Too Fond of Books

One of the side effects of breastfeeding is that I am suddenly parked on the couch for long spans of time, with very little use of my hands. Reading is basically out; I tried it several times and it takes either a very lightweight book (in terms of actual weight, not the content, ha ha!) or magazine, and even then it's really the luck of the draw whether it will work or not. So, I've been watching a lot of Netflix things, some old and some new. Catching up on every 'Futurama' episode is good, and at about the intellectual level I'm at these days, what with the very patchy sleep and all.

In Manga:

Rinne, Vol. 4: I did manage to read one volume of manga, and this is it. Fortunately, this was a very good volume, which heaped trouble on trouble upon our hero's already overloaded and in debt head. Hero's father turns out to be a good-for-nothing spendthrift who has nothing better to do in his (after-)life except create get rich quick schemes that don't work out and ultimately ruin his son's life. Our heroine continues to be completely oblivious to the hero's feelings for her, to somewhat plot-contrivance degrees, but this is a Takahashi manga, so I don't expect the love story to happen in the first 20 or so volumes. In the meantime, there's lots of comedy and glimpses of an underworld that apparently runs on scantily clad demon ladies and ridiculously handsome demon guys... and despite our hero's warnings to the contrary, the heroine never seems to keep away from ending up there. I would like the hero to catch a break, but I'm not holding my breath.

On TV/Netflix:

Avatar: The Last Airbender: So I held off watching this series for a long time. ( There were a lot of reasons why, some better than others. But I shouldn't have held out so long because it turned out to be pretty good! Copious spoilers ahead. )

Better Off Ted: I am amused that everyone I have talked to who's watched this show swears it was based on *their* office with [insert name of X huge company here]. If this is indeed true, then I weep for the soul of the American workplace. While I'm doing that, though, I'll be watching this sly little comedy with no laugh track (yay!) and a cadre of excellent actors.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand: orichalcum recommended this and even though yebisu9 and I have enjoyed it so far, I feel like it's pushed the TV-violence envelope even further than the most recent season of 'True Blood' did. I'm not sure I like that fact too much. OTOH, I do like several of the characters, and I'm reasonably intrigued such that my interest outweighs my gross-out factor. I will admit that I went into it thinking that if it were good, I would show an episode to my humanities class; ten minutes in, I realized that if I did that, I would probably create all kinds of controversy on campus and possibly get fired. So, a cautious yay for the time being.

As a reward to myself for getting the taxes mailed off, I stopped into Starbucks for an iced mocha and the latest Entertainment Weekly, which happened to be the summer movie preview. Huzzah, I thought, so many movies I want to see, listed in a convenient month-by-month manner! The first write-up is for the new Angelina Jolie spy thriller, Salt, which I had seen a few previews for and was looking forward to... until I read the article.

Long, overdone paragraphs made short: the role was written for a man, but switched to a woman! From the tone of the write-up, you'd think this is the most revolutionary thing EVER done. But, wait! There's more that had to be changed!

"But the process was trickier than just changing the hero's name and adding high heels."

Seriously: this character is on the run from the cops and federal agents, accused of being a double agent for the Russians, and you're worried about her heels? What will it take for writers to realize that when a character's running from something, there's absolutely no way she'd get very far if she's wearing heels?

But, wait! There's more stupid to come!

"'In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt saves his wife, who's in danger.' says [director Phillip] Noyce. 'And what we found was when Evelyn Salt saved her husband in the new script, it seemed to castrate his character a little...' In the end, Salt's husband... was made tough enough that he didn't need saving, thank you very much."

HORRORS: A MAN NEEDED SAVING. It's 2010, people: a man can stand to be rescued by his kick-ass superhero wife and not be worried about the state of his testicular fortitude. And, conversely, what they're saying is that had the character stayed male, the poor woman-wife would have still been in peril and needed saving. What about making her tough enough that she didn't need saving, thank you very much? This sort of thing makes me so mad: why are we still falling into traditional gender roles even as we make progress in subverting them? Is it because writers think audiences will be so intimidated by a strong female protagonist that their brains will explode if there's not a strong enough male figure to "balance" her out? That's bullshit, plain and simple. We've been presented with unequivocal strong male protagonists over and over again for years, but cultural mores have obviously progressed and changed. When we will get to see a movie where the heroine saves the hero, without needing any additional male help, and without hand-wringing over the state of the poor rescued man's state of mind?

So, in sum, my enthusiasm for Salt has considerably diminished. Maybe I'll watch art house movies all summer long instead.

This week, The Onion A.V. Club poses the question 'what are your best pop-culture-related memories of the past decade?' to its writers, with predictably entertaining and esoteric results. (As usual, Tasha Robinson's answer is the best and makes me wish she were my friend.) Here are some of my personal best pop culture moments from 2000-2009.

1) Just about any of my experiences at Comic Con would fall into this category, even the dull parts where I was waiting in line. Almost invariably, I fell into conversation with interesting people nearby, and on those few occasions where no one felt like talking, I had reading material in the form of huge sampler manga magazines and comic book previews. (This past year, a guy came past the line, handing out old issues of The Flash and Fantastic Four, refusing money and just smiling at everyone.) After waiting in a long line, meeting Lynda Barry a few years ago was beyond wonderful. But this most recent Con provided me with the best (and most personally embarrassing) pop culture moment of the decade: I saw David Tennant, John Barrowman, and Russell T. Davies on stage together and had a full minute of total fangirl squee. (livyanne will no doubt be telling my children about this story someday.)

2) Seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with my family and realizing a) Peter Jackson had not messed it up, and 2) the movie was almost exactly how I'd envisioned the story as a child. (Although not quite with the crazy HAWTNESS of many of the male leads--I was a pretty sheltered kid, and most of my mental pictures of the characters came from my favorite illustrators, like Trina Schart Hyman, Michael Hague, and Herge.) Watching the first installment of that series was like being around the campfire, listening to a master storyteller spin a tale that I already knew, almost instinctively, but longed to hear again. The remaining films did not disappoint, either, but nothing topped the sensation of seeing it for the first time.

3) Reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one day, the morning after they were released. It's very seldom now that I get a chance to read *anything* in one sitting, especially anything as long as those books progressively became. However, I staked out my selfish territory with these three tomes, on the basis that I would be talking to friends later that day, who would have read the entire thing already. And it was true--after each installment, there was a frantic phone call with aratana_miyuki along the lines of "Are you finished?! Can you believe that-?! I know, right? Do you think that-?! No way! Way!" etc. etc. On of these phone calls took place at 11:00PM West Coast time--I was surprised to hear from her, since she lives on the East Coast. It turned out she'd just gotten back from a party, but wanted to talk about the books. The whispered conversation that followed (neither of our husbands had read the book yet, and were incredibly spoiler-phobic) is one of my favorite moments of my friendship with her.

3a) A pop culture low point involved working retail the night Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released. It was dizzying. We sold at least 120 books in 45 minutes. I remember thinking it was worse than the entire Holiday retail season.

4) Seeing the first season of Heroes on DVD during the wild fires in 2007. It was a tremendously unnerving week: we returned from vacation to the smell of ashes in the air; everything was covered in a fine, grey film, and people were panicking. There was a very good chance at one point that the flames would jump over I-15, which would have brought them very close to our apartment complex. There was only so much news we could watch without getting too freaked out and tired. The little Blockbuster franchise in the shopping center nearby turned out to hold the key to distraction/salvation: we watched the entire run of Heroes over about three days, pausing every now and then to check in with my parents, who were housing some friends whose neighborhood was on fire. And it helps that the first season of that show contains some snappy writing, a great premise executed well, and a plot that has urgency and coherence. I was so grateful to the cast, writers, and production staff for putting it together and making me feel like everything would be all right, despite a direct and very real menace to the contrary.