Wordporn

by mollykl

At work the other day S asked how my birthday weekend went. I told her we had a great dinner at Waterboy and then went to a bookstore, where I picked up a couple of impossibly trashy novels. So trashy, I had to admit to her, that I wouldn’t even show my husband what I’d gotten, because I was embarrassed (even though he said, “But I’m getting sci-fi, that’s just as bad!”).

 S’s response was, “Geez, why not just watch porn?” To which I answered without blinking, “I was an English major – for me that IS porn.” And that got me thinking about words.

 I love the way words sound:  I actually keep a mental list of my favorite words. “Seraphim” is on the list, as is “absinthe”.  I only speak English, but I can read French a bit, and I can pick out words in Spanish. I hate the sound of German, too guttural, but I love the sound of Russian and Arabic. Arabic in particular just sounds so fluid, as if it matches the way its script flows.

 When I read, I can picture almost anything that is described. Oh sure, sometimes it’s fuzzy, if there’s not enough detail. For the life of me I couldn’t understand bangalore torpedoes when described in Stephen Ambrose’s “D-Day”, so actually seeing them, albeit briefly, in “Saving Private Ryan” was a revelation. At the same time, I was one of the few people in the movie theater NOT falling apart during that infamous first 20 minutes of the movie, because I’d read Ambrose’s telling of the beach landings, and unfortunately, had already pictured everything (and had recovered from the nightmares years before.)

 That’s not to say that I don’t have an appreciation for the visual. I have a thing for Jackson Pollock (not ironically strengthened by reading his biography by Smith and Naifeh). I love movies (I spent all of “New Moon” thinking, Wow! Great color saturation, nice lighting! Which is perhaps not good, if that’s what I thinking instead of actually paying attention to the story and acting, such as they were). My favorite color is red, and I’m quite particular about the exact shade.

The world is made up of picture-people and word-people. Some people just respond best to visual stimuli, and that’s great: there’s an entire industry made for you and you’re welcome to it.

 Me? I’m a word girl.

Man and myth

by mollykl

I like bad movies. It’s my “thing.” Ask any of my friends about my taste in movies, and they’ll inevitably roll their eyes and mutter something about”The Mummy Returns” (which I saw 3 times in the theater AND now own.)

I don’t go to the movies to think, I go to be entertained and forget about everything for 112 minutes. If I want to think, I’ll stay at home and not shell out the money for a baby sitter.

So I went to “Clash of the Titans” yesterday with a fair amount of anticipation. I’m old enough to remember the first one with glee. It was awful, even I knew that, but hey, Laurence Olivier as Zeus! I nearly had a coronary when I found out they were remaking it, and got more hyped up with each trailer. Keep in mind that I DO NOT HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS WHEN IT COMES TO MOVIES. All I really need is 1. handsome leading man, 2.helicopter or monsters, 3. guns, though a sword will do in a pinch and 4. god-awful editing that makes you dizzy.

As mentioned before, I like bad movies. I can put up with a lot. But what I cannot abide is when Hollywood fucks up mythology. Getting a fucking copy of Bullfinch’s! It’s not rocket science people. You don’t get to change a couple of thousand years of tradition because you think it would make a better story. Oh, and here’s a surprise for you: it didn’t. It would have been a much better story if you’d stuck to the actual myth. It’s not like it was going to be great movie anyway. Did you really think Ralph Fiennes was going to get an Oscar nomination? Hardly. 

In the breakroom at work we were talking about movies and V mentioned she’d seen it, and I chimed in. R snarkily said, “Let me guess..you thought the book was better…because you actually READ the book.”

Yes. And the book was better!

Woo-hoo!

by mollykl

Red Sox 9, Yankees 7

Torture, but the good kind

by mollykl

You know that feeling when you’re anxiously waiting on a favorite author’s newest release and you start think you might actually DIE from the anticipation?

Yeah, I’ve got that feeling…..times six. It’s bad when you keep checking back to the Amazon page, knowing that the info hasn’t changed, but you just need to see the cover one more time (or you need to keep checking back to see if the cover has been released.)

I’ve got whole days planned out: “Well, if Amazon ships so that I recieve it ON release day, then I have ad day at work, and the next day off, I can spend the whole day reading.  Memo to self, be sure I’ve got enough coffee and whole milk, and maybe something really great for lunch. Oh yeah, make J go to Ikea to get furniture for the front porch so I can sit out there and read. And for god’s sake ensure there’s enough scotch in case something bad happens and a favorite character dies.”

Seriously, I have these things planned out in my calendar. I can finish a book in a day, but I cannot and will not start a book that I’ve been waiting for on a day when I can’t just sit and read, because I will either a) stay up and finish it, and YOU try getting up at 2 a.m. to go to work after getting to sleep at midnight, or b) think about it constantly and be cranky and distracted at work. The distracted I don’t mind so much, but cranky makes it hard to get through the day.

That said, if you want to make plans with me this year the blackout dates are early April, late April, early September, late September, early October and late October. To be safe I’d avoid August as well. I’ll be too high-strung and the weather here won’t help.