WWJD?
Seen since the 30th of August:
And on Friday, the Covenant. ;;;progress
I like living in the new house, with an Italian landlady whose mother offers free Italian food, last year's roommate and a new housemate too. It's a charming prospect, making new customs and codes and learning how to share space. It's only been two days, but both nights I've been the last to go to my bedroom, if not the last to go to bed, so I have walked through the house and switched off all the lights except, of course, for the nightlights. I wonder if this will become my thing. Certainly nothing big, not a thing you could italicize or Capitalize, but it feels wonderfully fancy and poetic and I like to think it'll be mine for the rest of the year.
I was kind of 'flu-y today but I'm better now.
I haven't been able to write to save my life, which is problematic, considering I'm in an advanced fiction writing class which my teacher opened today with, "I'm assuming all of you intend to be professional writers someday. I'm assuming that's the reason you enrolled at this level." Good teacher, though. And (as opposed to 'because') he's been published in Playboy before.
In-deed, I had my first day of classes and for once I'm actually kind of excited about venturing forward in evil school Hell, which is undoubtedly symptomatic of vanity and a mental breakdown. That was Dante's excuse. Lasted him a good many layers of Hell and a Canto for each, so.
APPARENTLY the first episode of One Tree Hill was actually somewhat clever, insofar as I learned these phrases: 'a parliament of owls,' 'an exaltation of larks,' and 'an unkindness of ravens' from Chad Michael Murray's character, who subsequently spends the season getting hazed to death by the high school basketball team, The Ravens. Sad to see how far I have the show has fallen. Anyway, in light of Akeelah and this, I am considering making a hack study of etymology, and memorizing bird terminology. 'A charm of finches.' 'A siege of herons.'
"What would Peter do?" they cried simultaneously.
-- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan. And that is the real question.
- film: Akeelah and the Bee, which is a movie in which Morpheus trains a child to be the One, for the Scripps National Spelling Bee instead of the Matrix. This film explores every theme from words -- etymology, influence, sheer beauty -- to fighting with honor, what with pity and pride. Yes, it does start off with rather heavy-handed context, constructs -- stereotypes, almost -- of ethnic groups, social classes, zip codes, but only to deconstruct them, piece by piece. In the beginning, you have the Asian overachiever with his oppressive father, turning his nose up at the gumdrop of a girl from the mean streets. In the middle, Morpheus says, "There is only one person in the world who can push Dylan to spell his best, and that person isn't his father, or even the spelling bee people. It's you." By the end, the boy tells the girl, "My father's never won anything in his life." Like, fuck him. Fuck that. Cut out the lights, cut through the bullshit, do the words. *A*)/ 'Pulchritude.'
- film: Little Miss Sunshine, which is a portrait of the family that 'brudduh's eaterofcrayons and westbaylen would be, with a couple more generations. Dysfunctional, clever, funny, kinda broken, losing weight, sweet (TOTALLY SWEET), and occasionally gay.
- Olive: Grandpa, am I pretty?
Grandpa: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.
Olive: You're just saying that.
Grandpa: No! I'm madly in love with you and it's not because of your brains or your personality. - TV: House season 3, episode 1. Holy shit, that was fucking awesome. I don't even have words for it. It connects so well with the note season 2 left off on -- that House had defined himself so strictly by his obvious deficiencies, that now that he's lost that excuse, he's floundering to either find new ones or to fill his new outline -- the inevitable conflict. IT IS SO CLEVER. I fuckin' love how House's medical mysteries are an analogue for the characters' intellectual conflicts (and what conflicts; their intellects are all Monstrous) are an analogue for House's personal development is an analogue for the audience's interpretation of Gregory. Of course, we'd defined him by his obvious deficiencies, too. From what I can tell, our sympathies threaten our objectivity. House is always right, you see, and even if he isn't, Cameron is too self-righteous to be right instead. I'm terribly pleased that the producers seem to have taken a hint from the critics and the Mad TV spoofs, and reinvented the formulaic structure for the episodes (and thus, analogously, everything else). Ah, shit.
And on Friday, the Covenant. ;;;progress
I like living in the new house, with an Italian landlady whose mother offers free Italian food, last year's roommate and a new housemate too. It's a charming prospect, making new customs and codes and learning how to share space. It's only been two days, but both nights I've been the last to go to my bedroom, if not the last to go to bed, so I have walked through the house and switched off all the lights except, of course, for the nightlights. I wonder if this will become my thing. Certainly nothing big, not a thing you could italicize or Capitalize, but it feels wonderfully fancy and poetic and I like to think it'll be mine for the rest of the year.
I was kind of 'flu-y today but I'm better now.
I haven't been able to write to save my life, which is problematic, considering I'm in an advanced fiction writing class which my teacher opened today with, "I'm assuming all of you intend to be professional writers someday. I'm assuming that's the reason you enrolled at this level." Good teacher, though. And (as opposed to 'because') he's been published in Playboy before.
In-deed, I had my first day of classes and for once I'm actually kind of excited about venturing forward in evil school Hell, which is undoubtedly symptomatic of vanity and a mental breakdown. That was Dante's excuse. Lasted him a good many layers of Hell and a Canto for each, so.
APPARENTLY the first episode of One Tree Hill was actually somewhat clever, insofar as I learned these phrases: 'a parliament of owls,' 'an exaltation of larks,' and 'an unkindness of ravens' from Chad Michael Murray's character, who subsequently spends the season getting hazed to death by the high school basketball team, The Ravens. Sad to see how far I have the show has fallen. Anyway, in light of Akeelah and this, I am considering making a hack study of etymology, and memorizing bird terminology. 'A charm of finches.' 'A siege of herons.'
"What would Peter do?" they cried simultaneously.
-- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan. And that is the real question.