Four consecutive tweets:
Apparently the British for "emergency room" is Casualty. As in "she's going into labor, we have to get to a Casualty." How morbid is that?
And there's a BBC soap called Casualty (like ER), but for the longest time I misread it as Causality, which sounds like a much better show.
Crap I meant "she's going into labour." I suck at British. It's labour for all meanings of labor, right? She isn't switching parties...
oh god and there's no article for hospital. "She's going into labour, we have to get to Casualty." There. Glad I have no British followers...
Anglophilia fail.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Changes for Samantha
I received a copy of the American Girl catalog in the mail today, for some reason. 
I used to love the American Girl catalog. I spent most of elementary school optimistically marking up every issue with circles and stars, hoping that I might get more than one new doll outfit this Hanukkah (I never did. I also desperately wanted Kirsten's summer dress, and kinda still do). So I sat down with the catalog, prepared for a happy nostalgia-fest.
I knew the company had de-emphasized the core historical dolls in recent years, in favor of "girls of today." But I was pretty shocked to see that each historical girl (many of them strangers - I aged out of the series somewhere between Addy and Josefina) now only gets a two page spread in the catalog. Where's Felicity's four-poster bed? Where's Molly's canoe? Where's Samantha's school desk, with the wrought iron curliques for hiding notes? In fact... where's Samantha?!
Samantha is going back into the American Girls vault.
This? Not okay.
I know, I know, the American Girl books were designed to sell dolls. Insanely expensive dolls, and their insanely expensive (but oh so charming!) clothing and furniture. But, if memory serves, they were also AWESOME.
The books did an honest job of turning history into understandable narrative, and the dolls turned narrative into interaction. Their stories didn't shy away from tackling the darker issues of the girls' times, either - racism, classism, war, poverty, and child labor were part of these characters' lives.
Sure, the history was sometimes a little vague. I remember being totally confused about Molly's chronology. My interior monologue, circa 1992: "There's this huge war going on, and war is something that happens in the past. But she's got refrigerators and cars and stuff, so clearly this is present day. What war is this? Are we at war now? I'll sound stupid if I ask someone. I think I'll just stay confused until I'm 15."
But I also learned that poison ivy means getting covered with chamomile lotion (Molly Saves the Day). And that little girls with poor parents have to work bare-foot in factories (Samantha Learns a Lesson). And that the black character is always going to have the crappy story lines / accessories (poor Addy*).
My sadness at the loss of one of the original three girls (Molly and Kirsten are safe for now) is especially strong, I admit, because Samantha is MY girl. I had the doll, and her little white fur muff, and her sailor outfit with the whistle, and the change purse with the penny from 1904. We couldn't afford to get the matching clothes for me. But Allison Kresch wore Samantha's plaid dress to synagogue one Shabbat and omigod I was so jealous. So see! It wasn't only the books that taught about class differences!
I fear that Samantha's jettison is another step on the American Girl Company's path towards abandoning the historical line altogether. I hope that they are just cashing in on the Disney Vault concept, and will be periodically shelving each girl for a few years at a time to scare up sales. But it is all too likely that Samantha, Felicity, and Addy are being phased out to make room in the stores and catalogs for the likes of Madison, Brooke, and Taylor, with shiny little dolly iPods and dolly MySpace accounts.
The books aren't going anywhere, but the dolls themselves serve a legitimate purpose in a market glutted with Barbies and Bratz. Yes, they're only accessible to rich kids, and th
at's pretty gross. But rich kids getting decent dolls is still better than no one getting decent dolls. And if you're gonna buy a kid a $90 doll, she damn well better come with six novels worth of back story.
*actually, Addy reminds me of Martha Jones. Both intrinsically awesome yet really poorly used by their series. Also, Kendra from Buffy. And Uh
ur
a.
I used to love the American Girl catalog. I spent most of elementary school optimistically marking up every issue with circles and stars, hoping that I might get more than one new doll outfit this Hanukkah (I never did. I also desperately wanted Kirsten's summer dress, and kinda still do). So I sat down with the catalog, prepared for a happy nostalgia-fest.I knew the company had de-emphasized the core historical dolls in recent years, in favor of "girls of today." But I was pretty shocked to see that each historical girl (many of them strangers - I aged out of the series somewhere between Addy and Josefina) now only gets a two page spread in the catalog. Where's Felicity's four-poster bed? Where's Molly's canoe? Where's Samantha's school desk, with the wrought iron curliques for hiding notes? In fact... where's Samantha?!
Samantha is going back into the American Girls vault.
This? Not okay.
I know, I know, the American Girl books were designed to sell dolls. Insanely expensive dolls, and their insanely expensive (but oh so charming!) clothing and furniture. But, if memory serves, they were also AWESOME.
The books did an honest job of turning history into understandable narrative, and the dolls turned narrative into interaction. Their stories didn't shy away from tackling the darker issues of the girls' times, either - racism, classism, war, poverty, and child labor were part of these characters' lives.
Sure, the history was sometimes a little vague. I remember being totally confused about Molly's chronology. My interior monologue, circa 1992: "There's this huge war going on, and war is something that happens in the past. But she's got refrigerators and cars and stuff, so clearly this is present day. What war is this? Are we at war now? I'll sound stupid if I ask someone. I think I'll just stay confused until I'm 15."
But I also learned that poison ivy means getting covered with chamomile lotion (Molly Saves the Day). And that little girls with poor parents have to work bare-foot in factories (Samantha Learns a Lesson). And that the black character is always going to have the crappy story lines / accessories (poor Addy*).
My sadness at the loss of one of the original three girls (Molly and Kirsten are safe for now) is especially strong, I admit, because Samantha is MY girl. I had the doll, and her little white fur muff, and her sailor outfit with the whistle, and the change purse with the penny from 1904. We couldn't afford to get the matching clothes for me. But Allison Kresch wore Samantha's plaid dress to synagogue one Shabbat and omigod I was so jealous. So see! It wasn't only the books that taught about class differences!
I fear that Samantha's jettison is another step on the American Girl Company's path towards abandoning the historical line altogether. I hope that they are just cashing in on the Disney Vault concept, and will be periodically shelving each girl for a few years at a time to scare up sales. But it is all too likely that Samantha, Felicity, and Addy are being phased out to make room in the stores and catalogs for the likes of Madison, Brooke, and Taylor, with shiny little dolly iPods and dolly MySpace accounts.
The books aren't going anywhere, but the dolls themselves serve a legitimate purpose in a market glutted with Barbies and Bratz. Yes, they're only accessible to rich kids, and th
at's pretty gross. But rich kids getting decent dolls is still better than no one getting decent dolls. And if you're gonna buy a kid a $90 doll, she damn well better come with six novels worth of back story.From left:
my Native American doll Lily (named for Tiger Lily),
my Romanian doll Stashie, and my Samantha.
And a Dalek, but he's a more recent addition.
my Native American doll Lily (named for Tiger Lily),
my Romanian doll Stashie, and my Samantha.
And a Dalek, but he's a more recent addition.
*actually, Addy reminds me of Martha Jones. Both intrinsically awesome yet really poorly used by their series. Also, Kendra from Buffy. And Uh
ur
a.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Unpopular Opinion Monday
Susan Boyle ain't much of a singer.
I enjoyed the clip from "Britain's Got Talent" as much as anyone. It was a fabulous five minutes of television.
But you know who deserves credit for that excellent video? It ain't Susan Boyle. I'm sorry, internet hordes, but she's just not much of a singer. Strong voice, but untrained and with no range (can *you* hear the "but the tigers come at night" low note? which isn't low at all?). She is no different than anyone else on these Idol shows - she's just uglier.
The people who really deserve credit for the Susan Boyle video are the people who put it together - the director and editors who took the raw footage and made it heart-tugging. In fact, I just spent ten minutes trying to find the program's credits, to give the crew some truly deserved props by name, but even ITV's website snubs them.
Congratulations to the crew of Britain's Got Talent - your video went viral. Congratulations to Susan Boyle - you lucked out, big time.
And for the rest of you... You can stop patting yourselves on the back. It is no different and no better to be wowed by Susan Boyle because she sang better than you expected, than it was to expect a joke in the first place.
...Plus I've had Les Miz stuck in my head for a week now and it's really not okay.
I enjoyed the clip from "Britain's Got Talent" as much as anyone. It was a fabulous five minutes of television.
But you know who deserves credit for that excellent video? It ain't Susan Boyle. I'm sorry, internet hordes, but she's just not much of a singer. Strong voice, but untrained and with no range (can *you* hear the "but the tigers come at night" low note? which isn't low at all?). She is no different than anyone else on these Idol shows - she's just uglier.
The people who really deserve credit for the Susan Boyle video are the people who put it together - the director and editors who took the raw footage and made it heart-tugging. In fact, I just spent ten minutes trying to find the program's credits, to give the crew some truly deserved props by name, but even ITV's website snubs them.
Congratulations to the crew of Britain's Got Talent - your video went viral. Congratulations to Susan Boyle - you lucked out, big time.
And for the rest of you... You can stop patting yourselves on the back. It is no different and no better to be wowed by Susan Boyle because she sang better than you expected, than it was to expect a joke in the first place.
...Plus I've had Les Miz stuck in my head for a week now and it's really not okay.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I have been talked into joining Twitter. Or rather, Jeana said "why aren't you on Twitter?" and I said "dunno."
http://twitter.com/LizWeinbloom
Facebook's jumped the shark anyways.
http://twitter.com/LizWeinbloom
Facebook's jumped the shark anyways.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Little Einsteins; or, the decline of civilization
I am a big supporter of children’s television, but I have long been skeptical of preschool programming. With the very notable exception of Sesame Street, which is designed to be awesome for parents as well as toddlers, television for preschoolers is largely inscrutable to grownups. There’s just no accounting for the taste of 2-year-olds. Probably because they shouldn’t be watching tv at all.
Often, preschool programs employ the “interactive” model of Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer, in which the viewer is asked direct questions by a protagonist who blinks far too infrequently for comfort. On some level I eagerly anticipate the art that will someday be created by a generation whose concept of the fourth wall was demolished so early on – in my day, kids’ tv only got as meta as the seriously over-branded Where’s Waldo, which froze the action intermittently so we could run up to the screen and, you know, find Waldo. But on the whole, these “interactive” shows (and I will never ever call them interactive without a liberal dose of scare quotes) are labeled as educational, while being benign at best – and, far too often, actively idiotic.
Today I watched Little Einsteins. You might have heard of the Baby Einstein brand. The tv version is a Dora-style show on the Disney channel that promotes arts literacy or something. [Note that the actual baby Einstein was deemed to be no Einstein; irony is an 
Now, I have no quibbles about the value of arts literacy. I myself once wrote a pitch about talking paintings, though largely to cannibalize art puns from a failed project about singing paintings. And then I discovered that
My quibble is not with the end, but the means. The thought process behind the Baby Einstein franchise is that context-less exposure to Mozart and Picasso at an early age will stay in the system – like acid – and conveniently resurface sixteen years later in the presence of a Harvard admissions officer.
In practice, this means assigning each episode a painting and symphony (in the episode I watched, “Go West, Young Train,” these were a Navajo basket and a phrase from Bizet’s L’Arlsienne Suite #2), and randomly inserting them into a Dora-style problem-solving adventure. But the problem is not at all related to the art. A little red train in the Old West was on its way to a hoe-down, you see, and its bag of goodies – including three violins that ghost-bowed the Bizet, because what’s a hoe-down without some French ballet scoring? – was stolen by an evil jet plane.
Sure, whatever. How about that art? Well, the Navajo basket was not woven into t
On the music side of things, four measures of Bizet are sprinkled liberally through the soundtrack. A time-honored way to exploit the public domain teach classical music, though Bugs Bunny was a bit more willing to get past the opening phrases. But Little Einsteins goes one better than “What’s Opera, Doc” and uses the Dora model to teach real live music vocabulary too.
Dora’s claim to fame is, of course, the Spanish words. Her dialog is punctuated with random Spanish exclamations (“clap your hands mas rapido!”) that may or may not increase children’s comfort with bilingualism, depending on who sponsored the study. But when Little Einsteins borrows this technique, the result is dialog like this:
“The little red train is going andante, but the evil jet is going allegro! Help the little red train go more allegro!”
What. the. fuck.
Let’s ignore the fact that words like andante and allegro are completely useless for anyone who isn’t, say, sightreading a score or writing liner notes. This vocabulary is not only completely useless, but decontextualized to the point of meaninglessness. Tempo and velocity are NOT THE SAME THING. You can’t “go allegro”! You don’t walk allegro any more than you play the piano at 55 mph. Granted, I have had several conductors fond of obliterating traditional boundaries of units of measure (“the sopranos are two octaves behind and a golf course sharp!” – Dr. Jameson Marvin). But this is ridiculous.
Programs like Little Einsteins will not make your kid smart. They will quite possibly make your kid stupider. But at least they’ll be able to hum four measures of non-Carmen Bizet. And that’s more than you can.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Photo linkage
This post is solely so I can link back to this photo in an io9 comment.
Nothing else to see here, moving on...
[well, actually, I suppose there's the photo to see. Which is of some excellent people wandering the streets of Cardiff dressed as 10 and Jack.]
[comments on this photo in its facebook album:
Reha - Captain Jack's heels are the best thing ever.
Me - Not quite authentic though - you know the real Jack's heels would be three inches taller and sparkly.
Reha - Haha, they surely would. Possibly the kind with fish swimming inside, except they'd be ALIEN fish out to destroy the world.
Me - ::goes off to write that story:: ]
Nothing else to see here, moving on...
[well, actually, I suppose there's the photo to see. Which is of some excellent people wandering the streets of Cardiff dressed as 10 and Jack.]
[comments on this photo in its facebook album:
Reha - Captain Jack's heels are the best thing ever.
Me - Not quite authentic though - you know the real Jack's heels would be three inches taller and sparkly.
Reha - Haha, they surely would. Possibly the kind with fish swimming inside, except they'd be ALIEN fish out to destroy the world.
Me - ::goes off to write that story:: ]
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Point-missing, Spoilery, or Otherwise Amusing Translations of Movie Titles
It was raining a lot in Sevilla, so Jenny and I amused ourselves by making this list in a FNAC.
Point-missing, Spoilery, or Otherwise Amusing Translations of Movie and TV Titles
(key below)
Bonus book section!
Los Cuentos de Beedle el Bardo
Also, Harvard fails at policing unauthorized uses of its image overseas, apparently:
Point-missing, Spoilery, or Otherwise Amusing Translations of Movie and TV Titles
(key below)
- Mejor... Imposible
- Desayuno con Diamantes
- Atrapado en el Tiempo
- El Invisible Harvey
- Urgencias
- Expediente X
- A dos metros bajo tierra
- El Sueño de mi Vida
- Descubriendo Nunca Jamás
- El Caballero Oscuro
- La Guerra de las Galaxas
- Padre Made in USA
- As Good As It Gets
- Breakfast at Tiffanys
- Groundhog Day
- Harvey
- ER
- X-Files
- Six Feet Under
- 13 going on 30
- Finding Neverland
- The Dark Knight
- Star Wars
- American Dad
Bonus book section!Los Cuentos de Beedle el Bardo
Also, Harvard fails at policing unauthorized uses of its image overseas, apparently:
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Not the planet Barcelona
Which is to say, I'm probably gonna post more now, because now it doesn't have to be prose.
I sent an email to CERN when we got to Switzerland the other day, asking about tours. I addressed it "Dear CERN or Madam."
This may explain why I have not heard back.
Tomorrow I'm going to Barcelona. Don't get up.
Song starts at 1:20.
I sent an email to CERN when we got to Switzerland the other day, asking about tours. I addressed it "Dear CERN or Madam."
This may explain why I have not heard back.
Tomorrow I'm going to Barcelona. Don't get up.
Song starts at 1:20.
I think I'm going to be giving up this travel blogging thing, because typing up my journal really takes much longer than I expected. So I say au revoir (with a really revolting French accent, but Jenny is tutoring me) with a couple lists.
Favorite names for Underground stops:
- Elephant & Castle
- Tooting Broadway
- Cutty Sark
- Cockfosters
- Barking
- Ickenham
- Bounds Green
- Swiss Cottage
- Wembley Park
- Canada Water
- Heron Quays
- Shepherd's Bush
- Mile End
- Stepney Green
- Burnt Oak
- Chalk Farm
Favorite names of varieties of roses in Regent's Park, as indicated by little signs next to thoroughly dead twigs in the ground:
- Perestroika
- Top Marks
- Yesterday
- Buff Beauty
- Golden Celebrations
- Wife of Bath
- Vidal Sassoon
- Eye Paint
- Eye Opener
- The Times
- Razzle Dazzle
- Bruce
- Summerfield Miranda
- Tiddles
- Conspicuous
- Dr. Eckener
- Narrow Waters
- Tall Story
- Falstaff
- Cardinal Richelou
- Mayor of Casterbridge
Bon voyage! (you mean bon voya-guh)
Friday, February 20, 2009
"You're going to Cardiff? Why?"
The Doctor and Rose Tyler walk down a snowy Victorian street. Rose is gleeful, but the Doctor glances sullenly at a newspaper.
Caerdydd! Home of Doctor Who, the Millennium Centre, and, um, a castle. Rather lovely, rather dull. Perfect place for a day trip, if you do it right. Which I did not. I was in Cardiff for a total of 23 hours, but only eight of them were at all viable.
My train got in at 3 pm, and after checking in at the (really nice, highly recommended) NosDa hostel, I walked down the river to the bay. Predictably, I started at the Doctor Who exhibition, but... it was a bit unthrilling. Just costumes and flashing lights and the occasional panel with an episode summary - like anyone visiting a DW exhibit would need such a thing - and some animatronic Daleks. Even the gift shop was pretty lame. So the most obvious stage of my Doctor Who pilgrimage was a bust.
But outside was the Millennium Centre, which really is impressive in its own right. Welsh is a beautiful and absurd-looking language, so a massive carved wall of Welsh really does make for an interesting and worthy city icon. From there I started a walking tour I'd printed from the BBC website, which was theoretically supposed to take four hours. It actually took 20 minutes. There's just not all that much to see. Roald Dahl Pass is just some pass named after Roald Dahl. And there's, like, a church. Meh.
But I turned on the little boardwalk around the bay, and lo! There was the entrance to the Torchwood
hub! I was very impressed to find that the geography of the hub's area, as shown both on Torchwood and the parent show, is consistent with the real world (ie, Jack was running from the right direction in LOTL, etc). The hub's door is covered by a rusty grille, with some old newspapers tacked up behind it. I took a closer look. "New Mayor, New Cardiff" announces a headline, under a photo of Margaret Blaine, nee Slitheen. Squee! Enormous squee! I guess it's just been chilling there since they filmed Boomtown in 2005. You can keep your animatronic Cybermen and life-size talking Daleks - this is the sort of thing that fills my heart with fannish glee. I was grinning like mad for a good ten minutes.
There was one other happy fan moment of note - spotting 10 and Captain Jack waiting for a bus. If you're gonna do cosplay, boy, wandering around Cardiff dressed like Jack Harkness is the way to do it. Plus there are few images more hilarious than the Doctor boarding a public bus.
Alas, after having exhausted all the outdoor sightseeing, I suddenly discovered that it was 5:30, and EVERYTHING had closed. The restaurants and bars were open, but that's of no use to a solo traveler. Also, everyone appeared to be in high school.
And so, at a loss for what else to do on a Tuesday night in Cardiff, I went to the movies. And by "went" I mean "accidentally snuck into." And by "accidentally snuck into," I really do mean "accidentally snuck into." I think they use an honor system or something? Whatever. I was on an escalator, and next thing I knew I was in a cinema, and a movie was about to start. So I sat down to watch it.
It was "Twilight."
Okay, so, I really enjoyed it! Which is to say, I really enjoyed it in the way that I didn't enjoy the Dirty Dancing musical. Here was some awfulness that you could really sink your teeth into! Fangs, rather. ::rimshot::
I'd sort of gathered from the zeitgeist of Twilight-hate that the most objectionable element was the pro-abstinence shilling, but that is so very much the least of its problems (and not at all present in the first movie). Rather, in the very established tradition of classic vampire stories (cf, Dracula), Twilight is a rape fantasy. And a stalking fantasy. That huge creeper in bio lab is not a huge creeper if he has dreamy eyebrows. Being stalked is not only okay, but desirable! As is ditching your friends, family, and life for a guy. And ignoring all warning signs, of the flashing neon variety as well as menacing folktales from your token Magic Red Man, that the guy is a huge creeper. Who watches you while you sleep. And follows you around town. Oh my god I feel dirty just thinking about it.
Twilight actually made me cry. I cried from frustration, and anger, and sadness that in 2009 I was watching this movie in a theater full of 10-year-olds and their mothers. It was the sexuality, gender, and genre issues that were tackled by Buffy, but with all the nuance, awareness, and problematizing thrown out the window. Poor, poor Joss. He tried, he really did.
After that exercise in frustration, I hung out at the hostel bar for a few hours with a sargeant in the American army who just finished a ten month tour in Afghanistan, and a street magician on his way to a magic convention in Blackpool who currently lives in Spain but migrates with the tourist season. I didn't tell them a thing about myself, because jeez did I lose on the interestingness count in this crowd.
In the morning I visited the Cardiff Castle, which despite being many centuries old was entirely gutted in the 1890s, so that was also a bit unimpressive. Mostly I liked the pen of falconry birds, who were there not to put on a show for the tourists, but to keep pigeons and squirrels out of the castle. I was particularly enthralled by the bold orange eyes of the eagle owl, though I don't know if I found him terrifying or wanted to give him a cuddle. And then I wandered through the very nice city center till my train back to London, and discovered that Cardiff has great shopping, if only you're there during daylight.
So for anyone planning a trip to Cardiff: Travel at night. Bring a friend for the bars. And dress like Captain Jack.
Doctor: I got the flight a bit wrong.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: It's not 1860, it's 1869.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: And we're not in Naples.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: We're in Cardiff.
Rose: ....right.
Caerdydd! Home of Doctor Who, the Millennium Centre, and, um, a castle. Rather lovely, rather dull. Perfect place for a day trip, if you do it right. Which I did not. I was in Cardiff for a total of 23 hours, but only eight of them were at all viable.
My train got in at 3 pm, and after checking in at the (really nice, highly recommended) NosDa hostel, I walked down the river to the bay. Predictably, I started at the Doctor Who exhibition, but... it was a bit unthrilling. Just costumes and flashing lights and the occasional panel with an episode summary - like anyone visiting a DW exhibit would need such a thing - and some animatronic Daleks. Even the gift shop was pretty lame. So the most obvious stage of my Doctor Who pilgrimage was a bust.
But outside was the Millennium Centre, which really is impressive in its own right. Welsh is a beautiful and absurd-looking language, so a massive carved wall of Welsh really does make for an interesting and worthy city icon. From there I started a walking tour I'd printed from the BBC website, which was theoretically supposed to take four hours. It actually took 20 minutes. There's just not all that much to see. Roald Dahl Pass is just some pass named after Roald Dahl. And there's, like, a church. Meh.But I turned on the little boardwalk around the bay, and lo! There was the entrance to the Torchwood
hub! I was very impressed to find that the geography of the hub's area, as shown both on Torchwood and the parent show, is consistent with the real world (ie, Jack was running from the right direction in LOTL, etc). The hub's door is covered by a rusty grille, with some old newspapers tacked up behind it. I took a closer look. "New Mayor, New Cardiff" announces a headline, under a photo of Margaret Blaine, nee Slitheen. Squee! Enormous squee! I guess it's just been chilling there since they filmed Boomtown in 2005. You can keep your animatronic Cybermen and life-size talking Daleks - this is the sort of thing that fills my heart with fannish glee. I was grinning like mad for a good ten minutes.There was one other happy fan moment of note - spotting 10 and Captain Jack waiting for a bus. If you're gonna do cosplay, boy, wandering around Cardiff dressed like Jack Harkness is the way to do it. Plus there are few images more hilarious than the Doctor boarding a public bus.
Alas, after having exhausted all the outdoor sightseeing, I suddenly discovered that it was 5:30, and EVERYTHING had closed. The restaurants and bars were open, but that's of no use to a solo traveler. Also, everyone appeared to be in high school.
And so, at a loss for what else to do on a Tuesday night in Cardiff, I went to the movies. And by "went" I mean "accidentally snuck into." And by "accidentally snuck into," I really do mean "accidentally snuck into." I think they use an honor system or something? Whatever. I was on an escalator, and next thing I knew I was in a cinema, and a movie was about to start. So I sat down to watch it.
It was "Twilight."
Okay, so, I really enjoyed it! Which is to say, I really enjoyed it in the way that I didn't enjoy the Dirty Dancing musical. Here was some awfulness that you could really sink your teeth into! Fangs, rather. ::rimshot::
I'd sort of gathered from the zeitgeist of Twilight-hate that the most objectionable element was the pro-abstinence shilling, but that is so very much the least of its problems (and not at all present in the first movie). Rather, in the very established tradition of classic vampire stories (cf, Dracula), Twilight is a rape fantasy. And a stalking fantasy. That huge creeper in bio lab is not a huge creeper if he has dreamy eyebrows. Being stalked is not only okay, but desirable! As is ditching your friends, family, and life for a guy. And ignoring all warning signs, of the flashing neon variety as well as menacing folktales from your token Magic Red Man, that the guy is a huge creeper. Who watches you while you sleep. And follows you around town. Oh my god I feel dirty just thinking about it.
Twilight actually made me cry. I cried from frustration, and anger, and sadness that in 2009 I was watching this movie in a theater full of 10-year-olds and their mothers. It was the sexuality, gender, and genre issues that were tackled by Buffy, but with all the nuance, awareness, and problematizing thrown out the window. Poor, poor Joss. He tried, he really did.
After that exercise in frustration, I hung out at the hostel bar for a few hours with a sargeant in the American army who just finished a ten month tour in Afghanistan, and a street magician on his way to a magic convention in Blackpool who currently lives in Spain but migrates with the tourist season. I didn't tell them a thing about myself, because jeez did I lose on the interestingness count in this crowd.
In the morning I visited the Cardiff Castle, which despite being many centuries old was entirely gutted in the 1890s, so that was also a bit unimpressive. Mostly I liked the pen of falconry birds, who were there not to put on a show for the tourists, but to keep pigeons and squirrels out of the castle. I was particularly enthralled by the bold orange eyes of the eagle owl, though I don't know if I found him terrifying or wanted to give him a cuddle. And then I wandered through the very nice city center till my train back to London, and discovered that Cardiff has great shopping, if only you're there during daylight.
So for anyone planning a trip to Cardiff: Travel at night. Bring a friend for the bars. And dress like Captain Jack.
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