I Drink Two Gallons of Haterade Every Morning

I had planned to kick off this week with a photo essay about the DC book festival, but unfortunately, the DC Book festival sucked.  There.  I said it.  Because it did.

It sucked on the Metro when apparently everyone in the suburbs had exactly the same idea and crammed their babies and their babies’ strollers onto the subway cars, regardless of whether there was actually any space left or not.  It sucked when I finally surfaced in the city and the last vestiges of a DC summer embraced me like a big, sweaty armpit.  It sucked when I got to the book festival proper, and realized that everyone I’d wanted to see had already spoken.  It sucked when I realized that there was no way to just drop in on any of the speakers, because all the tents were packed and the microphones were too faint to be heard at the edges of the crowds.  It sucked when I thought about checking out the book selection, and then saw the mob scene that was the sales tent.  It sucked when I went to the state libraries’ tent and couldn’t actually get close enough to see any of the displays, because the crowds around them were always about two or three people deep.  It sucked because it had been raining earlier and the field was all squelchy, and it sucked because everything smelled a lot like horse shit.  It sucked so hard that the boyfriend and I stayed for approximately fifteen minutes and then fled back to Virginia.  Ordinarily I’d be angry at myself for being a quitter, but I can’t be angry that I quit something that sucked so hard.

If I’d felt so inclined, I could have written an entire Dr. Suess-style book about how hard that book festival sucked.  Fortunately for y’all, however, I can’t count syllables to save my life, so any poetic endeavor is pretty much doomed.  STILL.  The word of the day?  It was, hobvs, SUCK. 

Oh, and PS to the person who got here by searching “girls with there hands down there pants”:  for the love of God, it’s “their.”   I sincerely hope that you’re twelve, because otherwise?  That’s just sad.  I know you’re horny, but God.

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The Ruby in the Smoke

Phillip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke

Many moons ago, when I was but a wee girl, my mother handed me her ancient copy of The Ruby in the Smoke and commanded me to read it.  On the surface, I ought to have liked it:  it has a strong main female character, it’s set in Victorian England, and it’s a murder mystery.  And yet!  I think I read the first chapter, and then never picked it up again.

Which was pretty amazingly brave of me, because I think I’ve mentioned before that my mom is a total hardass.

A decade or so later, however, my booksfree queue was starting to feel a little stagnant.  I had nothing but Banana Yoshimoto novels and a couple of memoirs that sounded direly depressing.  So!  I started adding YA novels willy-nilly, and The Ruby in the Smoke and its sequels came up.  “What the hell?” I thought.  “I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m significantly more bored–let’s give it a shot!”

And so:  early 1870s, London.  Sally Lockhart’s father drowns when his ship goes down in the middle of a trade run in Asia.  Sally’s left virtually penniless and–since she’s still in her teens–is bundled off to live with a wretched middle-aged cousin.  One day, not long after her father has passed away, a letter arrives at her house telling her to seek out a man named Marchbanks and to “beware the Seven Blessings.”  Unsurprisingly, Sally’s reaction is a genteel, Victorian version of “wtf?”  In search of answers, she goes to her father’s shipping company and asks a clerk there what the hell all of this might mean.

He keels over dead when she mentions the Seven Blessings.

Eventually, Sally finds out that all of this has something to do with a gigantic ruby that her father encountered in India during his military career.  “Why hello, Wilkie Collins!” I said when that plot point became clear.  Still more eventually, Sally visits an opium den and falls into an opium-induced haze.  “MOONSTONE!” I screamed as Sally twitched.

For those of you who do not like cracked-out Victorian mystery novels (savages!), The Moonstone is a mystery by Wilkie Collins about a large gem from the Indian subcontinent called–wait for it!–”the moonstone.”  Written in the mid-1800s, It is quite thoroughly bizarre, and contains both a criminal somnambulist and unwitting opium use.

BEST.  BOOK.  EVER.

I’m not sad that The Ruby in the Smoke is a pretty obvious rip of The Moonstone–actually, I’m happy to have more than one Moonstone to enjoy, because I am mentally ill that way.  What bothers me is that although Pullman’s twentieth century mindset allows Sally to challenge the gender norms of the day, Pullman still maintains the racist elements of Collins’ original work.  He continually refers to Chinese characters as “Chinamen” in text, not just in dialogue.  And while that term was correct for the period, think of it this way:  if you were writing about a black character in the Jim Crow or antebellum South, it would be appropriate to have another character refer to them by a racial slur.  It would not be appropriate for the narrator to describe them using any of those words.

In addition to the wtfery of the language choice, there’s also the fact that Pullman manages to hit at least two major stereotypes with his Chinese characters.  There’s the wise, mystical dragon lady who runs the opium den Sally goes to.  There’s also-SPOILER!

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Have You Found Her

Janice Erlbaum, Have You Found Her 

The premise is simple:  now in her mid-thirties, Erlbaum begins volunteering at the homeless shelter where she’d lived as a teenager.  She meets and connects with a good number of girls, but all of those friendships pale in comparison to the connection she forms with Samantha, an HIV-positive junkie.  Sam’s a poet, can debate philosophy with the best of them, understands physics, is a brilliant pianist–I’m not listing half of her talents because I simply can’t remember all of them.  Sam seems too good to be true, and there’s a reason for that:  she is.

And now–cut for spoilers! 

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Why My Entire Immediate Family Stopped Going to Church in 1992

Taken in Ocean City, Maryland a few weeks before Easter 2008.  Not pictured:  the crazed Jesus freaks who were singing, dancing, and playing the tamborine in front of His Sacred Sandiness.

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Beneath A Silent Moon

So Booksfree coughed up Tracy Grant’s Beneath A Silent Moon, and I devoured it whole.  It’s a prequel to Secrets of a Lady , which I reviewed here.  It stars the same spymaster couple, Charles and Melanie Fraser, but takes place about three years earlier.  Charles’ father has just gotten engaged to a young woman widely regarded as the love of Charles’ life; a few days later, the girl, Honoria, is found murdered at a house party.  Her guardians and her fiancé ask Charles to investigate.  Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUN!

I didn’t honestly expect Beneath A Silent Moon to work:  it’s suspense, and if you already know all of Charles and Melanie’s secrets, then what’s the hook supposed to be?  And yet, I have to give Grant credit–she sidestepped the issue of Melanie’s past entirely and just focused on the sense of distance in the Fraser marriage.  It works, but I still think you’re better off reading Secrets of a Lady first.  In part because I think it’s a better stand-alone, and in part because it’s not so completely fucking cracked.

Make no mistake:  Beneath A Silent Moon is stark raving bonkers.  It’s riddled with horrible names–Honoria?  Aspasia?–and worse nicknames.  “Aspasia” becomes, even more improbably, “Spasy.”  Yeah, you read that right:  I’m thinking it’s pronounced either ”Spazzy” or “Spacey.”  In either case, good one, Grant!  When I wasn’t giggling about the terrifying (but not completely improbable) names, I gave the book a little nickname of my own–CSI:  Regency.  Why?  Because Melanie and Charles are forever analyzing crime scenes, a good 150 years before that became de rigueur.  When the Frasers inspect Honoria’s corpse, they actually take the time to scrutinize her pubic hairs…and they even notice that some of the hairs are not hers.

Come the fuck on, Tracy Grant!  You’re trying to tell me that in an era when doctors were too dense to wash their hands after touching a corpse, a bunch of spies would think to comb through pubes?  Really?  No, wait-really?  And not just any spies, but spies who are so inept that by the end of the book, they’ve told essentially everyone at the house party what they suspect and why?

Pardon me, but I feel slightly incredulous about this scenario!

And finally, cut because I’m about to bitch (nonspecifically) about a spoiler. 

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Two Thoughts…

In no particular order:

• Everyone hates this new Riley character on The Sarah Connor Chronicles because she’s “the generically quirky girl,” but I kind of dig her.  Because the actress who plays her totally starred on All My Children last summer.  She had two parts:  as an autistic girl, and as the autistic girl’s mysteriously identical, wild-child half-sister.  Man, I miss those characters!  They added like, sixteen new levels of crack to an already cracktastic franchise.  MOST EXCELLENT.
• In addition to being an autistic wild child model friend of John Connor, savior of mankind, actress Leven Rambin is also the new face of Sweet Valley High!  She is like, the QUEEN of desperate, low-rent ventures!  I LOVE HER SO HARD.

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I Hate You, You Hipster Assholes

Okay, isn’t this just the cutest concept ever?

…maybe I need to work on learning the actual definition of “cute,” but still.  Isn’t it neat?  Unfortunately, the execution leaves something to be desired.  I’m seeing a few problems, here:

1. In order for someone to actually get this joke, they’d either have to A.) come read the website, or B.) stare at my stomach and my chest for several long moments. Either way, that’s a lot of work for a simple joke about LEGO Vikings. Not to mention a rather intense invasion of my personal space. Can’t we just put “It Takes a Pillage” somewhere on the shirt and be done with it?
2. If you check out the “girlie” t-shirts on that thar site, you’ll notice that although they are VERY CAREFUL not to show you anything below the belly-button region, the shirts still look as though they’d be tight in the hips. Readers, there is nothing more irritating that a t-shirt that is tight in the hips. NOTHING.
3. Don’t get me wrong, I am okay with subtle. I bought my boyfriend a Zartram the Merciless t-shirt, so clearly I am okay with subtle (seriously, it took him like six months to figure out what was supposed to be so damn funny about the Declaration of Independence. THAT IS SUBTLE). However! I am fine with understated, but I think Glarkware usually takes it too far. To whit: if your three-paragraph explanations of the t-shirts are ten million times funnier than the t-shirts themselves, then in the immortal words of one Mr. Tom Hanks–”Houston, we have a problem.” I don’t want your high-concept, inscrutable, and completely wordless “First Snow in Space” shit: I want “Swedish Mafia: Efficient but Deadly.” Simple. Clear. Hilarious. Why is that so hard?
4. Oh, and while we’re at it, could you quit making everything in such hideous colors? Your penchant for vitamin B piss yellow is really starting to kill me, here.

In conclusion:  I know that you are  hipsters, and that hipsters get off on being “ironic” and cliquey and otherwise douchey, but could you give up on all that and just be funny?  I know you have it in you.  Really.  I know it.

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Bones

I have an unpleasant confession to make:  I’m totally a fan of the television series Bones.

Bones is about forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who works with FBI Agent Seeley Booth to solve often bizarre crimes.  Brennan (nicknamed “Bones” by Booth because she analyzes skeletons), works at the Jeffersonian Institute, and is aided by a rag-tag team of socially awkward weirdos.  There’s Zack, her graduate student (who bears an unsettling resemblance to a robot); Angela, the free-spirited, glorified sketch-artist; and Hodgins, the “bug and slime guy” who happens to be the heir to a vast fortune (and a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire).  During the first season they all had a boss named Daniel Goodman, but his beautiful, rolling bass voice couldn’t make up for the fact that his character was profoundly boring.  So they ditched him, and now they all work for Cam, a coroner who looks likes she could be Rosario Dawson’s slightly older, slightly hotter sister.

Bones very badly wants to you to think that it is edgy and transgressive and cool.  “Look!” every episode seems to scream, “Our main character is a borderline sociopathic misfit who is always saying the wrong thing because she was so traumatized by the disappearance of her parents!  Our lead male is a single father from a working class background who made good and now fights crime with the FBI!  We have a conspiracy theory crankpot!  A free-loving hippie artist!  A pet robot disguised as a graduate student!  A criminally hot boss!  You know you love us!  Now please, TELL US THAT WE ARE LIKE NOTHING ELSE ON TELEVISION!11!”

But the thing is, Bones is exactly like everything else on television:  every single character is a stereotype (hippie!  Robot!  Conspiracy theorist!), and conservative values always win in the end.  The writers have tried to set Booth and Bones up as this dichotomous pair (He believes in God!  She’s a hardcore atheist!), but scratch the surface and you’ll find that their worldviews are remarkably in tune.  Bones’ academic job and fondness for dangling jewelry and natural fibers code her as a liberal, but time and again, the writers subvert this coding by making her highly sympathetic to Booth’s (and Fox’s) conservative core values. She’s pro-death penalty, she loves her the guns, and out of everyone on the show–serial killers excepted, of course–she’s the character who displays the most outrageous disregard for the rights and dignity of others.  One episode features a high-ranking employee of the State Department who just happens to be a dwarf.  Okay, scratch that, he doesn’t “just happen to be” anything:  the fact that this character is a Little Person is essentially the whole point of his story arc.   Brennan, the forensic anthropologist, immediately asks the character what condition he suffers from; when he (quite justifiably) tells her that it’s none of her fucking business, she excuses herself by saying that bones iz her business and his bones iz weird.  Which would be hilariously socially awkward, except for the fact that Brennan then proceeds to spend the rest of the episode insulting the crap out of this poor guy because he’s a dwarf–the meanness actually culminates with, “Don’t say that!  You’ll hurt his tiny feelings!”

…okay, admittedly that is the best line in the history of ever.  Because I am a terrible person.  But anyway!  So Brennan continues to mistreat this man solely based on this size, and eventually informs him that he’s using his dwarfism to intimidate the people around him into giving him what he wants.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Let’s break this down, shall we?  Let’s translate.  What Brennan is really saying is basically this:  “So, I know you have this characteristic that sets you apart from what we consider to be ‘the norm.’  People look at you funny and treat you differently and you have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.  But you know what?  That’s a horrible burden to me, and to everyone else who’s ‘normal,’ because-get this-I feel bad for you.  I feel bad and awkward and don’t know quite where to look because you’re not ‘normal,’ and guess what?  That’s your fault.  Goddamn you for making me feel this way!  Quit milking this for all it’s worth!”

Dude, doesn’t it remind you of a bad relationship?  I kept expecting Brennan to fall on her knees and start sobbing, “Why do you make me hit you?”  Jesus, showrunners.  Way to make other people responsible for your own crappy feelings.  Why don’t you take some of that money you’re making off this and use it to A.) go to diversity training; and B.) go to therapy?  Because you need both.  Badly.

Ultimately, though, Brennan’s politics aren’t just icky because they are inherently icky; they’re icky because she’s supposed to be so smart.  “Look!” the message seems to be.  “Truly smart people agree with horrible conservative theories!  Ergo, those theories are smart!”  Um, no thanks.  Really.

On top of the gross politics, though, the writing is just plain shoddy.  In one second season episode, they find the body of a little girl.  “But wait!” the crime-fighting nerds cry, “she’s only nine, but she already had false teeth!  And veneers!  And her hair’s been bleached!  OMIGOD, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?  ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, DOES NOT COMPUTE.”  And you know, I can believe that no one in that lab had ever heard of JonBenet Ramsey, because I’m pretty sure that no one in that lab’s been outdoors since 1994.  But Booth?  Booth?  He’s the token normal person!  How did he not automatically Go There? 

The show is littered with internal inconsistencies and general wtfery like that.  I love it.  Because I am sick.  I am sick and bad and wrong and I’m not going to apologize for it.  The ridiculousness of it all amuses me, and I freely admit:  my amusement comes from a very wrong place.  I…I like watching these people humiliate themselves!  I enjoy knowing that everyone involved thinks that this is a smart, unique show when it is anything but!  I can’t wait to see what completely generic premise they will try to sell as fresh and interesting next!  I CANNOT WAIT!

Also, I hear there are cannibals in the third season.  Cannibals!  MOTHERFUCKING CANNIBALS, GUYS! 

I can die a happy woman now, thanks.

Recommended for:  No one.  Seriously, do not buy this.  Please.

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Un Lun Dun

China Meiveille, Un Lun Dun

Zanna and her friend Deeba wind up in London’s mirror image, the “abcity” called unLondon (Un Lun Dun, geddit?).  Zanna is the “shwazzy,” the chosen one (based on the French verb choisir), and it’s been foretold that she will save unLondon from the life-sucking Smog.  But then things go terribly wrong, the prophecy seems to have been false, and it’s up to Deeba to save everyone…

I liked this a lot:  it was fast-paced, had a lot of clever wordplay, and it sent a good message–that no one is “just” a sidekick.  But I didn’t love it, and I don’t really know why.  I mean, if you can’t love a book that contains flesh-eating giraffes and a perpetually-nude ghost boy, then clearly the problem lies with you, right?  Sigh.  I don’t know.  I was in one of those really soul-destroying moods; I kind of just wanted to curl up and die and never talk to anyone again.  But shouldn’t a truly good book be able to capture your attention and jostle you out of a mood like that?  What do you think, oh my 1.5 regular readers?

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About Asheville

For Labor Day, I decided that I would go to Asheville, the small city in North Carolina where I went to college for four years.

Now, Asheville is like, the gayest city on the East Coast.  I’m not saying that as some sort of idiotic, homophobic slam–there are a LOT of gay people there.  Also all kinds of hippies, a surprisingly large conservative contingent, and any number of hillbillies.  It’s a pretty culturally diverse population, as long as by “culturally diverse,” you’re cool with just meaning, “every variety of white person under the sun.”

Still.  I will always love Asheville, if only because the most popular pizza joint/movie theater (locally known as the Brew and View), has this kind of artwork all over its building:

Also, because they put this sort of thing downtown:

Look:  I like Godzilla, robots, and butterflies.  In fact, if someone could do a mural that combined all three, I’d be in heaven.  Hippies, attack!

But despite its awesome artwork, Asheville has its flaws.  I mean, there’s the whole “abundance of honkies” issue, but even beyond that, there’s the completely cracked-out traffic pattern, the lack of a decent mass transit system, and the chain-restaurant horror that is Tunnel Road.  Oh, and there’s the fact that so many of the male residents apparently have small penises:

That’s just sad, guys.  Accept your limitations, okay?

But you know, whatever.  It’s still a cool place.  I mean, check out this rock:

That’s down in the Botanical Gardens at UNC-Asheville.  I remember my Geology professor explaining to us how it was formed; I don’t exactly remember what his explanation was, however, because it was hot as hell and I was winded from tramping all over campus that day.  Rocks are interesting, guys, but if you’re going to make me walk up several small mountains in pursuit of them, I believe you owe me a complementary sherpa.  Be reasonable.

Love and kisses Asheville.  Please, stay awesome.

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