June 2010
15 posts
Drat the Expat
Lately, I’m living in Vancouver. I used to visit Toronto over the summers, and so I’m familiar with that unique disappointment of an American traveling abroad to Canada. You have to search so hard to find any difference that the ones you do find — the two-dollar coins! the superfluous u’s! the healthcare! — become the focal point of your anecdotes, making Canada...
One Day A Jealous Bastard
On Wednesday night R. took me to see (500) Days of Summer. This was payback because on Sunday I forced him to see Inglorious Basterds with me. I want to say things about Inglorious Basterds, too, but I feel tongue-tied because this isn’t a movie about young romance and supernatural creatures, and because I can’t spend three paragraphs examining my cute bitterness towards the...
Interventionist God
Right now my main goal in life is to have somebody intervene. I don’t think this is going to happen because they’d have a very flimsy case. “Sara, you used to be so full of life. Sometimes. You used to be marginally full of life and would sometimes go to parties and drink enough tequila to manage a mildly amusing anecdote. Anyway, Sally, what I’m trying to say is, you...
Let Them!
Marie Antoinette is one of my favorite movies; every time I watch it my heart expands like a soap-bubble and I get cartoon sparkles in the corners of my eyes. But the problem is that I can’t make it 20 minutes into the film without developing a specific, intense, and pricey appetite. Usually when I want snacks during a movie I rummage through the cabinets until I find organic raisin bran (my...
These Kittens Will Play
1. Beth dying is one of the few things that makes me cry, every single time; although, ashamedly, only in the movie version, not so much in the book.
2. If Jo had married Laurie my world would be a brighter place today. Of this, I have no doubt.
3. Of the four sisters in the film version, only Meg failed to become a major film star (Claire, Winona, and Kirsten were already starlets of varying...
The Crying, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Assistant
I watch Gossip Girl because nobody can stop me, plain and simple. It’s truly a wonderful show because if you just need glittery escapism, you can drain your mind of pesky things like dignity or irony, and suddenly you’re wearing a headband and drinking a saketini on a New York rooftop. Or if you’d rather keep your cynical third-eye wide open, then you’re presented with a...
Joysticks of Cooking
[originally posted August 9th, 2009]
Whenever I talk (re: whine incessantly) to R. he’s always all, “You’re just bored lately! That’s all!” Which makes me really angry, because I’m all like, “Why would you even think that? Just because I have nothing to do except watch old Nicole Kidman movies on Instant View and avoid important responsibilities that terrify me? You’re just jealous!” And then I...
Girl in the Green Scarf
[originally posted August 5, 2009]
Why wasn’t the movie called Girl in the Green Scarf? “Confessions of” is a title-trend that seems to have run its course. Sorry, St. Augustine. I guess the word “shopaholic” was a keyword to attract the right demographic (30-something co-workers on their ladies’ night out; dewy-faced college sophomores with a flimsy understanding of credit cards; or, in my...
Vampires Do It At Night With the Lights Off,...
[originally posted Aug. 2nd, 2009]
I was supposed to answer a question (why girls like vampires and boys don’t) at least a week ago, but the question still sits there, all complex and taunting, like a Rubic’s cube with the stickers put on the wrong way, and then forgotten behind a stove, and melted into a weird indistinguishable lump. Butguess what! I am going to rescue that lump and put the...
In my autobiography, this will be my least...
[originally published July 30, 2009]
When I feel sad and anxious I do not turn to time-honored coping mechanisms. People the in the olden days did not cope by painting their fingernails and listening to “Billie Jean” on repeat while walking around in a strapless dress, staring out the windows at the rain. When I worry about myself, the best thing to do is not pity myself, but of course to...
You Take The High Road, I'll Take Communion
[originally published July 29, 2009]
My boyfriend was raised Mormon. I was raised Catholic. Although by now we’ve both left our respective religions (ten years ago in my case and almost as many in his) the weird traces of both religions still mingle in most of our conversations, creating a miasma of outdated ideologies as subtle as incense but as insistent as a missionary knocking on the door....
“[T]he inner vanity is generally in proportion to...
[originally published July 27, 2009]
Like everyone, I have certain flaws that I nourish and groom, fussing over them like little lapdogs, holding them up to the light of public scrutiny, glossy and bright with ribbons. These are the flaws that I’ve accepted mainly because they have some level of public charm … either they blur the boundary between virtue/vice to the point of obscurity (think:...
“In the end it was Snape. It was always Snape.”
[originally published July 23, 2009]
Because I’m not an automaton, I guess, I cried when Dumbledore died. Even though I went to see the sixth Harry Potter nearly a week after the film first released, the whole theatre was quiet after Dumbledore fell, with little sniffles breaking out here and there, a damp Morse code of vicarious mourning. Maybe we were all remembering Gandalf, or our...
In Which I Ponder the Sex Lives of the Undead
[originally published on July 20, 2009]
Newsweek recently came out with this inhuman interest piece (badoom-ching). Notice that the ladies love the vampires almost exclusively, leaving the men to more scrupulous fantasy partners, like, I guess, Megan Fox straddling that motorcycle.
There are exceptions (surprise!). In Interview with the Vampire, at least, Anne Rice’s vampires avoid the...
Dracula Bids You Welcome
[originally posted July 17, 2009]
It’s just a regular Transylvania in these parts lately. For kids, you have the glittering anti-heroes and torture-porn childbirth of Twilight, while adults get the tacky porn (just plain porn, really, no prefixes) of HBO’s shameful hit True Blood. I think there’s some kind of especially declawed version coming out on the CW network this Fall (with the word...