two

You see her in the soda aisle loading a case of some fancy sparkling water into the bottom of her cart and can’t help but break out in a smile.  “Fancy meeting you here” you quip before launching into a nearly hysterical retelling of the ruined performance of Grease sophomore year that birthed a thousand different inside jokes between the two of you and lead to impromptu choruses of adulterated song lyrics in a variety of inappropriate contexts.  You spend far longer than you mean to recalling embarrassing moments and rebellious pranks and you laugh harder than you have in a while and ask for her phone number when she says that you should seriously catch up.  You wander off happily thumbing the torn paper and marveling on how surprisingly great this shopping trip has been.

Chapter Three

Reaching for a pound of chicken cutlets you see her again; she’s standing in front of the display and half- blocking it with her cart.  “I guess that’s the joy of supermarkets,” she laughs, “you reunite again and again.”  You laugh politely but the fun stories have sort-of exhausted themselves already and you really do have to get home and make dinner.  You smile warmly, saying how it really was so good to see her but you purposely skip the frozen food aisle in hopes of concluding the visit while you’re still genuinely happy to have run into her.

Chapter Four

Turning down the paper good aisle to retrieve toilet paper you spot her looking through paper towels.  You nearly back track but then mentally kick yourself for being so petty.  But in all honesty, it’s really just getting ridiculous.  As you near her you see that she’s parked her cart directly in front of the TP and you start to remember why you haven’t seen her for twenty years.  Because wasn’t she always getting in the way, one way or another?  Didn’t she steal the role of Sandy in Grease while you were stuck as stupid Patty?  And didn’t she always get the solos in chorus while you were forever harmonizing with the rest of the altos?  And didn’t she go to the prom with Mark Cooper even though she knew you were totally in love with him for, like, the entirety of junior year?  That bitch.  It’s not enough that she stole all your big moments in high school, now you can’t even wipe your ass because of her!  You give her a weak smile as you reach over her cart and grab a four pack, then beat a hasty retreat back down the aisle.

Chapter Five

You make your way to the check-out stands, nearly holding your breath as you wait for her to emerge at the end of a line and once again block you from getting your damned groceries.  All the pleasant memories have faded and now you want nothing more than to get out.  How silly for you to forget that the tall, beautiful Ann was the bane of your high school existence; effortlessly taking everything you worked so hard for.  You scan the horizon for her high-heeled figure to emerge and curse the pimpled checkout boy for not going faster.  Completely forgetting all the coupons you’d cut you swipe your card and violently shove your bags into your cart, nearly running for the door.  Safely in the parking lot you rush to get everything into the trunk of your car while your brain recalls a thousand horrific failures that perfect Ann succeeded at.  The dances, the boyfriends, the compliments and praises from teachers all directed at her while you followed her around like a dog begging for the scraps of her popularity.  You see her coming out of the store as you turn on your car and look in the other direction, backing out as fast as you can and cursing her for ruining everything.  When you get home, you throw her number away with your receipt.

My Read For May

Many years ago someone gave me a very surprising and wonderful gift for my birthday.  It was a copy of Steve Martin's Pure Drivel; a collection of humorous essays and super short stories by one of the funniest men on the planet.  Having never been exposed to Steve Martin off-screen before I was happily shocked to learn that he writes just as well as he acts.  Every page of that short little book had me laughing my ass off and I counted it as my favorite collection of funny essays ever after that (blew Dave Barry away, in my opinion.)

Since then I have amassed a small collection of Mr. Martin's works (the novellas, the plays, etc) and like so many other books they've been sitting on my shelf, waiting patiently to be read.  I hate to admit that the main reason I'm picking up this volume now is that it's really, really short.  Having spent the first half of the month reading Wicked I've cut back on the amount of time I have to finish anything and a super short collection like this one is just what the doctor ordered.  Furthermore, after the grave and saddening Wicked I could seriously use a little laughter.

So throughout the remainder of the month I will be reading Cruel Shoes, Steve's very first book which was written and released before I was born.  Based on how hard his second collection hit me my expectations for the first are even higher.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Book Review: Wicked

My first experience of the Wizard of Oz was the singing, dancing, brightly colored fantasy from the movie which brought nothing but happy memories and fond imitations.  When I played the cowardly Lion in a production of the play it brought my love of the happy, joyful version of the story to a new level.  That put me in a somewhat precarious position for reading Wicked because it turns not only the characters but the themes from the original story on their heads.

It's not just that the witch is the heroine and Dorothy is sort-of a bad guy; it's that the joyful, happy version of the original story has been reversed.  This Oz is a dark, dangerous place where singing and dancing is done at the risk of rather terrifying consequences.  This is a place where everyone has a motive other than the one you see on the surface and navigating the complexities of the path set out is a fuck of a lot more complicated than following a brightly colored brick road.  This is a place where every assumption is going to be questioned, analyzed and found to be false or corrupted.  And all of those beloved characters?  Well they're almost as messed up as the ones in that Chuck Palahniuk novel I just read.

So it was strange for me to find myself getting exciting when familiar characters or events or props popped up in this version of the tale.  It was strange to see Maguire's take on the origin of all these people and places and things.  It was strange to connect the dots from the long, strange back story to the original plot of the movie.  And most of all it was strange to find myself liking all of it.

Because the biggest difference between the Wizard of Oz from my youth and the one from this book is that one was happy and the other was definitively sad.  There's no happy ending, there's resolution of the terrible events which took place, there's no reassurance that it all meant something.  No, Maguire refuses to succumb to any of the cliches one would find in the fairy tales from one's youth.  In fact, Maguire addresses that directly: "In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever after of a Witch, there is no happily".

It's sort of like finding out that the fat, jolly Santa Claus from your youth is actually your alcoholic, abusive uncle in a red suit.  Or that the tooth fairy is actually your mom bribing you out of a combination of guilt and some false sense of obligation to an outdated story.  Or that your favorite childhood blanket is the reason you kept getting the flu every winter.

But it's not the jaded, cynical adult version- it's the mature adult version.  It's going further into the tragic story of why your uncle is alcoholic and abusive.  Or why your mom tried so hard to keep that fantasy alive for so long.  Or why the symbolism of that blanket made it worth every sniffle in the end.  It's going past blame to empathy; past superficial explanations to nuanced examinations.

It's like everything else in my experience: the search for answers to all these complicated questions only leads to more questions.  So perhaps saying that this was the sad version of the original is far too simple.  Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the biggest difference is that one is surface level and the other is bottomless.  Because that's the thing about digging for clues- you never really get to the bottom of it.

And I don't mean to make it sound like it's not an enjoyable experience here.  Maguire somehow manages to examine endlessly complex issues like family ties, politics, religion, sexuality and intimacy, societal norms, coming of age and re-examining childhood with the air of grace one would expect from a far more serious piece of literature.  A lot of the discussions reminded me of things I've seen in incredibly well-done political dramas or award winning autobiographies.  But it's done with the whimsical characters of the original story which are so familiar from childhood.

Honestly, there were so many passages that truly blew my mind with their beauty and complexity.  Looking at the scars from youth, how they formed, and what they mean to our identity as adults.  Wanting to blame our faults on the mistakes of our parents or those who taught us and finding that we would have done the same in their shoes.  Asking the difficult questions about the nature of good and evil and why people do what they do and finding that there are no easy answers but only a maze of different viewpoints.  And what's really amazing- and possibly Maguire's greatest strength- is that he uses the same language one would find in the sources one would examine for these answers: parables, allegories, apothegms and rhetoric.  So many passages are introduced as if from the bible or an archaic fable or an ancient myth and the same controversy about the truth or validity of these is argued by the characters discussing them.

The way that he breaks down the societal norms, geographical boundaries, politics and religions of all these different peoples makes Oz look like something featured in national geographic.  He balances lyrical verse with factual observations about the characters, how they look, where they live and their culture.  He looks at love and anger and prejudice and reverence and everything in between with confounding complexity.  And he doesn't give you any answers.  Seriously, if I were pursuing a PHD in literature studies I could do a dissertation on this thing and still not cover it all.

Even the structure of the book raises questions rather than concluding story arcs.  Every time a huge life-changing event happens he ends the section of the book and moves to a different time several years later where you're left wondering what the hell happened all those years ago.  And the main character whose eyes we're seeing all this through is as perplexing and multilayered as one of Miller's antiheroes.   She doesn't understand herself and is constantly seeking to understand her own complexity.  And the more she learns, the harder it becomes to conclude anything.

In the end I think what strikes me most about this is just how fascinating and unsettling all those questions are.  It's impossible for me to draw any tidy conclusions about it because of that.  There's no good or bad because there's no black or white in this book.  Everything is gray.  But I will say this: the man has way with words.  His descriptions are heartbreaking and beautiful and although I feel sort of disquieted I'm still compelled enough to want to try out Son of Witch.  Because there's way too many unanswered questions to simply move on.

The Heiress

Wikipedia states that community theatre is “theatre made by, with, and for a community.”  In general, this is taken to mean the locale in which the theatre is located and in which the participants and audience live.  But there’s a different definition of community that applies to my experience here.  That definition which focuses on the shared “character; agreement; identity” of the people involved in a joint activity.  Because when I try to sum up what this experience has meant to me, it is that definition of community that most accurately describes it.

I felt like part of a community- a group of people whose shared passion for the art leads them to not only endure but to enjoy all the details of a production.  All these late nights, juggling schedules, reciting lines, examining characters and motives and events, cramming into costumes and enduring less-than-comfortable false eyelashes, joking about how weird the audience is or how crazy it was when that mini-catastrophe happened.  All of it.  It is this shared experience that defines this feeling of community- this sense of belonging.

When I think of “the acting bug” I think about that ever-elusive high that one gets from walking off stage and feeling that you have, within that moment, ‘nailed’ the performance.  I had that with this production a couple of times and it feels pretty damned groovy.  And it is that which I will be seeking out when I audition again for the next production.  I’ve got the acting bug in this regard and it had been dormant for a long while before this.

But those singular moments are only a tiny piece of the overall tapestry of emotions I got from this.  What means more, strangely enough, is all of the side effects.  The joking and talking and laughing down in the green room while getting on makeup and putting on costumes and waiting for your scene.  The energy circle before each performance during which we wished ourselves luck and reminded each other to have fun while squeezing hands for vigor.  The awkward moments when you stepped on someone else’s line or skirt or your scene went drastically differently than you anticipated just because of the audience or a technical hic-up or just messing up.  The celebratory cakes and gifts and thanks-yous.  The fact that we all make ourselves more than a little crazy with all of it and we all love it.

In community theatre- because theatre in college was just a drastically different experience- I haven’t really had a bad time of it.  I haven’t encountered challenging personalities or over-demanding directors or anything else that might make the experience less enjoyable.  But I’ve also never felt this strong of a sense of community before and I have to believe that what my other more seasoned co-stars were saying was true: that this was just a really great group of people.  Despite my one little scene I felt just as much a part of the cast as everyone else.  I was no less valuable, no less appreciated, no less important to the play.  I was a part of and I value that feeling more than anything else in the world.

My co-stars were not only great actors (and I honestly think that everyone did a pretty incredible job) but great people.  They were kind, caring, funny, passionate, laid back, enjoyable people and all of those nights joking around in the green room or changing costumes back stage meant even more to me than those miracle moments when I nailed my scene.  And the crew- the producer, director, stage manger, costume designer, set designers and even the people running the ticket booth and baking cookies for intermission- were no less incredible and overwhelmingly kind.  And my family and friends who hooted and hollered for me when I got cast, came out to see me with excitement, and showered me with praise afterwards reminded me of how incredibly lucky I am to have such an amazing support network.  I have so many fond memories of this production it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it all.

And although I’m trying to be nothing but grateful for all of it I can’t help but be more than a little sad that it’s over.  Leaving the theatre that last night was nothing short of heart breaking and I’ve had to console myself that if I’m lucky enough to get cast again I may run into these incredible people in the future.  But in the end, it's the fact that I had this experience- not that it’s over- which matters. 

The memories and the pictures and the gifts will stay with me.  I will audition again for another show in the not too-distant future.  And if I’m very lucky, I will be a part of another community- perhaps comprised of some of these same wonderful people.  And in the mean time, I will be grateful with every story I tell about my time in the Heiress.

The Play is the Thing

At some point over the years in this field I picked up a list of the most stressful events a human can go through as determined by some high-up researchers.  The thing that always struck me about the list was that positive events such as getting married ranked just as high as negative events like getting divorced.  Thus you might find yourself having a new baby- generally considered to be a blessing- and feeling more stressed out than you’ve ever been.  What we know about stress is that it leads to a variety of physical and mental health problems and what this list taught us is that regardless of the cause the outcomes tend to look the same.

This is a lesson I’ve been reminded of (or rather beaten over the head with) over the past couple of weeks.  A variety of really positive events- Buddy’s graduation from training class, the premier of the play, a work conference which would have been enjoyable under normal circumstances- have all collided to turn me into a zombie.  Like I said, these are all positive events but the stress level is high enough to lead to the same consequences as if they were negative: I’m perpetually exhausted.  I’m getting migraines way more frequently than normal.  By the time I get home every night my brain has deteriorated into the consistency of apple sauce and I’m mentally incapable of doing the things I’d like to be able to do- like reading the book I planned to finish by the end of this month or writing here. 

I’ve actually tried a couple of times over the past week to sit down and write something- about the play, about Buddy, or even to try and coherently sort through the mesh of story ideas in my head to write a new fiction piece.  And every time I’ve found myself staring at the screen, drifting out of alertness and then getting confused as to what I was supposed to be doing.  It’s like falling asleep- you lose time and then you’re confused when you wake up.

So even though I have a million things I want to say I may have to wait until everything has calmed down so I can formulate my thoughts into a narrative that will lead to something above the rambling, disjointed mess that’s currently swirling around my head.  In the mean time, suffice it to say that fun times are happening.  The play is the thing.

Put on Your Sunday Clothes

Last night at rehearsal my co-stars were trying on their dresses.  We premiere in only a scant two weeks and the technical costume details like shoes and gloves and costume changes are being considered.  One of the dresses struck me as being terribly at home in a production of Hello, Dolly when everyone starts singing about their Sunday clothes and I couldn't help but observe this out loud.  As if one cue we all started singing the tune and laughing.

Then I looked at my friend in her pretty yellow dress with a wide skirt and frills around the shoulders, laughing over how she needed a parasol to complete the outfit, and her face changed.  I realized immediately what had happened, and I said it:

“You’re gonna have that stuck in your head all night now.”  Her smile sank because she knew I was right, the chorus was already cycling through her mind.

Throughout the rest of the evening as we meandered around the lobby looking over lines or rummaging through the box of gloves I’d hear the first few words of the song sung quietly followed by a loud, abrupt “Dammit!”

I'd laugh and then step over to say "You're welcome!" with a giant grin on my face.