Romantic Comedies Suck, But They Don't Have To

I don't understand it either, Owen.

If you're a film lover on a budget in Victoria, there's one theatre you go to, and that's the Roxy. It sets you back four bucks, it's in Quadra Village, and the interior looks like, depending on your inclination, either an airport hangar or a cremation chamber before things get cooking.

If the latter seems like a weird group of thoughts to be having at the movies, then clearly you haven't recently paid four dollars to see How Do You Know? as it limps through second-run theatres. In short, this movie inexplicably packs Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson into your standard romcom. There's Our Plucky Heroine, Charming Blonde Bastard and Standup Brown-haired Guy. Our Plucky Heroine then takes her sweet time getting from Guy A to Guy B before the credits can finally, blessedly, roll.

These movies do two things: they make me contemplate cinema architecture in boredom. And then they anger me. Romantic comedies don't have to be bad. Some of the best movies (His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, Top Hat) ever made are romantic comedies. They give you your romance (they meet cute, they crack wise), your comedy (end preferably on a wedding, but at least not a funeral) and usually your Cary Grant or Ginger Rogers too.

So, it's theoretically possible for rom coms to be good. But modern romantic comedies are so bad because the people who make them are lazy.

I have a feeling that a lot of the studios assume that the audiences for rom coms are inelastic. Good or bad, high movie prices or streamed online, they must think that the same people will go and see them. So why bother making good product, if people will so happily consume the bad?

How Do You Know? doesn't just have a flabby script and lazy acting from everybody except Owen Wilson. It also looks like the director, James L. Brooks, didn't really care where the camera was pointing, as long as it was pointing somewhere. I am generally not conscious of the set decoration in movies, but at several points during this one, I had cause to reflect on really, really ugly lamps.

Scripts for romantic comedies need to start getting smart again. They need to start featuring characters who act like real - or at least slightly improved and wittier versions of- people. Right now, I often feel like the people on screen are just bundles of character traits that pump out plot complications for themselves. There should be less Katherine Heigel, less of the goddamned lamps, and better dialogue. Because right now, I would trust a video game adaptation to be assembled with more care.

To the ramparts, people- and don't forget your snacks and soda!

Sawdust Failures

Last Sunday, I had the following disagreement with the table saw at my co-op workshop:

Me: Could you cut my roof at this steep angle, please?

Table Saw: You f$@king s%&t, I ain't cutting s$!t, you can go s$#k a c@*k, you w@%$e!!!

And so, my birdhouse remains unfinished. Somewhere in greater Victoria, a mother bird cuddles her two chicks to her breast, as another cold (well, damp) night closes upon them.

But I am not here to talk of my personal failure. Instead, I want to discuss the possibilities presented to me by another piece of equipment at the workshop, the open-source 3D printer.

Photo courtesy of the TC Maker blog

This little baby will apparently make anything I can design out of some plasticky substance. Examples on Thingiverse include a little cathedral and buttons. The latter intrigues me most as a knitter, because it means one thing: custom buttons! I have come up with the following ideas:

1. Squid buttons (naturally)
2. Ctuluhu buttons
3. Pie slice buttons
4. A button within a button within a button
5. Amoeba buttons

But which one shall I make first? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Book Pile for January 22nd

I haven't done one of these for a while. So let's see what's been taking up space on my beside table, from top to bottom:

"Bees are Awesome" Reading: The Incomparable Honeybee, Reese Halter

Current Reading: Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

Current Graphic Novel: The Goon Volume 3, Eric Powell

Recently Completed Reading: Crash, J.G. Ballard

Future Graphic Novel: Kenk, Alex Janson, Jason Gilmore and Nick Marinkovich

CanCon Reading: The Penguin History of Canada, Robert Bothwell

"The Title is Lies" Reading: Learn Chess Quick, Brian Byfield

Days of Grain and Miso: Some Thoughts on Cleanses

On New Year's Day, after an Eve that ended somewhere around four, I woke up to take a shower. As one does. As I do every single day. But something set this day apart.

And that thing was a full-length mirror.

For reasons only explicable to my brother and his Romanian landlady, his bathroom features a floor-to-ceiling reflective surface, the perfect thing for reflecting my puffy, lumpy, bumpy body in all of its post-debauchery glory. "Damn girl," I said, "something has got to change." A cleanse (as found on My New Roots) was the only conclusion.

Now as I limp into the eleventh day of the cleanse, furtively noshing on a cheese-laden panini, I have come to a couple of conclusions about cleanses. First, brown rice rapidly loses its charms. Second, a world without dairy and all of its delicious by-products is not a world I want to contemplate living in. And third, being on a cleanse is just one big marker of privilege.

There's a difference between being on a cleanse and starving, although the menu's rather similar (rice, rice, rice). In the first, you're supposed to spend a lot of the time being present and listening to your body's needs, which is the opposite of what you want to do in the second situation. It's hard to make it through another day of subsistence working if you're congratulating yourself for having hunger pains. My, aren't you virtuous, for giving up something you could so easily pay for.

And even compared to people who aren't starving, cleansing is still a sign of disposable time. Grains must be boiled, vegetables steamed, lemons squeezed into hot water before you run out the door. It's not a task for single parents, unless they have a sizeable divorce settlement and a nanny watching the kids. Or people working two jobs.

This isn't intended to be critical of cleanses. They harm no one, we could all be more conscious of the crap that goes into our bodies, etc. etc. Rather, I'm disappointed that my days of fasting have not led to some higher plane of consciousness. Instead, I'm just more conscious of the fact that I'm middle-class and terribly privileged. But then, I guess I always had the BA to prove that.

Color Me... Brown: A Journey Through the New Age Wonder of Power Colors!

You should support your local library. Not only do they provide free books and a place for society’s finest to consume their 40s in peace, but they’re also bringers of joy. For example, take Power Colors!, a fine product of Kosmic Korners Press, circa 1994.

The following quotes were found my flipping to a page in the book at random, reading a sentence, and then copying it verbatim:

• “For instance, ladies, a little touch of red near the face, a scarf or a necklace, is very attractive to a man.” [Also try: blood. Then you’ll look hot AND numbnuts crazy.]
• “Strong, I have truly found the Power in Passivity!”
• “... turning the dancing rays of sunlight into a jagged clawing bolt of obstinacy.”
• “... and so could Cantaloupe, you lucky Olive, you!”
• “Ever travel through a mist in the car or hypnotically stare into a fog?” [Ever get into a completely preventable car accident? Then you might be a Chartreuse!”]
• “The right tones will titillate a tycoon, or vibrate a casual friendship into a volatile Vesuvius.”
• “Egypt knew. Atlantis knew. The ad and marketing industries know.”
• “Plummmmmm......just savor the luscious hummmmmmm.”
• “To quell hunger pangs, drink a glass of mentally transformed Chartreuse water.”
• “It is a pink that goes to your soul giving you the license to perform magic!”

Beneath all the woo-woo and mockery though, I was touched. Touched, first of all, that they thought beige and cantaloupe were two intimately related colours. But, more meaningfully, touched by its earnestness.

Power Colors! doesn’t want you to be better- it wants you to be happier. And they don’t ask you to make hard choices or painful sacrifices to achieve this goal. They really believe you can do it all just by tapping into those colours, and painting a new version of yourself. Er, one that’s hopefully less horrifying than the portrait on the inside cover.

I [Heart] Mittens

What's that weirdly-shaped mass of colour up there? Why, a mitten of course. Don't worry, it's going to be felted down to size, so hopefully it will eventually be able to fit my hand instead of Andre the Giant's.

The yarn (Briggs and Little Heritage) and pattern (Greenelf Designs) were purchased as a kit at the K-W Knitter's Fair, when I was looking for a simple project that would improve my colour work skills. Fair isle and intarsia both fall under the category of "Things I can do, but would prefer not to." I want to change that though, since this whale hat is calling out to me, and I want to terrorize friends and lovers with the spectre of receiving vintage Anny Blatt patterns knit in their size.

Pictured: Potential Christmas '11 gifts for all the lucky ladies in my life.

Notice, if you will, the sudden change in tightness between the bottom half and the top. Clearly the former was knit after drinking two cups of coffee and reflecting back on Hydro Quebec (tabernak!), while the latter came after I hit the Qualuudes.

Lady Mag Shakedown: Cosmo Vs. Bust

My feminist development, -actually, my personal development- can be traced back to two magazines I was slavishly devoted to in high school. They were Bitch and Bust. Bitch taught me that feminism was a stimulating and necessary critical position, while Bust taught me it could be a lifestyle philosophy. Knitting! Cocktails! Cherry-print dresses! Lots of sexy sex!

Then something changed. I still buy every issue of Bitch without fail, but shortly after starting university, I gave up on Bust. It was probably all that sexy sex that did me in, actually. I’m all for vibrators, but I feel like the political change that can be effected from the purchase of said object is limited. A Hitachi Magic Wand is not going to protect abortion rights in South Dakota, or close the wage gap, or fight rape in the Congo, no matter how many cozies you knit for it.

I started calling it the Cosmopolitan of Third Wave Feminism and forgot about it. And then, with no other options at the bookstore last week, I bought a copy. I was disappointed, but then I wondered, was I even being fair comparing it to Cosmo? It had been even longer since I had read that mag, and surely Bust hadn’t become that dire. Maybe I was just being hyperbolic. So, I shamefacedly purchased a recent copy of Cosmo too, and set about to do a point-by-point comparison, using arbitrary categories and my own subjective opinions.

Let the glossy catfight begin!

Heteronormativity
Bust was always pretty queer-positive in my heyday, with articles about GLBT rights and some pretty hot lesbian and even trans erotica stashed in the back pages. However, in this issue, that story has a straight bent (hot sex in the library stacks! Pity the janitor!) and an article about how your guy needs to do all the relationship work, instead of you. And yeah, that’s a nice inversion on the Cosmo “What Turns Him Off” columns, but it still assumes that the average reader of Bust has a man-friend in their life, which, whatever. Shockingly, Cosmo comes through with a one-pager whose intro copy publishes a lesbo scare piece where “An intense college friendship exploded into a frantic affair their boyfriends didn’t know about. The heartbreaking results aren’t what either of them expected.” Actually, the “heartbreaking results” are more like “things got terribly awkward, and then I broke up with my boyfriend, but things had been heading south for a while, so eh.” And the woman still identifies as straight, so it’s surprisingly Cosmo who can see past the lesbian/straight dichotomy!

Point: Cosmo


Fawning Celebrity Profiles
The interview of Sophia Coppola, conducted by Kim Gordon, is pretty frigging noxious. It’s not Coppola’s fault, but Gordon’s, for hijacking the interview to talk more about herself than Coppola. To whit: “Growing up, did you feel self-conscious about who your dad was? I notice that [my daughter] Coco is very self-conscious about that.” You know what Kim? I’m just impressed your daughter’s preteen friends know about Sonic Youth. However, that’s a Gay Talese interview compared to the
Ashley Greene profile in Cosmo, detailing “the ballsy way she scored Twilight (as a secondary character -me) and a New Love (Joe Jonas -me) Man, if I just had her spunky ‘tude, I too could become the third chick from the left on a Twilight poster!

Point: Bust

The Doctrine of Stuff
I decided to award a point in this area based entirely on the relative cheapness of the most expensive item in each magazine. Bust doesn’t price the clothes in its fashion spread, although they have Christian Louboutin shoes there and a $549 Vitamix blender in their gift guide. Cosmo has a $625 pair of Diane Van Furstenberg shorts. At least you can make a margarita with the blender, whereas the shorts do nothing to get me drunk.

Point: Bust

Ridiculous Self-Improvement Goals
In 2011, would Bust like me to agitate for Stephen Harper to reinstate funding for Sisters in Spirit? Or be more aggressive about fighting street harassment? Actually, I need to “buy more sex toys” and wear “sparkly pink eyeliner” so as to truly be a “messy, imperfect, beautiful, honest... ever-evolving contradiction.” At least that’s relatively achievable (sparkly pink eyeliner probably costs about $6 at Shopper’s Drug Mart) compared to the roll call of self-improvement efforts Cosmo would like me to effect. I better look leaner naked (99), keep my man from cheating by “accentuating his awesomeness” and “flirting with someone else” (85), get off Facebook more often (102), where more of the “makeup men can’t resist” (153), “take a sexy soak” (157) and more things I didn’t possibly have time to read through, because I was too busy writing up a profile for Match.com. I don’t want to be caught babyless when my ovaries spontaneously combust at 35 (“Are You Running Out of Time to Have a Baby?” 94-97).

Point: Bust

Man Crush
Cosmo presents the horrifying vision of Joe Manganiello, the man who sounds like he should own a sports bar in Long Island, but actually appears on True Blood. Bust counters with Rivers Cuomo. One looks like he has a beard made of magnetic filings, the other is... still Rivers Cuomo. May I refer back to that lesbian confession article?

Point: Draw.

Conclusions
Well, Bust is still better than Cosmo, but that’s because anything is better than Cosmo. Reading that magazine is exhausting, with every page screeching at you to do this or that to have better sex, a better body, a better man. I wanted a nap after I was finished. Does anyone even take it seriously anymore? If people do, I don’t want to know about it. I do, however, want to know what happened to Bust to turn it into a clone of long-departed Jane magazine. It used to be better, and it could be better again, if it would let its feminist sensibilities be more than icing on the vegan cupcake.

Sawdust Memories

Pictured: The table saw, looking more like a Fisher Price toy than an instrument of gross personal injury.

In an effort to live up to my New Year's Resolutions this year, I have decided to embark upon an exciting and surely injury-causing woodworking career.

And I think I'm doing well so far:

1. I have found workshop space.
2. I have checked out a book on basic woodworking from the library.
3. I have a pattern for a birdhouse from Canadian Living, circa 1997.
4. I have given serious thought to purchasing materials.

Unfortunately, I'm concerned about the actual woodworking part of things. Sure, I learned how to knit, but you'll have to be really dedicated to the cause of dismemberment to lose your hand to a knitting needle. Paging through the basic woodworking book though, it seems that a slight sneeze could do me in. And apparently I have to build things (workshop jigs? crosscut sleds?) just to be able to build other things. OH GOD, WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?!?!?

Even the pre-game show seems exhausting. I got through the ventilation and safety glasses part of the book, only to be done in by amperage. Apparently I need to "read the labels on [my] tools to identify how many amps they draw at peak loads, and then use a circuit rated 20 to 30 percent over this number" (Weekend Woodworker, 11). Furthermore, "extension cords can be used to safely power most tools provided the cord's amperage rating is greater than the tool's peak amperage draw." (12). That's... good then... I... guess?

Fortunately, I have plenty of enthusiasm. After having my mind blown (due to under-amperage, I suppose) reading the electrical section, I flipped to the projects section and am now totally planning on having my second project be a "deceptively simple bedside table" that "packs a great deal of woodworking skill and detail into a small package" (212). Alright! Simple!

New Year, New Lists

Ah, the first days of 2011. They feel rather like the last days of 2010, except I keep on writing the date wrong.

In that spirit of consistency, it's time to engage in the annual Protagitron Checking of the Resolutions. I can't even remember what I resolved to do last year, so I have low hopes of having accomplished any of them. So, let's roll the film:

Protagitron's Resolutions for 2010

1. Watch Kieslowski's Decalogue


2. Learn how to make worthy holibshi


3. Visit Portland all by myself


4. Knit 5 sweaters


5. Be more frugal

Yep: that's four solid no's, along with one "kinda", because I did make holibshi once, way back in January. And at some point in May I shaved mould off of some cheddar cheese, which I guess is pretty frugal. Still, that's hardly a record to be proud of.

But that failure's all in the past! The arbitrary changing of a date on a calendar has cleared all that dead wood out of my life, like so many 1-800-GOT-JUNK employees carting away so many elderly refrigerators. So, I will begin a new set of resolutions with the best of intentions, and the conviction I can manage a better than 13.33333% success rate.

Protagitron's Resolutions for 2011

1. Build a birdhouse


2. Knit this sweater


3. Run a 10k


4. See an octopus underwater


5. Become a less embarrassing chess player

I Was a Teenaged Douchenozzle

I remember, in my last year of university, someone saying I was one of the least pretentious people they had ever met.

And I let out a bitter, internal chuckle. First of all, I was pretentious then, I remain so today, and will be pretentious forever. It is my destiny, along with the persistent eczema.

Second, although by that point my pretentious had normalized a little, I was one of the most insufferable people ever to log time at John F. Ross, CVI, back in the mid-aughts.

Those years would have been comfortably forgotten, however, if I had not seen fit to record some of my precious, precious thoughts in a big plaid notebook. A notebook I found this holiday season while visiting the parents. I opened its cover, and opened a Pandora's box of ill-advised clothing picks (it doubled as a look book), optimistic reading lists (it tripled as a depository for lists of all kinds) and awkward doodles (it quadrupled as a sketchbook.)

So, in order to cast out the demons of my high-school self, I have selected some of the worst quotes and most ridiculous photographic evidence for your enjoyment. Be nice, I was lousy with hormones.

1. "It appears that being out of the loop is my destiny in life. In other news, I've seen prezzies for a few people." (11/29/2003) 16 year-old Protagitron: Mistress of the smooth transition.

Hey, at least those shoes are still cute.

2. "The last few weeks of school have been torture. I have no close friends anymore. [Redacted] is gone to the land of makeup and confidence, [Redacted] has decided to keep her secrets and [Redacted] is being a grade-A bitch." (11/30/2003) She's also a person with a firm sense of perspective. Although the land of makeup and confidence sounds like a faaabulous place to visit.

Although nothing excuses that coat.

3. "I'll end up living my nightmare: a faux-intellectual with two whiny kids and a bald husband who's screwing his TA." (11/30/2003) It's good to have goals.

4. "I believe in love by osmosis." (12/05/2003) And tolerance by sublimation!

This page was for everything I thought you would need to be a superhero: a Vespa helmet, a bendy flashlight stand, a hamster belt and a hand-written reminder to pick up pepper spray.

5. "*shudder* beer commercials. playoffs. A proliferation of one leads to an excess of the other." (01/08/2004) No it doesn't.

6. "U2 makes the best songs for melancholy." (01/11/2004) And no they don't.

7. "All I want in life is to be disgustingly talented." (?/?/2004) This quote really gains a lot from being written in what appears to be rose lip liner. Sadly, however, not all of our wishes can come true.