Nobody Knows Anything

Carina Chocano has an article in today’s LA Times Calendar about the seven rules for movie heroines. Every one of her rules resonates with me. Resonates with me as to why I cannot stand most of the women in movies today, especially in romantic comedies:

How? After watching “Monster-in-Law,” I canvassed a few writers—who won’t be named, so that they may continue to write and happily incorporate notes—to share directives they’d received while creating their romantic heroines. There is no such thing, it appears, as a romantic comedy heroine who couldn’t benefit from being just a little more “likable” than she already is (Rule No. 1). “Likable” of course, can mean many things in the real world; but for a studio it tends to mean that she does some kind of work involving animals or the elderly. Perhaps she’s a veterinarian, or a zookeeper. If she works in business, she has a boss who doesn’t appreciate her, or steals her ideas. Whatever it is, she has it tough. Sometimes she’s a single mother, “trying to hold it all together in this tough, dog-eat-dog world,” one writer offers. “Also, likable often means clumsy,” she adds. “She falls down a lot, but in an adorable fashion. Likable also means pretty. As we all know, the fat are unlikable.”

The seven rules, in case you need the summary instead:

1. There is no such thing, it appears, as a romantic comedy heroine who couldn’t benefit from being just a little more “likable” than she already is.
2. Once she’s been established as almost unbelievably likable, a heroine must be “sympathetic” because, what if she got so likable people actually started to hate her? She must be punished for her smug likability—dumped, cheated on, left at the altar.
3. While it’s OK to spend some time with Ben & Jerry, heartbreak does not call, under any circumstances, for excessive, depressive or erratic behavior of any kind.
4. Essential story elements can and should be jettisoned if they risk making one of the female leads less attractive than she otherwise might be.
5. Sexiness is good, but having sex is problematic.
6. In the case of a male protagonist, one can’t go wrong inserting supermodels wherever humanly possible.
7. If a character’s age is ever mentioned, best to make it 29—29 being the universal sell-by date after which point singleness, klutzy adorability, etc., cross the line from “sympathetic” to simply “pathetic.”

(Via Booksquare.)

Today I went to get a manicure and pedicure with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law (light pink on my fingernails, sparkly blue on my toenails, thanks for asking) and I heard the woman across the aisle from me say she had just bought a house in Sherman Oaks. “Oh!” I said. “We just moved from there.” (Okay, it was two years ago. Whatever.) “Where is your house?”

She shrugged and said, “I’m not really too sure of how things are laid out there. It’s at Valley Vista and Crisp Canyon.”

Huh.

I had no clue where that was.

I asked her for a few things near there—she said she’d stayed at the Sportsmans Lodge, which is fairly near my old house—but she couldn’t really tell me specifically where it was.

Now, after I got home I looked it up on Mapquest, and indeed, Crisp Canyon Road is on the other side of Sherman Oaks from where I used to live. (I used to live near Valley Vista and Murietta, in case anyone cares.) So it’s not that surprising that I didn’t know it off-hand. But I got a shock from realizing, Wow, I really don’t know that area, and I’m going to lose whatever I did know about it.

Scott Lynch tells us about a variant on the Sony Aibo robotic dog. It’s from Honda and it’s called Writerbo.

Strangely, he didn’t include where to buy such a thing. Guess I’ll just have to do it myself.

(Via Tamboblog, who doesn’t have any entry links that I could find!)

It’s been a busy week.

Last Friday I baked 48 cupcakes for Simon’s birthday party. (Why? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.) 24 chocolate, 24 vanilla. Then early Saturday morning I made vanilla and chocolate buttercream frosting, dividing between the cupcakes such that we had vanilla-vanilla, vanilla-chocolate, chocolate-vanilla, and chocolate-chocolate. Something for everyone.

I was already exhausted, and I hadn’t even gotten to the party yet.

The birthday party was quite a success, despite my fears that everything would go wrong, from no one showing up to parents saying, “Cupcakes???” We had it at a nearby park. 15 of Simon’s closest friends showed up to eat chicken nuggets, play on the playground, do crafts, and eat cupcakes. The craft was painting and putting stickers on wooden picture frames, and the kids really got into it. (Michael’s Art Supply is a wonderful place to get stuff for a kids’ party.) The kids got horribly dirty, which they utterly loved. I had a box of baby wipes so parents could make an attempt at cleaning up their kids.

When I put Simon’s birthday cupcake in front of him, several kids leaned forward and blew out the candle. He didn’t care—moved him that much closer to eating the cupcake.

(I tried to make a joke for the parents: “Don’t worry! The cupcakes are low carb!” Instead of a laugh, I got, “They are?” Waaah.)

Then Darin’s parents arrived for a visit, which is always great—the kids love Grandpa and Grandma.

Then we all got sick.

The kids had been sick for a couple of days. Sophia had a one-day cold and fever, and then Simon got it much worse, with fever on and off for a couple of days. The excitement and strain of Simon’s birthday party may have weakened his immune system, although he’s always gotten colds a lot more easily than Sophia has.

Then Darin got sick enough to stay home from work—trust me, that’s sick—and I woke up one morning going, Ennnnnnhhhhhhhh.

Not that that has stopped us: kids need to do stuff, and when grandparents are in town we need to do extra stuff. So there was the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, which is the kids’ newest favorite spot:

(No, I don’t know why whenever I tell them to sit together for a photo, Sophia decides they must hug. I guess next time I try to take their picture somewhere, I will have to enforce separate seats.)

And we went to the park in town that has a fountain for playing in:

(This is them post-frolic. They were wet and exhausted and very happy.)

The grandparents’ visit is almost over, the kids have only a residual cough, and I think I’m getting better too. Darin even went to work today.

Roger Ebert let some time lapse between his TV review of the new Adam Sandler movie, The Longest Yard, and the written review. In between, he went to Cannes and saw all manner of films. And now that he has to write a review of completely disposable Hollywood programming, he regrets his earlier televised version:

Three weeks ago I saw “The Longest Yard,” and before I left for the Cannes Film Festival, I did an advance taping of an episode of “Ebert & Roeper” on which I gave a muted thumbs-up to Richard Roeper’s scornful thumbs-down. I kinda liked it, in its goofy way. There was a dogged ridiculousness to the film that amused me, especially in the way Adam Sandler was cast as a star quarterback. Once you accept Sandler as a quarterback, you’ve opened up the backfield to the entire membership of the Screen Actors’ Guild.

Now three weeks have passed and I have seen 25 films at Cannes, most of them attempts at greatness, and I sit here staring at the computer screen and realizing with dread that the time has come for me to write a review justifying that vertical thumb, which is already on video and will go out to millions of TV viewers seeking guidance in their moviegoing.

I do not say that I was wrong about the film. I said what I sincerely believed at the time. I believed it as one might believe in a good cup of coffee; welcome while you are drinking it, even completely absorbing, but not much discussed three weeks later. Indeed after my immersion in the films of Cannes, I can hardly bring myself to return to “The Longest Yard” at all, since it represents such a limited idea of what a movie can be and what movies are for.

Read the whole thing. Talk about your mea culpas.

Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey has a wonderful discussion of story, plot, act structure, and character arcs. I think I will be studying this a lot, because some of the things he talks about are the very problems I’ve been having of late.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between story and plot, Rogers manages to explain it very succinctly.

So there’s this guy, see, and he’s overweight. He out and out calls himself fat. And to do something about it he’s decided to walk from his home in San Diego to New York City.

Yowsa.

Of course, he’s keeping a blog about his journey, called appropriately enough “Fat Man Walking.” He’s evidently managing to put up entries somehow.

(Via Food is Worse Than Crack)

Update 7/29/05: It seems several people who’ve come to this blog don’t understand that I have nothing to do with the Fat Man Walking. If you’re interested in contacting Steve Vaught or in giving him notes of support, please go to his page and contact him and his wife. I don’t know if he’ll ever see this page, and you’ll be sure to let him know how you feel if you write to him instead of me. Thanks.

A friend of Darin’s is a big fan of the show Alias. Darin and I watched Alias when it first premiered and gave up on it during the teaser of show 2, I believe. But Darin’s friend really wanted us to watch it, so he loaned us three seasons worth of DVDs. And we sat down to start watching, see what we’ve missed.

Well, we both agree Not much. Still seems pretty silly and fake to us. But I discovered something even odder: real life really can ruin the fantasy experience. I’d find myself thinking, That’s Jennifer Garner. She was married to Scott Foley, but then they broke up and she took up with Michael Vartan, but I guess they’ve broken up because she’s having a baby with Ben Affleck now.

Then we came home last night after Date Night and the babysitter had the Alias season finale on. Sydney’s father was telling the CIA agent—the aforementioned Michael Vartan—that he could marry Sydney. And I thought, How weird is that? On the show they’re going to get married, despite the fact that they’ve broken up and she’s having someone else’s baby? Hope that was a good breakup, ’cause otherwise that’s an acting job that would totally suck.

And mind you: I don’t particularly pay attention to Jennifer Garner gossip and we haven’t watched much of Alias. But what I do know has completely affected how I look at her and look at her show.

In related news, while I am amused by the coverage on the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes relationship—there’s some doubt on its veracity, let’s say, in mainstream gossip publications—I can’t actually imagine what else Tom could do. A man’s got to date somebody.

Bill Frist’s Northeast political director at the NRSC in 2002, James Tobin, was the guy behind the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal from that year. (From Josh Marshall: “The state Republican party hired an Idaho company to knock out the phones of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation on election day by placing hundreds of automated hang-up calls to their phone banks.”)

Well, Tobin was indicted by a grand jury. But, no fair! he cries. The jury was biased against him. Why?

It contained Democrats.

Tobin now says, in motions filed with the court, that his indictment in the case should be thrown out because the grand jury that indicted him included Democrats.

And in line with Tobin’s apparent contention that Republicans now constitute a protected class (will they mind if we call them a ‘discrete and insular minority’?) there’s this …

And if the case does go to trial, Tobin’s lawyers want to question prospective jurors extensively about their politics and their exposure to media reports of the case to root out potential bias.
A proposed questionnaire would ask prospective jurors to disclose their political party, union membership, whether they’ve ever had a bumper sticker on their car and what it said, what Web logs they read and whether they ever watch TV shows such as “West Wing,” CNN’s “Crossfire,” MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” and “The McLaughlin Group,” which mostly runs on public television stations.

Tobin’s lawyers also want jurors to describe themselves by checking off all that apply: “aggressive, articulate, emotional, entrepreneurial, intelligent, laid back, loyal, naive, perceptive, stubborn, (or) other.”

Federal prosecutors countered that Tobin is required to prove actual bias by the grand jury: He cannot ask judges to assume that Democrats would indict based on their political convictions, anymore than judges can assume Republicans would indict Democrats in violation of their oath to look only at the evidence.

Let’s see: we have a President who will only make public appearances in front of vetted party members, we have lobbyists being forced to hire Republicans if they want work, and we have the administration insisting that telecom representatives going to a conference overseas be Republicans.

And now trial by acceptable political activity.

Just in case you’re wondering where this is headed.

Now this is a movie review: Anthony Lane of The New Yorker reviews “Revenge of the Sith.”

What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she is about to give birth? Mind you, how Padmé got pregnant is anybody’s guess, although I’m prepared to wager that it involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask.