what have i gotten myself into?

Ever since Websnark did the National Novel Writing Month thing last year, I've been wanting to give it a try. Basically, the online version has been going on since I started college. Now that I'm done, I actually have the time to do it. I figure this may be the last November where I don't have a real job and don't need to get one, so I signed up as a participant. See my little icon? This is my version of a marathon, I suppose. I haven't done any training, though--I have no idea what to write about, and I never really make page count on my papers. I also never write fiction. So the question is, do I go full out and create something from scratch, or do I do what most beginning novelists do and write from personal experience. The latter feels like a cop-out, but I think that's what I may have to do, faced with writing 50,000 words starting November 1st. At this point, I don't even care if I finish by November 30th or not. While I know it is physically possible for me to type 2000 words a day (I did it all the time when I had to write papers), I don't know my writing speed for fiction at all. Maybe it's a lot easier. Maybe it'll be worse.

Apparently, there's a group at my local Borders that meets every Saturday. I feel like I should go, seeing as how the writer's group for all of NaNoWriMo L.A. is meeting in Torrance. These things never meet in Torrance. It's just... not done. Too bad I like the Barnes & Nobel better. Free wireless, and they don't try to kick out out of the cafe after half an hour. Although maybe that's changed since the last time I actually stayed longer than 30 minutes at a Borders five years ago (before they built the Barnes right next door and closer to the mall.) Maybe I'll rebel and go to Barnes while they're all at Borders. Mwahahaha... ahem. In any case, here goes nothing. I'll post some bits if I like them enough, but that may not happen ever in the next month or so. This blog will either be updated all the time or never, depending on how much I need to get away from writing this novel that I haven't even begun planning yet.

weddings

happy bride
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

For some reason, I haven't had the desire to bring the rebel to either of the weddings I've been to recently. I think it's because I've had to travel light, and I didn't expect to have too much time for pictures. I still brought along my little sony, though, and that's what allowed me to capture this moment while I was helping Damaris get dressed.

She's laughing at something, but I don't remember what. I think it had something to do with someone who just walked in, since she's looking over a the door. All I remember is that I was supposed to hold the veil, but I gave it back to her so I could take a few pictures. I kind of wish I did have my rebel with me in this case, though, because the sony pictures aren't as crisp in low light. I didn't think I would be taking any pictures because I was playing for the wedding (and I don't like taking pictures of people :P), but I couldn't pass this up. I only took five pictures the entire weekend, and all of them were within five minutes of this picture. (I also just realized that my sony is still set to eastern time before daylight savings...)

i did my part

Wallace and Gromit open at the top of the box office this weekend. I watched it twice opening weekend :) It's definitely worth watching--even the second time around the day after my first viewing I caught details I hadn't noticed the first time. There are a lot of jokes for adults in there, and it was interesting listening to the laughter of the audience (which I did more the second time around with a bigger audience and more kids). You could tell when kids just didn't get the joke (usually because it didn't involve any funny actions, just words). The kids definitely responded to the visual gags and physical comedy of the clay characters much more that the adults, for the most part. But, even when they didn't get the joke, they would laugh along with the adults, just for the fun of laughing (although you could hear the delayed laugh reaction).

toys!

arrr!
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

I think one of the things I miss most about being at school is doing random spur-of-the-moment things like going to Chuck E. Cheese's and taking pictures of toys at Target. This image was taken after Esther's birthday party at above, uh, restaurant when some of decided we wanted to walk across the street to the Target because we hadn't been in one for a while. I like taking pictures of toys. I need to make another trip to a toy store...

villainous explanations

You know when you watch a movie, and the villain always talks enough to give the hero time to break free? That always struck me as a lame plot device. Why would someone go through all the trouble of catching someone if they were just going to give them time to get away?

I was watching The Pretender today when Sydney turned into that villain with the need to talk. Sydney is the good father figure in the story, but he's also got a dark past. When he finds one of the men from this past, before he kills him, he feels the need to explain to his victim what happened that drove him to want to kill him. Because Sydney is a protagonist on the show, we relate to him and understand this desire in a way that doesn't happen when it's just the regular old villain pulling the same trick.

Maybe this is obvious, but I thought about how most good stories have a back story. There's always a reason behind the action, and if that's well developed, it gives the story that much more depth, even if the audience never actually gets to hear that story. It's just something that I think most writers are aware of (I've definitely heard it before), and I think good writers are able to incorporate it into the story without hitting you over the head with it.

But man, when Sydney did his spiel, it kind of made me stop and think. He's mostly good, but he's made some questionable decisions in the past that have led to some pretty terrible repercussions. Aren't all superheroes like that, in some way? On the other side of that, if the villain were the protagonist, he (or she) wouldn't be a villain anymore. I think that's why I find retellings of familiar stories so interesting. Something like Wicked, where Gregory Maguire tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. It's like they (whoever "they" are) say--there are always two sides to every story. And most of the time, there are more.

cheeeeese, gromit, cheese!

A.O. Scott in the NY Times:

Gromit, made by hand and animated by a painstaking stop-motion process, has something Shrek will never acquire in a hundred sequels: a soul.

I <3 Gromit :)

On a side note, neopets.com is apparently very steeped in the same Britishness that Wallace and Gromit are (which makes sense, seeing as how the two creators are Welsh). The tombola and marrow both make an appearance in the movie, although the marrow was changed to melon for the American version (the inside did seem a bit green for melon...).

On a side side note, I can't seem to get the theme song out of my head...

On a completely different note, Brent got a Rebel! (Probably. There aren't that many 8 megapixel dSLRs out there.)

no more wonderful world for eisner

According to a Yahoo News (via IMDB, of course) article posted about three hours ago (from my writing this), Michael Eisner just severed all ties with Disney. Now, without knowing too much about what was actually going on, I was one of those people who was glad to see him resign as CEO of Disney. I also haven't watched "The Wonderful World of Disney" for about five years, but I do remember the first time I'd heard of Eisner was when he did the intro bit for the new version that came out probably about ten years ago.

"Hi, I'm Michael Eisner. Welcome to the wonderful world [pause] of Disney." If you've watched "The Wonderful World of Disney" enough times, you can probably hear him say it in your head. I spent four or five years watching almost every Sunday night, so everytime I hear anything about Eisner, this phrase pops up. There was just something about the way he said it, all clipped and formal, that I found irritating and repetitive--but I heard it so much it was almost a part of my Sunday night. Then I went to college, and ABC moved Wonderful World to Saturdays, sometimes replacing it with the usual Saturday night movie, and I didn't really think about it too much anymore. I'd seen all the Disney movies I wanted to see in the theaters, none of my favorite late 90s sitcom actors were contracted to do any more made-for-Disney/ABC tv movies anymore, and I had basic cable in my dorm room.

I'm still bitter about the way he handled negotiations with Pixar, but I suppose if he's been there for 21 years, he probably had something to do with the initial relationship in the first place.

sarah and tara, or movies and writing and me

I'm what you could call a default movie snob, scanning the news pages of IMDB first in a sort of self-defense from the culture around me, later as a means of reconnecting to it after moving away. I'm not a movie snob in the sense of "I only watch films that no one can understand (including me, then)" or "I only like films that no one can understand" (always making sure to call them films and not movies, of course). I'm more of a general, non-discriminating (to a point) movie watcher and daily reader of IMDB (allowing me to therefore know pretty much what's going on in that mystical place about thirty minutes from my house called Hollywood). I like IMDB because it summarizes news from all sorts of trade papers, so I don't have to go and find them myself (which I probably wouldn't do). I also then get a listing of celebrity birthdays, starting, of course, with the most "it" celebrity of the day, prompting me to look them up if I don't know who they are, one of their many ways of advertising without ads. I take the daily poll, scroll down and try the trivia and quotes questions (I've only once gotten them both right--edit 10/7: make that twice, although they were totally advertising Serenity today, so getting "Nathan Fillion" right wasn't too difficult, and the other was from "Much Ado About Nothing," which is Shakespeare, and all those IDs I had on my exams weren't for nothing :P), and then I look at the outside links at the bottom of the page.

This is the almost daily routine (they don't update on weekends) that led me to discover that the "King of Queens" taping I was supposed to go to was cancelled because Kevin James and his wife had a baby last Friday. This is also what led me to fun sites like the 30 Second Bunnies at Angry Alien and other relevant articles from the NY Times (their Critics' Notebook is pretty good) to Yahoo (which itself is a collection of news from other places).

One of today's articles (which, in retrospect, was probably yesterday's, seeing as how it has already been replaced with news of Katie Holmes's pregnancy) is a link to Sarah Bunting and Tara Ariano talking about Cameron Diaz. Now, the article in itself isn't all that enlightening--I'm not too much of a Cameron Diaz fan and could care less how spazzy she acts--but the manner in which they write is fun and engaging. It always helps to have someone to write off of, in a manner of speaking, and their rapport is commendable. Reading them almost reminds me of the glory days of Siskel and Ebert, if Siskel and Ebert were two women in their 30s (from what I gather) who watch way too many chick flicks and have an obsession with whether an actress is too pretty or not. That helps me relate to them more than to than S & E, if only because I have many of the same, uh, concerns they have (like is Kate Hudson ever going to manage to be famous?).

At the time of this posting, I've read through the archives of their articles on MSNBC and opened up their website, Television Without Pity, although I don't really watch TV anymore, so the articles there don't interest me as much. (Being an internet snob as well as a lower level movie snob, I find it badly organized and hard to navigate as well, which makes me even less likely to want to delve deeper than their front page.) Maybe it's because I fit right into their target audience (with my knowledge of the eighties boosted by my time in college), but I have this strange desire to read what they have to say, even though their articles get low ratings on MSNBC pretty much across the board(presumably by people who didn't like what they had to say about their favorite actor or actress, but maybe because they genuinely didn't like them).

There's more to it than just liking their commentary, though--I want to write like them. It makes me regret not liking writing for as long as I did (pretty much ever, until now). But I know that there were a number of things I didn't want to do if I couldn't devote time to them, and writing was one of them. Until now, I didn't have much time to write other than procrastinating a paper, and that affected my outside writing (like my blogging, or any desire to join the school paper in any school that I've attended). I saw writing as a means to an end, which isn't to say that I didn't use it for other things, but I always had too much school writing to do. It's only now that I can really explore what it is about writing that I enjoy (much like reading, in my previous post). I guess it's only now, after my hectic summer after college, that I can sit down and try to figure out what Life after college is for me.

Also, for the record, I tend to agree with Sarah, but a lot of times they act like one unit, each person expounding upon a different part of the reason why, say, Keanu Reeves allowed to keep making movies, but both agreeing that it's mainly because he's nice to look at.

i know i promised, but dude--orson scott card, so it's really about books.

Orson Scott Card reviews Serenity. And calls it the best science fiction movie ever. From one of the most prolific science fiction authors today. He makes Whedon into a more accessible Kaufman.

Being an avid science fiction reader from way far back when I first started to read (after the Bible--I went to a Christian pre-school--the first book I remember reading involved a little boy and his friend, a brontosaurus, and their adventures with masking tape...), Card has always been one of those names that I knew was famous. I never got around to reading any of his stuff until high school, and even then, he wasn't one of those authors who I had to read every single one of his books. He writes science fiction with depth. Not the random 'humorous science fiction' of Adams or Pratchett, and not really meant for light reading. The reaction I had to Serenity? Probably pretty close to how I'd feel at the end of one of his books.

When I read for fun, I try to stay away from stuff that reminds me of my classes, so I've probably only read two of his books that I remember. He has some of his favorite authors listed on his website, and their influence is felt. The problem is, from what I remember, his work reminds me a little too much of school reading. As an English major, I did a lot of school reading, so when I end up, say, buying a book written in the style of Jane Austen while I'm taking a class on Austen, I tend to not want to read the book until I'm well away from the subject. Otherwise, I don't enjoy the book as much (which happens a lot because I tend to take classes on works that I would want to read, which is why my light reading ends up being Discworld novels, which are only related to 'classic' literature in that they are either parodies or reference them briefly, which I can deal with and feel smart at the same time because I get them :P).

All this to say that now that I don't have any more school reading to do for a while, maybe it's time to go back to Card. The funny science fiction is getting boring. It's pretty much the same stuff over and over, and I'll still finish reading the Discworld series eventually, but they're actually much better in audiobook form (and with an Audible subscription, only a few dollars more than the paperbacks, and cheaper than the hardcovers. It does help if you've got some idea of where the plot is going, though, because they can get pretty convoluted towards the end.). So maybe Card's books can be the bridge between academic reading and light reading.

See, this post wasn't really about Serenity :P (By the way, the site where I heard about this review, Websnark.com, uses it as a means of talking about Full House of all things, and not Serenity or 'Uncle Orson' at all.)

last whedon-esque post for a while, i promise.

One last post on Whedon, and look, it has Neil Gaiman in it! If you're a fan of one or the other or both, you should read this interview they did with Time. It was a phone interview, but it was more like a conversation they had with a fan of them both than an interview about 'catching up with my fantasy universes so you can watch my new movie.' I read so many of those in the last couple weeks before Serenity came out, but this one is different. I mean, they still have all that stuff, but it was quick and not the meat of the interview. This is more talking about the way their work has evolved from geek culture to mainstream, and how Hollywood in general has done the same for things like Spiderman and Lord of the Rings. The interviewer isn't the typical interviewer, either. He seems to really be a fan, instead of just being assigned this article to help promote two movies that looked poised to become cult hits. Ironically, or not, the article is a web exclusive, where the geeks gather, I suppose... Anyway, go read it!

edit: This inevitably happens whenever I promise something. Something else comes around to make me want to go back on it. Anyway, Dom from Megatokyo went in cold to watch the movie and loved it. Granted, it's his kind of thing and he only held out to spite Joss Whedon, but still, it is in fact possible to watch the movie without watching the entire seires first. (You'll have to scroll down a bit for his reactions, the rant on the right.)

serenity sing-a-long

I almost forgot. If you've ever watched the series, you know how the theme song gets stuck in your head? Well, of the 15+ people we went to watch Serenity with, a good number of them (us) knew the words to the song. When the song (with no lyrics) came up at the end of the credits, there were a lot of people singing along. It was a very communal experience to have stayed till the end of the credits. (Jo and I were front and center, which meant we were in the middle of the entire row of her friends who had to be practically kicked out of the theater. Seriously, one of the workers asked us if we were there for the next show, and when we said we weren't, she was like, can you please leave.)

Also, it looks like Serenity is number two at the box office! Yay, over $10 million opening weekend. Not bad, considering the number of fans who'd already paid to watch it, and the fact the it only opened in two thousand-some theaters (I can't remember the exact figures right now, but I know I saw that somewhere). Wide wide releases are in the mid-three thousands, usually. And first place Flight Plan only made about $5 million more (in its second week, September/October box office, but probably in more theaters, plus starring a Yale alum :P).

edit: Serenity only opened in 2188 screens, grossing over $4600 a theater! (Flight Plan was on 3424 screens and grossed made $4300 per screen.)

joss whedon needs to die. uh, i mean, now he can die happy.

Oh goodness. That was really good. Took a lot out of me, though, emotionally. I just got back from watching Serenity with Jo and a bunch of her friends and their friends. (The same friends who stood in line for hours that we 'met up with' for Phantom Menace.) One of the guys was dressed as Simon Tam.

Sean Maher, who portrays Dr. Simon Tam in both "Firefly" and "Serenity," was present at last week's L.A. premiere of the new film and saw one attendee dressed in his character's trademark white button-down shirt and vest.
~from The Hollywood Reporter

Yep, that was him. He's even got a picture of with Sean Maher in front of the Terminator 2:3D ride at Universal Studios to prove it. He came dressed the same today. There were other people dressed as Jayne and Wash, too, and a general 'browncoat' wardrobe. I wore a brown jacket, mainly because I like them, almost changed when it looked like I would match Jo, then decided not to because I didn't care that much. In the car, she was like, oh yeah, they told us to wear brown coats, and I was glad that I had just bought her her own brown jacket from Target a couple days ago. There was definitely an atmosphere of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars opening days, with someone sporting the ever-popular (Joss himself mentioned it in an interview) "Joss Whedon is my master now" tshirt from PVP.

That was probably one of the few good movies I've seen this year, a list which includes Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (where Chris was dressed as Arthur Dent) and Batman Begins (where a different "Chris" was dressed as Bruce Wayne). Part of (my theory on) why these movies are so good is that you have this extended emotional attachment to the characters and stories of the world created outside of what the movies themselves give you. In most movies, you spend 1 1/2 to 2 hours with the characters, and if any emotional attachment forms, it could be said to be successful. Which is why you get movies that are either blatantly trying to manipulate your emotions, or those that try to make you forget them. Maybe that's why there's such a dearth of original movies around. Original movies mean you start from scratch with the audience. Adaptations have their struggle to please fans and newcomers, but ultimately, if you're a fan, you're going to know the world already, so the movie either kills whatever feeling you had for it or satisfies for a moment a need for more. Of course, the actual product itself has to be good for it to be good, but a certain familiarity with the universe involved helps to make the movie a thoroughly enjoyable event.

Also, (*English major alert*) Mal reads Coleridge, and that makes me happy.