\Ev`a*ga"tion\, n. A wandering about; excursion; a roving.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
My bizarro week.
Last week, I was lamenting the end of Gilmore and my lost Harry Potter paperback books.
Well, of course Gilmore is still gone, but at least I found the books. Last Thursday, I started reading Sorcerer's Stone and, since I was pretty sick, I stayed home on Friday and had myself a nice four-day weekend.
I was planning to take my time reading the six HP books. I have until July 21st, so I wasn't at all worried. In-between reading, I was planning on finishing the second season of Battlestar Galactica (they did Season 2 in two parts--part 2.0 and part 2.5, which is weird).
Since Devin has a disc-golf tournament every Friday (and one every Tuesday, and a monthly one on Saturday mornings), I figured that I should spend my Devin-free time reading HP because he would probably want to watch Battlestar with me (when I went ahead and watched episodes while he was in bed, he was a bit peeved that he missed the chance to re-watch them).
Which is when things started to get odd.
Devin got home from the tournament, and I was already half-way through Chamber of Secrets (I've read Sorcerer's so many times that I have the damn thing memorized). We talk about how the tournament went, and I'm telling him that I'm ready to stop reading for a while and watch some Battlestar.
And Devin picks up Sorcerer's Stone. I have been trying to get Devin to read the Harry Potter books since the moment I met him. Which is no surprise because I think every literate person in the world should read Harry Potter, and have told that to anybody who will listen to me.
Devin has never showed any interest in Harry Potter. Even the movies bored him silly (well, except for Prisoner and Goblet but that makes sense because those two were far better than the first two, which were directed by Christopher Columbus, who freakin' cut out some of my favorite "RENT" songs from the damn movie to get a PG-13 rating, the rat bastard). I had given up on trying to interest Devin in Harry Potter a long time ago. He goes with me to the movies and tries not to look too embarrassed because I'm wearing my "Quidditch" shirt and am squealing over the movie like a teenage girl.
I love my husband but he is just not a reader. Since graduating from high school, he's read more books in the five years that he's been with me, than he ever did during school (not including assigned reading, of course, since he always read the books he was assigned to read but never read for fun, and would, in fact, argue that there isn't any "fun" reading).
When we moved in together, he had less than ten books, almost all of which were assigned books from high school and junior college, and (of course) The Book of Mormon. After we moved into our second apartment, which was twice the size of the little cottage that we were living in before (referred to as "The Stoops," since we all spent most of our time sitting on our stoops, talking with our friends, who also happened to be our neighbors, the cottages were built after the first World War for war widows and their children), I was able to move in a whole lot of my books.
It took Devin a while to notice that his meager book collection wasn't visible in any of the bookcases. They were hidden behind my Nora Roberts books (which is truly bizarre because most women hide their romance novels). He tried to argue that, since he only had a few books, I shouldn't be hiding them behind my books, and especially not behind a bunch of romance novels.
He said something about how he didn't even remember what books he owned, so I pulled out all of my Nora Roberts just so he could see his books.
"When was the last time you read one of those books?" I asked him.
"Ummm... I read Choke by the Fight Club guy (Chuck Palahniuk) after you gave it to me."
"That was almost two years ago, Devin. And I just finished reading a Nora Roberts trilogy, so that trumps your book collection."
We eventually decided that if Devin started to read for fun--even if it was only one book a year--then his collection would not be kept hidden behind my romance novels. Since he liked the first "Bourne" movie, and a close friend of ours kept telling him that he should read the books, Devin started reading Robert Ludlum.
Which was actually rather funny because he became completely obsessed with Robert Ludlum's books and was excited to hear that a "new" book of his was coming out. And I got to explain to him that Ludlum was dead and that his "new" books were being written by ghost writers (using Ludlum's rough drafts, outlines, and anything else that he left behind).
After plowing through most of Ludlum's books, Devin read The DaVinci Code (since all literate Westerners feel obliged to read that book at some point--and it's actually pretty good).
Last Friday, while Devin was looking at Sorcerer's Stone, I told him that I was ready for a break from Harry Potter and why don't we watch some Battlestar together?
"Nah. Since you did something for me--started watching Battlestar--I'll do something that you like."
"Are you actually going to read Harry Potter?" Over two years ago, I had shoved the dark blue, mass-market version of Sorcerer's at Devin and he didn't even finish the first chapter.
"Yup." And then he took the book to his game room and, sure enough, started reading it.
I decide to watch an episode of Battlestar and, when it's over, I go in to check on Devin.
"This is great. Are you almost done with the second one?"
"Ummm... no. I'm about half-way done."
"Well, you'd better hurry up and finish it because I'm already half-way through this one."
"What about Battlestar? Are you going to watch any of it with me?"
"No. I'm going to read Harry Potter."
And so he did. He was also very serious about me finishing Chamber before he finished Sorcerer's.
And that was how our holiday weekend went. I plowed through Chamber less than an hour before Devin finished Sorcerer's. I plowed through Prisoner of Azkaban while Devin read Chamber of Secrets.
I damn near didn't finish Prisoner before Devin finished Chamber. That was definitely a close one.
Then I threw a bit of a hissy fit. Goblet of Fire is easily my favorite Harry Potter book. I told Devin that this madness of me plowing through the books just so he could read them after me had to stop. I refused to plow through Goblet. I've read the first three so many times that reading them again was pretty much unnecessary, I read them because I love them, not because I had forgotten anything that had happened in them (even the small, minute details).
But I flat-out refused to do that with Goblet, and Devin was not pleased with that decision. It was Monday morning, and he'd stayed up until the very wee hours of the morning to finish Prisoner and was ready to read Goblet. I was about half-way through it, so Devin decided to go play some disc golf with some friends and instructed me to finish the book while he was gone.
Which is when we started fighting. Over Harry Potter. It was WEIRD. Once again, I told him that I love Goblet and was not going to rush through it. Fine, he said, then I'll just read your hardcover copy.
"NO YOU WON'T. Do not even THINK of touching that book."
"Have you gone insane? What the hell is your problem?"
"No one touches my hardcover Harry Potter books. Especially Goblet of Fire. I've read that book so many times that the spine has completely separated, right at the part where Harry gets the golden egg. It will fall completely apart if you try to read it. Leave. It. Alone."
"You broke your favorite Harry Potter book?"
"I didn't BREAK IT. I just loved it too much."
"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to go play disc golf with Mike."
"You do that. Have fun."
So, Devin stormed off and I re-immersed myself into Goblet, filled with happiness because I didn't have to rush through it just so Devin could start reading it.
When Devin came home a few hours later, he was carrying a Target bag.
"You didn't..."
Before I can finish the sentence, Devin interrupts me, "Yup. Bought my own copy. Now we can both read it."
"Devin! We now own three copies of Goblet of Fire! That's crazy."
"No. YOU are crazy. But don't worry, Mike told me that I can borrow his copies of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Even though he thinks you're crazy as well."
"What about watching Battlestar together?" I didn't bother fighting over my alleged lack of sanity because... they were both a bit right. 99.9% of the time, I am thrilled to lend a book from my library to a friend, since I firmly believe that books should be shared.
Except for a few very special books. All of my beloved autographed-by-the-author books, my antique books and, of course, my HP hardcovers.
"You can watch Battlestar if you want but I'm going to read Goblet of Fire."
Devin is now half-way through Order of the Phoenix and he cannot stop talking about all of the stuff that was left out of the "Harry Potter" movies. Which means that he never listened to any of my lectures on that very subject but that's okay. At least now he understands.
His goal is to finish Order of the Phoenix today (I'm not sure why, other than the fact that he is now addicted to the series and is obsessed with finding out what happens next). He wants to read Half-Blood Prince over the weekend, and has already told me that we should put a second Deathly Hallows on order for him.
Never in a million years did I expect Devin to plow through five Harry Potter books in less than a week. But I am THRILLED. When he's not reading, he's asking me questions about the books and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Labels: books
Posted by Katie.
at 8:48 AM |
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Out of touch with time.
And probably reality.
This year is going by at an insane rate. I can't believe that my two-year wedding anniversary is less than a month away and Devin and I have no idea what we are going to do about it.
Although it will probably not involve spending much money, unless our parents gift us with a gift certificate to a nice restaurant. We're lucky to be able to funnel money into our savings account after paying our bills and mortgage.
Last week, Devin had the brainstorm that I needed to replace Gilmore Girls with another show. Which was really just his three-thousandth attempt to get me to watch Battlestar Galactica.
Entertainment Weekly is obsessed with this show. Since I read every issue cover-to-cover, I had been telling Devin about it because it sounded like something he would like. Which turned out to be a gross understatement: He loved it. And maybe I made fun of him for loving what is basically a science-fiction soap opera.
Before Gilmore went off the air, Devin would complain about how yeah, it sucks when the shows that I like go on hiatus, but they come back on in a few months, and his precious show isn't even returning from hiatus until 2008. Once I learned Gilmore was ending for good, I turned the tables on him and said hell, at least your show is coming back.
Yes. Sometimes we act like children.
Since watching my shows last week ran the gamut from being highly emotional to just sucking monkey butt, I was pretty cranky over the weekend. Obviously, Gilmore made me crazy. Then Jaslene won America's Next Top Model and it was making me think that Tyra is either on medication, or needs to be on medication because that was a seriously fucked-up decision. (I could actually give a reasonably well-argued rant for why Jaslene was the stupidest choice possible for winner but I shouldn't waste my time because obviously the judges don't give a rat's arse about who is actually the best freakin' model. Stupid show.)
Then CSI got way creepy. Which is saying a lot because CSI is certainly not a warm-and-fuzzy type of show. Although their Miniature Killer storyline was fabulous, and it left us with a great cliff-hanger. But it also gave us the creepy puppet man who turned his dead five year-old daughter into a puppet for his stage show and kept having her sing about how she had a "pain in her sawdust."
Try getting THAT out of your mind.
On the work front, I actually had the mother of a former pool client calling me a couple of times Friday afternoon because his son told her to call.
The son is in his forties. I've dealt with some crazy callers at this job but I had never had a forty-something year-old man have his mother call me because he felt that we were not returning his calls in a prompt manner. (Which was completely untrue--we returned his call every day that week, he simply didn't happen to be home for the calls and refused to give us his cell number.)
(Although it was a bit funny when Devin was trying to figure out the work number that he gave us. Apparently, he gave us a work number that is actually an emergency hotline for freeze disaster relief. Which was pretty much useless because it was an answering machine.)
That pretty much unhinged me. I've gotten yelled at, cursed out, and hung-up on by former customers but I'd never been scolded by their mothers. I feel very sorry for that man's wife.
So, it was in this weakened state that Devin convinced me to watch some Battlestar Galactica with him over the weekend. We watched the three-hour-plus miniseries that served as one huge pilot for the show.
Now I'm hooked. You have no idea. It is the soapiest, campiest show that I have ever seen and I'm in love with it. In two days, I managed to bust through the entire first season.
Of course, Devin is thrilled that we actually have a shared interest in a TV show that isn't The Simpsons. I still can't really believe it. I have been mocking Devin for loving this show for almost a year.
He also might be gloating a bit about how his devious plan worked so well. Although he was a bit peeved with me because I was laughing at things that he felt were NOT funny. Except I always do that. Gilmore didn't bring out that side of me because the writing for it was superb, right up to the end.
I love dialogue. As a kid, I actually wrote far more plays than I did short stories. In class, whenever we were given a creative writing assignment, mine were always heavy on the dialogue. In fact, up until high school, they were pretty much ALL dialogue.
Oh yeah. That's also why I'm writing a one-act play for Script Frenzy. It's the June version of Nanowrimo for dramatists. Luckily the deadline is only 20,000 words, so I actually have a chance in hell of making the deadline. (Even though re-reading the entire Harry Potter series and watching two more seasons of Battlestar might make writing a one-act play a bit impossible.)
Although, honestly, I'm not that worried. Most of my Nano novel was dialogue because I am one of those people who enjoys dreaming up characters and then putting them in a room together to see how they interact.
Plus, if it's any good, I can submit it to the local community college for their theater department to use when they perform their one-act plays at the end of the year (obviously, I would have to wait until next year). I did this with a one-act that I wrote in high school but they didn't go for it because the main character spent the entire play in a hospital bed. Although this was before W;t won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
(I wonder what the hell happened to that one-act of mine, now that I think about it.)
So, you may now start betting on which thing I will not follow through with:
Reading the entire Harry Potter series by July 21st.
Writing a 20,000 word one-act play during the month of June.
Watching two seasons of Battlestar Galactica.
Watching any of the first two movies in a trilogy, of which the third installment is coming out this summer (Pirates, Bourne, Ocean's).
Or all of the above.
Labels: random, tv
Posted by Katie.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Acting like a baby.
Tonight is the last episode of Gilmore Girls EVER.
Devin's being incredibly sweet about it, especially yesterday, when he came home and I was crying.
Yup. Crying. Like a baby. Devin just wrapped me up in a big hug and said, very softly, "This is about Gilmore Girls, isn't it?" But he was being very nice.
"Yes." Sob. "I'm an idiot." Sob. "But I just started thinking about Tuesday nights and how I always watch House after Gilmore because Gilmore is so much fun, and House is so insane. How will I be able to watch House without Gilmore Girls?"
Which is when Devin realized that I had truly gone completely insane. He was especially pleased when I started sobbing about how Gilmore had taken the Buffy slot when Joss moved Buffy to UPN and that I've been watching a show on The WB/CW on Tuesday nights, at 8:00pm since 1997.
THEN I started sobbing about how I still have no clue where my paperback Harry Potter books are, and that I need to be reading Sorcerer's Stone soon if I'm going to be able to read all six books before the final one comes out in July.
Which, of course, turned into me sobbing about the end of Harry Potter and how the hell was I going to survive THAT? Because there will be some serious melting down over here if JK Rowling kills any of the Weasleys. Except for Percy. She can totally kill Percy Weasley but absolutely no other Weasley.
At this point, Devin was just trying to get me to stop crying. Since it had perhaps gotten a bit out of control. (Although I still think that it was totally understandable why I was crying because this is turning into the worst summer EVER.)
Once I calmed down, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner in one of our favorite restaurants (we're trying to save money but we both decided that getting me out of the house last night, so I wouldn't start watching my saved episodes of what is now the final season of Gilmore Girls and start crying about it all over again was worth spending a bit of money).
Then we went and saw "Spiderman 3" for the second time. (Yes. Second time.) We saw it opening weekend, early Saturday morning, so the theater wasn't packed but there were still way too many little kids there for us to really enjoy it. They got bored long before Eddie Brock became Venom.
(The next morning. Can't remember why I stopped writing the entry. Probably because all things Gilmore makes me want to cry. Or actually does make me cry. And I'm not even PMS'ing or pregnant, so I can't blame it on hormones. Even though I'm female, so I could still blame it on hormones if I wanted to because sometimes females don't make no sense.)
So. "Spiderman 3" was actually more enjoyable the first time. Simply for the obvious reason that it was brand-new and we didn't know what was going to happen next. The first two movies were still good after multiple viewings but this one rather sucked a bit the second time around (for me, Devin thinks it was just fine). Because Mary Jane Watson is a freakin' bitch. I tried to tell Devin how bitchy she was after we saw it the first time but he didn't believe me. So, the second time around, I kindly pointed out to him every time she did something bitchy by saying "Bitch!"
I'm nothing if not helpful. My favorite part of the movie the second time around was one of the ads that they ran before the previews. It was from the Tulare County Department Of Health urging all young people to get tested for HIV because many people who have the virus don't know that they have it.
Finally. It's only been 26 years since the first recorded case of GRID (gay-related immune deficiency, which is what they called AIDS until 1982) but finally our county is urging people to get tested for HIV. I seriously applauded the screen and yelled, "YES!" when that ad came on. Since at least they're finally getting their act together about it (yes, they are a few decades late but since I thought this was never going to happen, I'm feeling pleasantly surprised... now I want to see some stats about how HIV is affecting Tulare County but that will probably take a few more years).
And to abruptly change subjects: Gilmore Girls last night totally made me cry. A lot. It was rather pathetic. I seriously started bawling when they ran the theme song because they aren't going to be with me anymore when I need them, so Carole King and her daughter Louise Goffin were totally lying to me.
So, I think crying because I felt that "Where You Lead I Will Follow" was lying to me probably means that I have lost my mind. When Devin heard the music signaling the end of the show (and series, SNIFF) he came out and very sweetly asked me how I was doing.
"I'm crying. It was just so... PERFECT. Well, almost perfect. There was no Sebastian Bach, which makes me a bit mad."
"Because you wanted Sebastian Bach to sing?" Which made me laugh.
"No! Because he's a member of Lane's band Hep Alien! I just wanted him there. But they got almost everyone else so it's okay."
It really was a fantastic series finale. From the beginning, it was very clear why they chose this as the end of the series. Rory had graduated from Yale and was leaving on her first big job (as a reporter with the Barack Obama campaign, of all things) and the damn episode was called "Bon Voyage" for goodness sakes. So the entire cast getting together to say goodbye to Rory was obviously a huge metaphor for saying goodbye to this wonderful show. It was a very heavy-handed metaphor but I rather liked that because heavy-handed meant that this was really the end. If they hadn't given me a hugely emotional episode, with a lot of tearful goodbyes, then I would have been freaking' pissed. Because ending something like Gilmore Girls is different than ending Seinfeld. Gilmore fans expect to be bashed over the head by obvious metaphors because that's part of the show.
And I'm seriously going to miss Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann. I have loved them both for far longer than I've been watching Gilmore Girls and I was so pleased to see them on this show. ("Dirty Dancing" and "Overboard" were two of my favorite movies growing up. Although apparently the entire world hates "Overboard," I thought it was absolutely hilarious when I was eight years old.)
So. After over a decade of watching a show on The WB/CW on Tuesday nights at 8:00 pm, I now have nothing to watch. It's probably the heavy-handed Gilmore metaphors talking but this honestly feels like the end of a very long era of my life.
Which probably means that I need to grow up. Except. I rather like knowing that I can still become emotionally invested in a fictional story. I've never been ashamed of crying at the end of a movie, even if I was the only person in the theater sobbing. Or of giving a movie a standing ovation, even though it's a movie theater, and not an actual theatre. The first time I stood and clapped for a movie was when I saw "Apollo 13," the last time I stood and clapped for a movie was two weeks ago, when I saw "Dirty Dancing" on the big screen (I wasn't kidding when I said that I love that movie).
The last time I cried at the end of a movie was when I saw "Stranger Than Fiction." I sobbed my way through that ending because it was beautiful and good lord, do I love that movie.
Every time I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I cry over Cedric's death. Which actually makes it difficult when I see the Harry Potter movies because I already know who is going to die (Goblet kicked off the dying motif in the series), so I actually cry when that person simply appears for the first time in the movie because I know what's going to happen to them.
The Order of the Phoenix movie is going to be very emotional for me. JK Rowling is an incredible writer because she doesn't give the fans what we want--a nice, happy story about a bunch of wizards (reminiscent of the first book in the series) and instead gives us heart-breaking tales of death and redemption. Devin can attest to the fact that I went absolutely bonkers when I finished reading The Half-Blood Prince. I was crying so much that I couldn't even get enough breath to tell Devin WHY I was crying. I'm still hoping that the character she killed at the end of Half-Blood Prince isn't really dead because if he is really dead, then JK Rowling was serious when she said that all bets are off, and that many characters could die in the last book. Including Harry.
Just thinking about that is making me sad. So, I suppose I'm glad that I am able to feel so much for people that aren't even real. Even if it means making a damn fool out of myself when a favorite show of mine goes off the air.
Posted by Katie.
at 10:58 AM |
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