DEAD DOVE. DO NOT EAT.
"There's no sense like nonsense!" I just derived that from something less cool-sounding that somebody else said already, but I'm sure my improved idea has already been thought of for the first time. So I am sharing it.
If anyone cares, I figured out the title and author if the book I couldn't remember. ALL BY MYSELF. It's Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The Colbert Report has clips of all guests who have appeared on the show EVER, so I scanned through all the authors over the past two years and picked the one with the biggest hair. It was the right clip! Woo and yay for me. Clearly I should be a highly paid researcher because I can find information. Sadly, my skills only apply to goofy-looking people with weird hair.
To update on my ambitious reading escapade, I started Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and it fucking goes on and on and on. I got through ninety pages before saying fuck it, I need to read something about people with names. Have any of you read Moll Flanders? Did it piss you off that NO ONE HAS NAMES? Just the narrator and her first husband Robin - everyone else is this gentleman who said this and that gentlewoman who married this other gentleman who was broke and etc. about their net worth. Plus the Ye Olde Puncktuatione was very tedious. Capitalization of arbitrary nouns and sometimes verbs, random italics and sentences that lasted three paragraphs was just too much for me. If I go back to it, I'm getting a fucking updated edition. I don't know how English majors do it. Fuck me.
I have also read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman and it was lovely. I am about to sound like a big stupid white person, but I kept imagining the uncool characters as white even when they weren't supposed to be, namely Fat Charlie and Rosie's scary mother. Am I racist for assuming that only white people can achieve such levels of uncool?
In general I am terrible at envisioning literary characters. My mind's eye is pretty poor - everything I imagine is sort of fuzzy and half-formed. Plus, when I really like what I'm reading, I tend to speed through it to find out what happens next, which only makes it worse. Lately I've taken to assigning PBs to book characters just so I can clearly picture them as I read. (I know. I'm lame. Shut up.) For example, last night I was thinking about the Mayfair series by Anne Rice and how I never connected very well with the central characters Rowan and Michael because I couldn't make them look interesting in my imagination, which I am the first to admit is really silly. Anyway, I realized that Cate Blanchett would make Rowan's coldness less boring, and if Eric Bana were playing Michael, I would finally understand why every fucking character swoons after him for being such a big burly manly man. Problem solved.
Relatedly, whenever I read Neil Gaiman, I'm always pining after a film version because his work is so fucking cinematic. If Anansi Boys were a movie, Fat Charlie and Spider should totally be double cast and Chiwetel Ejiofor would be perfect. He can do mind-blowingly sexy (as in Kinky Boots), but he's also done Big Fat Nerd characters. Plus he is hot and awesome and looks good in a suit (has anyone seen Talk To Me? Um, DAMN.).
Wow, this is really boring. I apologize.
As I study theatre and find myself frustrated with its limitations (as well as my own), I find myself drawn more and more to film. My mom went to film school when I was a wee tyke and had it in her head to be a director until she decided it was too fucking nauseating to sit in an editing suite for sixteen hours a day and started a singing telegram company instead. As a result, I spent most of my formative years around snooty artsy people who watched a lot of movies and only recently have I begun to realize that I too have watched a lot of movies and know a lot more about the business and the artform than most folks. I have never claimed to be an expert of any kind, but only after gaping at the ignorance of people who are really quite intelligent and hold Ph.D's and shit have I admitted to myself that I must know juuuust a little bit. I mean, Jesus Christ, would most people really spend the first twenty minutes of That Thing You Do! trying to figure out where else they've seen the lead character instead of paying attention to the HILARIOUS opening footage or is it just my boyfriend's weird parents?
Anyway, I've been thinking about what it would be like to have a career in cinema, but I have NO idea how psychological acting works or how the fuck you deal with a camera, etc. Maybe I should audition for one of those student short films that the theatre department's email listserv is always telling me about.
OH OH. My boyfriend got me hooked on Arrested Development. Yeah, I know I missed the trend by about five years. Does anyone else find Michael kind of hot even if he sounds a lot like Albert Brooks, who is not hot? >_>
If anyone cares, I figured out the title and author if the book I couldn't remember. ALL BY MYSELF. It's Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The Colbert Report has clips of all guests who have appeared on the show EVER, so I scanned through all the authors over the past two years and picked the one with the biggest hair. It was the right clip! Woo and yay for me. Clearly I should be a highly paid researcher because I can find information. Sadly, my skills only apply to goofy-looking people with weird hair.
To update on my ambitious reading escapade, I started Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and it fucking goes on and on and on. I got through ninety pages before saying fuck it, I need to read something about people with names. Have any of you read Moll Flanders? Did it piss you off that NO ONE HAS NAMES? Just the narrator and her first husband Robin - everyone else is this gentleman who said this and that gentlewoman who married this other gentleman who was broke and etc. about their net worth. Plus the Ye Olde Puncktuatione was very tedious. Capitalization of arbitrary nouns and sometimes verbs, random italics and sentences that lasted three paragraphs was just too much for me. If I go back to it, I'm getting a fucking updated edition. I don't know how English majors do it. Fuck me.
I have also read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman and it was lovely. I am about to sound like a big stupid white person, but I kept imagining the uncool characters as white even when they weren't supposed to be, namely Fat Charlie and Rosie's scary mother. Am I racist for assuming that only white people can achieve such levels of uncool?
In general I am terrible at envisioning literary characters. My mind's eye is pretty poor - everything I imagine is sort of fuzzy and half-formed. Plus, when I really like what I'm reading, I tend to speed through it to find out what happens next, which only makes it worse. Lately I've taken to assigning PBs to book characters just so I can clearly picture them as I read. (I know. I'm lame. Shut up.) For example, last night I was thinking about the Mayfair series by Anne Rice and how I never connected very well with the central characters Rowan and Michael because I couldn't make them look interesting in my imagination, which I am the first to admit is really silly. Anyway, I realized that Cate Blanchett would make Rowan's coldness less boring, and if Eric Bana were playing Michael, I would finally understand why every fucking character swoons after him for being such a big burly manly man. Problem solved.
Relatedly, whenever I read Neil Gaiman, I'm always pining after a film version because his work is so fucking cinematic. If Anansi Boys were a movie, Fat Charlie and Spider should totally be double cast and Chiwetel Ejiofor would be perfect. He can do mind-blowingly sexy (as in Kinky Boots), but he's also done Big Fat Nerd characters. Plus he is hot and awesome and looks good in a suit (has anyone seen Talk To Me? Um, DAMN.).
Wow, this is really boring. I apologize.
As I study theatre and find myself frustrated with its limitations (as well as my own), I find myself drawn more and more to film. My mom went to film school when I was a wee tyke and had it in her head to be a director until she decided it was too fucking nauseating to sit in an editing suite for sixteen hours a day and started a singing telegram company instead. As a result, I spent most of my formative years around snooty artsy people who watched a lot of movies and only recently have I begun to realize that I too have watched a lot of movies and know a lot more about the business and the artform than most folks. I have never claimed to be an expert of any kind, but only after gaping at the ignorance of people who are really quite intelligent and hold Ph.D's and shit have I admitted to myself that I must know juuuust a little bit. I mean, Jesus Christ, would most people really spend the first twenty minutes of That Thing You Do! trying to figure out where else they've seen the lead character instead of paying attention to the HILARIOUS opening footage or is it just my boyfriend's weird parents?
Anyway, I've been thinking about what it would be like to have a career in cinema, but I have NO idea how psychological acting works or how the fuck you deal with a camera, etc. Maybe I should audition for one of those student short films that the theatre department's email listserv is always telling me about.
OH OH. My boyfriend got me hooked on Arrested Development. Yeah, I know I missed the trend by about five years. Does anyone else find Michael kind of hot even if he sounds a lot like Albert Brooks, who is not hot? >_>