Three Word Wednesday: Bread

knead, cleanse, melt

He had spent most of the morning moping. It wasn't as if he hadn't been productive earlier, he was entitled to moping. His mother had called already, her tone concerned. He could almost see the fine lattice of lines that was sure to be hanging between her eyebrows, the downturn to her mouth as she forced her voice into a more upbeat register. He had fended her off with platitudes and assurances he didn't feel, but she had hung up with a light, "I love you," and he had sighed and unplugged his phone from the wall. His cell phone hadn't had battery since the funeral. He wasn't planning on charging it. 

The sun was going down, tinting the blinds a brilliant orange and illuminating the apartment that had too many boxes stacked near the door, too many empty spaces on the walls. He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. He had packed up everything of Max's earlier. Lovingly organized books in boxes, selected clothes for donation, compressing a life into a few bits of cardboard and two plastic bags. They were all sitting by the door now, and he didn't want to look at them. 

He was sure that he had been productive enough for one day. For a week maybe. He wasn't sure what the protocol was for these things. But he wasn't used to being idle, his fingers already drumming against his thighs in anticipation of the something he knew he should be doing. 

He is in the kitchen without really remembering how he got there. When he cleaned, something else he knows he did without remembering when, he had washed all of the pots and pans, cleansed the countertops with a lemon-scented cleaner he didn't remember buying, and emptied the fridge. 

He puts an empty pot on the stove and clicks it on, melting half a stick of butter in it, his hands moving, adding things, stirring without any conscious decision on his part. The smell of chocolate fills the small kitchen and he turns, dusting the counter with flour and pouring the concoction into a glass-bottomed pan.  

The sun is setting, the blinds glowing a dusky purple and the light on his balcony snaps on with a loud click. He jumps and clutches his chest before he steps back from the counter, leaving white streaks of flour in his hair as he runs his hands through it.  

His sister had insisted that he needed to cry, earlier. When, he couldn't exactly remember, but he knew that had been a conversation he had participated in. Probably. He had insisted that he didn't need to. Jeez. I'm fine, he had said.  

He is wondering, halfway through a batch of banana bread, if maybe he needs to cry. But he hasn't felt teary, so he rubs the sleeve of his rolled-up dress shirt against his face and turns to finish kneading out the dough. 

It is only after the loaf comes out of the oven, perfect and glowing, that his breath hitches in the back of his throat and his eyes burn. When he cuts two slices from the bread without thinking, laying one out on the blue plate with the chipped edge, he remembers. 

The bread cools, the kitchen light casting a harsh fluorescent sheen across the counter, and he turns his piece in a forlorn circle.  

The sun sets completely and the curtains go opaque.  

He cries.

Time for an Angry Geek Girl Post...

It's been a while since I've had a geeky subject to rant about, but I think this particular situation deserves a little anger. For all of my aspirations to be in the publishing industry eventually, there has been all sorts of crazy drama lately. I'm not going to go into the Wicked Pretty Things anthology and all of its ridiculous shenanigans mostly because Cleolinda over on el-Jay did a much better job than I ever will. Click her name for the link to her overview of the haps.

What I want to rant discuss today, however is the very interesting (and by interesting I mean awful) use of demeaning language in an article by the New York Times. An illustrious institution, to be sure, but that's certainly no excuse for the callous and really insulting article they published.

The New York Times review of HBO's new series Game of Thrones (found at the link back there) starts inauspiciously with the interesting title: "A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms." Right off the bat, I'm on the offensive. Strange? That's a...strange choice of word for a review title, but I suppose it could work...

But the author of the review, Ginia Bellafante, takes this article as an opportunity to show how very little she appears to know about this show, the book series it is based on, and girls in general.

Let me clarify before I go further and explain that I do not like George R.R. Martin's Westoros (the land where Game of Thrones and its book series is set). I have tried on more than one occasion to slog through A Game of Thrones, the first book in the series, and I just cannot do it. I do not like the characters, I do not like the setting, and I have just not been in the mood to push through a book I do not like.

I want to like you George R.R. Martin, really I do...

This dislike of the series, however, does not make anything that Ms. Bellafante wrote any better.

She begins her article with speculation on how much the 10 episode mini-series cost to produce, referring to its "quasi-medieval somewhereland" setting and its "sweeping 'Braveheart' shots of warrior hordes." Already she has forced me to defend HBO's right to spend money as they see fit and the show itself (I don't want to do this. HBO spends a lot of money that could be used for other stuff). Quasi-medieval sounds pretentious in the best of settings. In this case, coming as the second sentence of her intro, it just seems mean. I get the feeling from the outset that she isn't going to give the show a chance, to judge it on its own merits, rather she has already pigeon-holed it as something she will definitely Not Like, and so her review is tinged with this repulsion from its inception.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with quasi-medieval, anyways?

Not a really good way to write a review, I think. But I mean, I get it. She doesn't like this kind of show. She concludes:

“Game of Thrones” serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no...relevant idea beyond... notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.

And that's fine. If you know anything about me and my blog, you know I'm critical of movies and their plots, and that I have no qualms about telling folk why I didn't like something. Ms. Bellafante is more than entitled to her opinion on this show, and I am glad she is privy to such a grand platform where she can share it.

The problem occurs when Ms. Bellafante attempts to make her review about something else: feminism. In a weird turn of events, Ms. Bellafante claims that the show is attempting to pander to a female audience by including sex and sexual-intrigue in this "boy fiction." She speculates that all of the sexual exploits (something I'm pretty sure HBO is known for doing...they can show skin so they do...) are something "tossed in for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps that no woman alive would watch otherwise."

Whoa... That is...wow. That is a huge claim right there. No woman alive?

Besides the fact that a statement that all-encompassing is a little nuts, it's highly demeaning to attempt to use feminist rhetoric for something that is so non-feminist. The series, so far as I remember and have come to understand from other reviews, is full of strong women doing their thing and doing it well. It's got its problems, yeah, but most things do. Ascribing to it a sense of pandering isn't really fair to it, and is also problematic in another way. By assuming that the sex is what's been added (not the case, btw: one of the reasons I stopped reading was because I couldn't take the sex in the book anymore...my delicate sensibilities and all) Ms. Bellafante is insisting that is what draws women to a show. Not the plotlines or the war scenes or even Sean Bean. It's romance that supposedly draws us, and by positing this, she's made her supposedly feminist-point rather soundly anti. Women only like shows/movies/books if there's love? Sheesh. This isn't the 1800s, we're allowed to like more than the Domestic Sphere.

If I were going to watch, it'd be to see Sean Bean be all scruffy and quasi-medieval.

Let me back up and comment on some of the other troubling turns of phrase Ms. Bellafante resorts to in her review:

In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, “If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of ‘Sex and the City.’ ”

[On the climate of Westoros] "you have to wonder what all the fuss is about. We are not talking about Palm Beach."

The series claims as one of its executive producers ... author David Benioff, whose excellent script for... “25th Hour,” did not suggest a writer with Middle Earth proclivities. 

 I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first.

Do you see what she's doing? She's saying that "Middle Earth proclivities" are something to be ashamed of, that women don't read books like The Hobbit in public, and Heaven help a group of them who might be wanting to do so... She even posits that Sex and the City is the best choice of show for you if you can't understand the plot line...

We say that we as a country are moving forward, that we are losing our tendency to pigeon-hole and sort, to say that If you are a Nerd, Then you cannot be a Girl. There are a host of Geek Girls on the web who would love to take anyone who continues to think so erroneously to task.

But Ms. Bellafante is doing the exact same thing in her article that we accuse intolerant characters of doing. She is embracing something that isn't really a societal norm anymore (in this case poking fun at the "lowly geek") and asking us all to come along and help her in her fun-poking...

And by expressly saying more than once that no "real girl" would be caught dead watching this show, Ms. Bellafante is essentially belittling all of us Geek Girls that love fantasy-esque shows. The saga of Katie the Star Wars Girl really showed how big the online geek community is and how many of us have felt small and inconsequential in the span of our lives for what we like. I'm not trying to say Ms. Bellafante shouldn't have said these things, I just feel there has to have been a nicer way to go about it that doesn't involve essentially insulting anyone who has leanings toward the fantastical.

Someone with such an inherent dislike of fantasy and how it pertains to our real lives probably shouldn't have been asked to write a review on a show based on a series that is beloved by so many. I mean, did you see the Internet explode when it was revealed that the last book in the series finally had a release date? Pure, joyous chaos.

Book 5 in the series. This is FTW according to a lot of the Interwebs.

Ms. Bellafante's conclusion deals with the idea that HBO's strengths in original programming lie in, as she says, "its instincts for real-world sociology" as it has accomplished in such highly recognized shows as The Wire, Big Love, and Rome. She argues that shows with more fantastical leanings, like True Blood and now Game of Thrones feel "cheap."

What I think Ms. Bellafante fails to understand is that the point of fantasy is to make us consider our own lives. Well-written fantasy is one of the best explanations of real-world sociology there is, with the fantastic stepping in to really show the problems that we sometimes don't see in our day to day lives.  A book like Harry Potter isn't solely about the trials and tribulations of a boy in Wizard School. It's also about prejudice and judgement, love and family and trust, true friendship and the overwhelming terror of true evil. To only see the fantasy elements and miss how the book is merely couched in these to say something about overarching concepts, is to miss the point of the book.

So to say that fantasy does nothing but provide an escape for those who have no other way to do it (what I felt Ms. Bellafante was doing) is to completely misread the point of fantasy.

And if Ms. Bellafante doesn't understand that, she cannot be expected to understand the appeal of this show. I am left with the question, then, of why she was chosen to write this article. I can only hope that in the future there will be a modicum of tact used in reviews. By all means, slam something that is awful, just don't slam its fans (or all the tangential fans), especially when it hasn't even come out yet.

Game of Thrones premieres on HBO tonight, Sunday, April 17th at 9 pm Eastern. I won't be watching it for reasons I've already mentioned (plus, it's got all sorts of crazy sex...oh my delicate sensibilities lol) but if you're interested, by all means please prove Ms. Bellafante wrong.

Review: Your Highness

Two nights ago we had the dubious honor of seeing David Gordon Green’s Your Highness before it officially comes out on Friday.  (As I’m still waiting to see Sucker Punch and Insidious, I was more likely to see one of those this weekend than this…don’t judge me…)

Okay, dubious honor makes it seem as if I didn’t enjoy the movie, but that’s not really true.

Your Highness, starring James Franco, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride, Natalie Portman, and Justin Theroux is essentially a deconstruction of every fantasy epic to ever grace our TVs. You know pretty much exactly what you’re getting into within the first few seconds of the movie, as the narrator makes fun of the various tropes of fantasy filmmaking as he sets up the story.

Yarr, thar be spoilers ahead! If yer boots shake in fear at the sight of the Spoiler Ship, don’ read no further…

About 100 years before the events of the movie, a prophecy was set in motion: when the twin moons of whatever planet this movie is set on eclipse each other, a powerful warlock will be able to impregnate a virgin and conceive a dragon baby that will wreak havoc on the populace. Yes, dragon baby.

The warlock is stopped just in time by the Knights of Good Golden Knights (I think) who shoot an arrow through his neck and rescue the maiden. Huzzah for the Knights of Good. It’s great we got this introduction because they literally will not be mentioned again until the last ¼ of the movie.

Fast forwarding about 100 years, and we see Danny McBride, strung up, awaiting a hanging by the Highland Dwarves (a silly folk) who forget that, as an average human, his feet hit the ground in the dwarf-sized gallows. He breaks free of his restraints and, along with his faithful manservant Courtney, McBride proceeds to run across the countryside, getting into bar brawls and getting high before he arrives home. Turns out, he is the second son of the King, Prince Thadeus.

Thadeus and Courtney

After the king shows us how absolutely useless the second son is (yeah, we know he’s a screwup; yay for transparent character arcs!) the first son shows up: James Franco with flowing brown locks and a vapid smile.

Once Franco appears on the screen, his bumbling happiness mixed with how good he is at warrior-ing and being the Prince really serve to make the movie a lot more fun.

/grin

Franco’s Bride-to-Be, Zooey Deschanel, is brought in as the Princess who was raised in a tower and has no idea how to perform simple tasks. There are a few really fun scenes where she Deschanels about the castle, dancing and eating in that I’ve-never-seen-a-fork-before manner. It’s funnier than it sounds and serves to set up the impetus of the story: the evil warlock (he who will impregnate a virgin for his dragon baby) comes to the castle in a swirl of robes worthy of Maleficent and with the aid of his three moms (I couldn’t quite figure out if they were saying something positive about lesbians and polyamory or if they were three facets of the warlock’s real mother, Morrigan-style) steals Zooey and her Deschanels back to the tower.

"Nooo! You can't take The Deschanel!"

Franco is crushed. First his brother doesn’t show up to be best man at his wedding (severely ticking off Franco’s knight-friend who gave his right arm [literally] to fight with the Prince) and now his fiancée gets stolen. So he sets off on a quest, and McBride and Courtney, threatened by the King with disinheritance, come with him.

So they begin their quest, going to see the wise wizard whose head looks like one of the mushrooms in Zangermarsh. He gives them a magic compass that will direct them to a labyrinth, at the heart of which is the mystical Sword of Unicorn which is the only thing that can kill the warlock.

In the forest, Courtney stumbles upon one of their retinue conversing with the evil warlock and the brothers get set upon by their own knights, led by the one-handed one who is feeling really betrayed by the fact that he wasn’t the best man.

On their own now, the brother princes begin their quest to find the labyrinth and the warlock-killing sword, meeting up with all sorts of characters like a group of maenad-type women and the ogre who rules them, a giant, evil, five-headed gila monster, and Natalie Portman – a badass in leather armor.

I spent a lot of the movie wondering when she filmed this in the space between Black Swan and pregnancy...

The movie ends up with Danny McBride wearing a minotaur’s penis around his neck, Courtney stabbing things with a pitchfork, and Natalie Portman being awesome. (yeah, I have no idea...)

I really enjoyed the movie (I know I’m being a little harsh, that’s just my style…you should see how I treat my own writing…). It was fun and funny and I had a good time watching it. It’s got the traditional fantasy-epic holes (if there is only one blade in the world that can defeat you, why would you give it to the admittedly silly Highland dwarves? Smelt that shit!) but those are part of what makes any kind of fantasy movie fun.

It pokes fun at itself and breaks the fourth wall in places (not by talking to us, but by being aware of itself…meta-fantasy?) and is just an overall fun ride. The scenery and the special effects are really nice. I wish I knew where they filmed because it’s LotR-like in places…probably on purpose. All of the magic effects were really cool and I am such a sucker for swirly colorfulness, they could have been shooting puppies and it would have been okay.

Major props to Justin Theroux who plays the evil warlock Leezar with such scenery-chewing awesomness, you almost feel sorry for him at the end. Pretty much every scene he is in is worth watching.

Plus, he has truly awesome Evil!Hair

My only complaint with the movie is that McBride’s character, our titular hero, is supremely unlikable. The traditional movement of a character from screw-up to hero is passed over here with McBride’s prince barely learning anything from his quest. It would be okay, I guess, if the other characters weren’t so nice. I just feel awful for Franco who is legitimately a good guy and he’s saddled with a brother who doesn’t really care at all. McBride’s Prince felt like Seth Rogan’s character in Knocked Up, except instead of growing up at the end, he just…stays in the same place. And because everyone else (even Courtney!) are essentially good, it just highlights how selfish Prince Thadeus is. Even the warlock appears to be a nicer character.

I like good character arcs in my movies, or, you know, any kind of growth. It can be reverse growth for all I care, but something... It rankled a little that McBride’s character is treated like a hero when he’s done nothing to deserve it but lie to everyone and rest on the triumphs of the other characters (again, even his comic-relief manservant).

I can’t figure out if that was the intention or not, but it was the only sour taste in a movie that otherwise proved to be a really good time.

Ultimately, Your Highness is full of really well done fight scenes, epic scenery shots, and some lines that I just want to use all the time, forever.

I give it 7 arrows from a quiver of 10.