Posted tagged ‘Twilight’

Robert Pattinson and My Dog Pearl

August 30, 2009

My online astrologer wrote that the troublesome opposition between Saturn and Jupiter this weekend might bring up a host of old, but nettling, problems.  I don’t actually pay that much attention to my online astrologer these days.  Any astrologer who predicted, as he did, that the economic downturn of 2008 would improve markedly at the end of August 2008—that is, a couple of weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers—has lost an identifiable percentage (let’s say 65) of my confidence.

That said, it was a nettling weekend.  I felt the other side of manic, that is depressed enough last night, to actually seek out images of Robert Pattinson on my blackberry. (I had no internet connection.)  (Yes, it was pathetic.)

The images were very very small, and frankly, some of the ones that were retrieved were irretrievably model-ly.  Plastic.  They looked about as much like my preferred Pattinson as elevator music sounds like real music (i.e. not much.)

Still, I persisted, thumbing the little keys to next and next, until I finally got to a couple of tousled-haired, sweet smiles.  I felt immediately a bit better.

Yes, it’s very weird.

Seriously.

In my defense, my interest really is not combined with any fantasies about Pattinson, not even a narrative line.  (Other than the fantastical stories of the Twilight books, I suppose. Though, those are not my fantasies.  I don’t even identify with them except perhaps with the heroine’s physical clumsiness, and …loyalty, and, okay, there’s the whole unrequited love aspect.)

Still, feeling stressed, I guess, yet non-manic, I sought out the little postage stamp pictures.  (See e.g. post “From Rat Race to Rat Rut.”)

The whole scenario reminds me of my dog (my family’s dog) whose name is Pearl.  Pearl is a very cute dog.  White tousled fur, black-nosed and eyed.  An easily anthropomorphized face whose (very cute) expressions run the gamut from “delighted”,to  “quizzical”, to  “I want,” to “pretty please” to “I don’t want” to “oh no!”

She looks a bit like a classic cartoon, a children’s toy, which is to say mopsy, fluffy but ragtag, bemused.

I am Pearl’s groomer.  Which is to say, she is not terribly well-groomed, certainly not symmetrical or in any way poofy.

People absolutely love her.  Passersby stop and stare at her when we walk.  They smile.  They laugh.  Small children reach out their hands.

The public reaction to Pearl has often made me feel that perhaps my whole purpose in life, the secret but true reason I was put on this earth, has nothing to do with my work, my wonderful wonderful children, or even the payment of taxes.  But simply to walk this cute little dog around, and, by doing so, to brighten peoples’ days.

Which may be, at least a part, of Robert Pattinson’s purpose.

Does it have something to do with tousled hair?

Hmmm…..

Check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above or on Amazon.  Thanks!

Why I Stay Up Late Rereading Silly Books i.e. Twilight (ha!)

August 25, 2009

Why I Stay Up Late Rereading Really Silly Books (Like, I’ll Admit It, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, even Midnight Sun….)

  1. Otherwise, I read The New York Times.
  2. Or check on the stock market.
  3. Ugh.
  4. Books like Twilight have happy endings which, at all moments, even the “tense” ones,  can be foreseen by the reader.  Especially on a re-read.
  5. In the world of Twilight, even environmental issues, like the poaching of endangered species in national parkland, are dealt with soothingly.  (The  vampires only go after an “excess” of such endangered species after all, and with only their teeth as weapons.)
  6. And man’s inhumanity to man turns out to be actually vampire’s inhumanity to man, which somehow feels a lot less disturbing …  (I mean, what can you expect from a bunch of bloodcrazed supermodels?)
  7. Health care issues, at least in terms of access to treatment and payment for care, are arranged with breath-taking ease.  Of course, it helps to have a vampire doctor in the house.  And, in Breaking Dawn, a personal x-ray machine.  (Though blood banking’s a bit tricky.)
  8. Hardly anyone in the books seems to actually work at a job for pay except the policeman father (Charlie) who apparently plays cards with other officers much of each day.  Yes, Bella has a part-time job, but whenever this is mentioned, she’s being urged by her employers to take time off.  (The altruistic vampire doctor, who seems somehow to work at the hospital on a volunteer basis,  doesn’t count.)
  9. The New York Times, when I read it, frequently mentions the large number of ordinary Americans not working, being shunted to part-time jobs, or forced to take time off.   Somehow these practices seem a lot more fun in Twilight.
  10. Not only more fun.  More lucrative.  In the best-selling fantasy saga, college tuition and living expenses can actually be earned in one of these barely-existent part-time jobs.  By a teenager.
  11. More importantly, it’s somehow more pleasant to identify with Bella Swan than Maureen Dowd;
  12. More pleasant to read what Edward Cullen has to say than David Brooks, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and/or Frank Rich.
  13. After all, Edward Cullen is even better than Robert Pattinson.
  14. True love conquers all.

To Robert Pattinson Re Leaving New York and Fast Sporty Cars

August 7, 2009

Dear Rob,

It’s so boring here in New York now you’ve gone.

As an admirer whose feelings are strictly maternal (check out July post, why my feelings for Robert Pattinson must be strictly maternal), a part of me is happy for you.  Those paparazzi were such thugs.  The endless click of their cameras on all the youtube videos was like the sound of huge skittering cockroaches.  Their voices, calling out your name, sometimes lewd questions too, were crude, thick, loutish.  I got such satisfaction out of absolutely hating them on your behalf.

And I did feel truly sorry for you.  Seriously.  Maternally.  Which, I have to confess, was a great way to use up my downtime.

Besides all the photos.  Dozens of them every single day.  You in Washington Square, out on Long Island, Brooklyn, Central Park.  And though I think it’s more a tribute to your features than the talent of those bloodsucking (oops! Sorry!) paparazzi, an amazingly large number of them were pretty charming shots.

But now you’ve gone back to LA and the paparazzi just don’t seem to have the same access.  I guess that’s because it’s a place where you don’t walk or take cabs, but drive everywhere in fast, sporty cars.

Speaking of fast, sporty cars, you seem to have gotten yourself a new one. You apparently lost your old car (which I imagined as used and agreeably beaten up) because, in the chaos of your new fame, you forgot where you had parked it.  (This made me feel doubly maternal towards you–a misplaced car almost automatically raises maternal feelings of some kind.)

I have to confess, though, that there is something that bothers me about LA (besides the fast, sporty cars).  Maybe it’s the conspicuous wealth.  Or the ability to hide wealth.  Or the fact that wealth in LA can be conspicuous and hidden at once.  Meaning that people can both flaunt what they’ve got and also live in an enclave.

New York City certainly has its share of very wealthy people.  But here, at least, the rich and the poor have to walk the same sidewalks, and, in your case, get mobbed by the same crowds.  (Only yours are usually young female crowds.)

Maybe the saddest thing for me about knowing that you’re driving around LA in a fast, sporty car, is that it somehow destroys my already feeble fantasy that I could somehow, someday, write a book that you would be interested in, and somehow, someday, get you the manuscript, and somehow, someday, convince you to be in the movie based on that manuscript.

Yes, I know it was very silly.  People who know my work will point out that you don’t look anything like an elephant.  Still while you were here, walking behind several supposedly lax security guards, there seemed to be always the chance.

To see my counting book for children and elephants, check out the link for 1 Mississippi.

A Twilight Interlude, Rachel LeFevre-Round Peg in Star-shaped Hole

July 31, 2009

For those of you interested in my posts re writer’s block–sorry.  I’m temporarily distracted by the news that Rachel LeFevre is being replaced as the vampire Victoria in the upcoming Eclipse movie, third of the Twilight Series, and just can’t resist.

I’m sorry, Rachel, but it’s a smart casting move.

You are too womanly for Victoria; too rounded, too soft.  Your breasts are full, your hips are present, your nose is rounded, even your forehead is noticeably convex, you are one curvy dame.  I don’t mean this as a criticism; you have a figure to be envied.  But these are teen books in which narrowness prevails.  Besides, the whole idea is that vampires are stone, hard, streamlined; their bodies weapons; their faces aquiline.

Victoria’s supposed to menacing, to almost kill Edward (Whoa!) but you, Rachel, have the smile of a character actor, someone  who would only kill with poison, or maybe, if the victim were drunk,  a blunt instrument to the back of the head.

You smile is too self-deprecating to be as singleminded as the Victoria in the book, an old Hollywood-style villain, almost cartoonish in her all out commitment to vengeance.  (To get to Edward’s beloved, she forges an army of new-born vamps who come rampaging from Seattle, refusing to be satisfied by anything Starbuck.) 

Hollywood.  That was the magic word in that last paragraph.   Which is the final problem here.  Hollywood personifications are generally to be way hotter than the characters in books.  (See, e.g., Emma Watson as Hermione Grainger, Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries, Meryl Streep as Julia Child.)

But in Stephenie Meyer’s books, the vampire characters out-Hollywood Hollywood.   They already look like movie stars; that, in fact, is one of their primary character traits.   So that now that the films are big budget, Hollywood has to go all out (and, I guess, throw out) just to live up to its name.   The brand name too. 

It doesn’t seem fair, but the fans will love it.

 

Check out 1 Mississippi at Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249040514&sr=8-1

To Robert Pattinson re Edward’s Appeal to Women

July 28, 2009

Robert Pattinson says that he doesn’t understand Edward Cullen’s appeal to women:  “if Edward wasn’t a fictional character and you met him in reality, he is like one of those guys who would probably be an axe murderer or something.”

Edward Cullen, in case you don’t know, is the hero of the enormously popular Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer; the vampire who falls in love with a human girl, Bella, whose scent holds a unique and nearly irresistible attraction for him.

By strange happenstance,  Edward also holds a unique and nearly irresistible attraction for Bella.  Bella , and about a zillion other women, who, since the publication of the series have gone gaga.   Though a fictional character, the web is full of Edward Cullen  fan clubs.  Pattinson, a human stand-in for Cullen, is mobbed in the streets.

I have to admit that I am one of Edward’s admirers, though I try, given my age and education level, to keep it a secret.

Still, I very much understand Pattinson’s confusion.  There is a lot about Edward that really should not be likeable.

First, although Edward and his family aspire a lifestyle of  vampire vegetarianism in the books (i.e. they don’t  regularly suck the blood of humans), Edward admits to a past of vigilantism.  He tells us he spent at least  ten years cutting down (and drinking the blood of) assorted assailants who, but for him, would have assaulted otherwise defenseless women in dark alleys and elsewhere.

(Sorry, Rob, but women sort of like that kind of thing.)

Secondly, Edward has a self-confessed problem with his temper, a potential for murderous rage.  (But hey, it’s self-confessed.  And in Edward’s defense, he always controls the rages.  Also, they are directed at people, usually men, who are either insulting, threatening, attacking, or otherwise laying an unwarranted claim to, his girl.)

Third, he regularly drives over 100 miles an hour.  (But has never had an accident.)

Fourth, he lies frequently (but in an almost dutiful way, striving to either a. protect his girl again, or b. protect his family.)

Fifth, he’s more than a bit of a stalker.  Which is creepy.   But again, there’s the protecting the girl thing going on.  Oh yes, and the adoration thing.  (More on this later.)  And, even as he stalks, the reader always has the feeling that he would go away if Bela wanted him too (which she wouldn’t.)   (Or at least he’d stay out of sight.)

He’s kind of a control freak too.  (Though he backs off on that one in Book 3.)  And did I mention the protecting his girl bit? And the adoration thing.

The two negative behaviors which are not really justified in the books are, first, an occasional prissiness.   But hey,  Stephanie Meyer’s a morman.  And besides that, Edward’s human instincts (that is, his sex drive) have been buried for eighty years by his blood drive.  It takes a while for lust to triumph over blood lust.   (Nearly three books.)  And, oh yes, did I mention the protective thing? And the adoration?

The second fault is more serious.  This is Edward’s…passivity, the way he and the other Cullens allow various non-vegetarian vampires to suck their way through nearby humans without much of an attempt to rein them in (except when they are threatening Edward’s girl Bella).  To their defense, there’s only so much they can do, right?   But, at the same time, they do seem a bit uncaring, standing by in discomfort, but not true suffering, for example, as a large group of tourists is devoured (okay they’re tourists.)

In other words, Edward is no super hero charging around saving the world.  To be fair, he warns Bella of that  in Book I.  Sort of:   “what if I’m not a super hero?  What if I’m the bad guy?’

But when someone with Edward’s/Robert Pattinson’s eyes, lips, bone structure, HAIR, asks a question like that, what can Bella, the viewer, and the reader possibly say?

OMG.

To be continued.

P.S.  Please check out 1 Mississippi at Amazon, counting book for kids and elephants:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248829291&sr=8-1

If you’ve seen the book, and like it, please review!