Friday Five: TGIF

For today's list, the five things I'm most excited for this weekend. It's a simple list, but then again, everything seems a little simpler on the weekends.

1. Writing: It's been a rough week at work, which makes it difficult to come home and write, but the weekends mean I can leave work at work and focus on writing. Here's to getting one more chapter finished.
2. Chaos: I'm planning on finishing the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. These books have kept me on an emotional precipice since I picked the first one up two weeks ago. Seriously, I think this roller coaster might be even worse than it was with The Hunger Games.
3. DC Adventure: Some good friends are moving next week, so as a farewell, we're having a clue-based race around town to visit all their favorite places. I haven't done one of these since I was a teenager, and I can't wait to see where the clues lead.
4. The Avengers: I watched Captain America this week and I'll watch Thor Saturday afternoon, all so I won't be behind on Joss Whedon's newest film. I might not actually have time to see The Avengers until next week, but this superhero kick is kind of fun.
   
5. My Mom: Being so far away from family is never easy, but on Sunday I have an excuse to be a little homesick. I'll get to call my mom and tell her I love her, and I'll get to hear her say it back to me. What better thing to do on Mothers' Day?

There and Back Again: My 18-Year Journey to Finish Reading The Hobbit

Yes, it took me 18 years to actually read The Hobbit. That's an average rate of about 18 pages per year. It only took me 18 months to read the King James' version of the Bible, and I was done with the last Harry Potter book 18 hours after its release.

I first picked it up back in middle school when a boy I had a crush on insisted it was the best book ever written. The crush didn't last much longer than it took me to get board. Then in high school I picked it up when rumors began to circulate that the Lord of the Rings would be made into a movie. I finally gave up on the prequel and managed to get through the trilogy the summer after I graduated. Then again in college I attempted to read if for my Children's Lit class, but there were too many other books I wanted to read. With 18 months until the movie release, I procured another copy, figuring it might take me that long to get through it. I don't know why I was so determined to read a book that can't hold my interest.

This time I finished it in 18 days, but I still don't like the book. I think it's all those dwarves' names. How can you expect me to remember the names of 13 stout men who all look and act so much alike? At least I know Bilbo, Gandalf and Smaug. Or maybe it's that the action is nowhere near as intense as modern adventure novels. Bilbo may be pretending to be a thief and all, but there are far too many riddle wars and too much wandering around starving to really be considered an adventure–fantasy novel. Or it could be more a book for young children and I was just too old to truly appreciate it. There are a lot of adults who love the book, but how much of that is tied to childhood nostalgia?

No disrespect to people who love this book, but I just don't see the appeal. It's not the first time I haven't liked a popular book (even through Markus Zusak is one of my favorite authors, I couldn't get through The Book Thief, and my disdain for many of the classic British authors like Dickens, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen is well documented). Then again, there are books I love that other people can't stand (like my passion for Greek plays and Roman philosophers—and Shakespeare, I have yet to read something by Shakespeare I don't love). Some books speak to some people more than others, and The Hobbit happens not to speak to me.



So there's another book marked off my Guilty Un-Reads list. Maybe I'll like the movie better. Or maybe I'll just stay home and read a different book.

This Year's for You, Harry Potter

I still can't believe that Harry Potter is ending. In just about 24 hours, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be released, ending an amazing era that changed children's book publishing forever. I began reading those books in high school, and I can't help but reflect upon the time I've dedicated to Harry and his pals. But there are 8640 hours in a year--there's no possible way I've spent an entire year dedicated to Harry Potter. Or have I?

• 233 Hours of Reading: I've read the first book seven times (1610 pages), the second book six times (2112 pages), five for the third (2240 pages), four for the fourth (3008 pages), three for the fifth (2610 pages), two for the sixth (1304 pages) and only once for the seventh (784 pages). And then there's the supplement books (320 pages). Averaging about a minute per page--and let's be honest, I can't read that fast--that adds up to a lot of minutes
• 144 Hours of Listening: Jim Dale is one of the most amazing audiobook narrators of all time, and so you can bet I've listened to all the audiobooks at least once. But I've also listened to the second and sixth books twice because they're my favorites. And having driven from coast to coast multiple times, I can assure the folks at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that you can indeed listen to the audibooks while circling the contiguous United States.
• 109 Hours of Viewing: I honestly don't remember how many times I've seen each of the movies, so I'm just guessing here. I've seen the first movie at least a dozen times (1824 minutes), but I've only seen HP7.1 once (146 minutes). So let's say I've seen the second movie 10 times (1610 minutes), the third eight (1128 minutes), the fourth six (942 minutes), the fifth four (552 minutes), the sixth twice (306 minutes). I've also added a half hour for all the previews I've watched. It's a wonder my vision isn't worse than it is.
• 200 Hours of Web Surfing: Mugglenet, YouTube, J.K. Rowling's site, Warner Brothers...I've visited them all. Back in college, I could spend hours at a time perusing the chat rooms and trolling for movie stills and hunting for spoilers. I found all the secret treasures on Rowling's desk and watched more tribute videos than I care to admit. In fact, the 200 hours is probably a modest estimate.
• 24 Hours of Line Standing: Every movie and book release came with waiting in line. Granted, most of these lines were more like parties than actual lines, but I still remember going to the book store at 9 p.m. and not getting my 4th book until 1 p.m.--I was so tired the next day I couldn't even finish reading the book.
• 24 Hours of Costume Making: While my favorite HP character to play is Rita Skeeter, I've also donned several generic Ravenclaw and Gryffindor uniforms, played a Death Eater and fancied myself as Luna Lovegood.
• 100 Hours of Event Planning: Midnight Muggle Magic at the Salt Lake City Public Library was a HP event to the max. I ran the charms class and made more than 200 trick wands with wooden dowels, feathers and fishing line, researched Latin so kids could make up their own spells, distributed copies of HP7 after midnight, and then there was the set-up and clean-up for the event. But it was also one of the most memorable nights of my life.
• 50 hours of Layout and Designing: I did two in-depth design projects for design classes, including a Hogwarts brochure and a magazine layout about the movies. There was also the year that I saved every image from a HP desk calendar and made a collage poster after cutting them all out and fitting them together with lamination paper. Oh year, and all the art projects, homemade cards, scrapbook pages and trinkets I've made for friends who love Harry just as much as I do.
• 400 Hours of Extras: Television shows (5 hours), movie extras (10 hours), music concerts (5 hours), book clubs (10 hours), webposts (5 hours), shopping (10 hours), gaming (25 hours), discussing (100 hours), magazine articles (100 hours), critical books (5 hours), reviews (25 hours), interviews (100 hours)... All of that, and I wouldn't even call myself a hard-core fan like the ones who design websites, write fan-fiction and know all of the spells in every book by heart.
• 156 Forgotten Hours: Let's be honest, I'm sure I've had more dreams, told more jokes, worked more references into every-day conversations and thought more about Harry Potter than just about any other franchise out there. And because this isn't exactly a scientific analysis, I'll give myself some nice, round numbers to work with.

Okay, so that only totals 1440 hours, or about two months, of my life dedicated to the boy wizard, but I've still got another good 60 years in me. Give me the rest of my life, and I'm sure I'll be able to tell St. Peter that I lived a full year thinking about Harry.

Fairy Tale Retelling?

A friend of mine had her baby-sitter cancel on her this weekend, and thanks to rain, the baseball game I was planning on attending was postponed. Thus, I was free to watch her three children. And because I don't often hang out with kids without a "teen" in their age, I watched my first animated Disney movie in years (I believe I saw both Meet the Robinsons and Chicken Little on plane rides at some point).

Aside from the predictable dialogue and less than stellar music, I found myself laughing. A lot. Maybe it was because kids' laughter is unbelievably infectious, or maybe it was so predictable that I laughed at the jokes both coming and going. I really don't know. And it's beside the point. Watching this movie made me think about how different Tangled is from the Rapunzel story I heard growing up, yet somehow the story manages to be both recognizable and nostalgic.

Which begs the question, when does a story go from being a retelling to being a completely different story? And if it’s labeled a fairy tale, how closely does it need to stick to folklore before it becomes fantasy?

In lit classes, a lot of professors like to say that there are only a handful of stories that are told over and over. You have the creation, the epic journey, the love saga, the family drama—depending on who you talk to, the archetypes are slightly different. While this might be one of those intellectual quandaries designed to make you think about what you’re reading, I mostly think it’s a cop-out to pave the way for comparative essays.

Ever storyteller uses unique skills to make a story their own. How many boy-meets-girl stories can there really be? Yet each rom-com keeps us wondering how the two hopeless cases will ever get together in the end. And what more can we possibly do with man vs. man? But every time the underdogs sacrificially face an army twice their size, we always cheer when they manage to defeat their foes. Shakespeare often based his stories on mythology and local legends, and even Jesus Christ quoted past prophets and familiar allegories to teach the people in his day. So maybe a story is found more in the audience than the teller.

Throughout the entire movie, my friend’s 7-year-old daughter never batted an eye at the horse who acted like a dog or wondered how simple lanterns could fly or took pause at how a man could jump from a castle tower and not get hurt, nor did she once question how Rapunzel could cart around all that hair without it getting dirty, knotted or broken. What she didn’t buy into was how a tear could heal someone after magic hair had failed. The irony being that it was Rapunzel’s tears the healed the prince in the original story—the Grimm’s Brothers never mentioned there was anything magic about her hair. My young friend was shocked when I told her that was basically the only thing Disney kept from the original.

The next day I gave my friend a copy of Paul O. Zelinsky’s Rapunzel so the family could read a more scholarly version of the fairy tale. But just because it’s based more closely on the Italian folklore doesn’t make it any more valid of a story. After all, how strong can human hair really be?

An Ode to Harry Potter

Midnight marks the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter dynasty, and it's leaving me rather nostalgic. I read my first HP book back in 1999, which means HP has been a part of my life longer than just about anything else.

A few years ago I designed this layout for a class I was taking and had more fun doing it than with any other assignment I have ever been given.

(It was a layout and design class, so it's just filler text.)

And if you ever happen to be searching through the fall 2000 archives of the SVU school newspaper, you might notice that HP is hidden somewhere in every issue.

(I looked through my old portfolio, but all of these clippings have been lost to time.)

One of the best nights of my life was the Midnight Muggle Madness event at the Salt Lake City Public library.

And my friend and I had a blast a few nights later when Harry and the Potters came to perform.

We broke dorm curfew the night HP4 was released in theaters.

And I experienced HP in IMAX for the first time with the release of HP3 while I was in New Orleans.

(Sorry about the poor quality of this one, but it was a printed picture and I don't have a scanner. And in case you're wondering, that is indeed a "SEEKER" t-shirt.)

Here are some great posts about saying good-bye to our favorite boy wizard.

Hank Green signs his love for HP:


The teen librarians over at the Arlington Virginia Public Library have been honoring HP all week:

• It's Harry Potter Week!!
• Harry Potter Week Confession #1: How Madeline L'Engle Opened the Door to Harry Potter.
• Harry Potter Week: Growing with a Series
• Harry Potter Week Confession #2: Saying Goodbye to HP
  
• Harry Potter: Important Dates in History

Fan sites are all going crazy:

• MuggleNet (This was the first HP fan site I ever visited)
• The Leaky Cauldron
• Harry Potter Fan Zone
• Harry Potter Automatic News Agitator

And just for kicks and giggles, watch the HP cast speak American:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Write what you (don't) know

One of the best things about writing is that you get to research some facinating topics you never expected to learn about.

While working for the PR department of a university, I was writing a lot of press releases about plays and dance team performances and vocal recitals. Through that, I got to know the costume mistress pretty well. I even ended up doing a feature on her because I loved sitting in her room watching her sew. Though the room was quite large to accommodate all of the items she needed to produce costumes, it was probably the coziest spot on campus. All the sewing machines, manikins, clothing racks, fabric bolts made the room so intimate and colorful I could have watched her work for hours.

That was so long ago I had almost forgotten all about the costume mistress. But then I found myself revisiting those long ago chats and wishing I still had my notes from those interviews for my current WIP. Instead I'm having to satisfy myself reading about Colleen Atwood. She is my new hero. She did the costume designs for my favorite album

(The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance)

as well as some of the best movie eye-candy of all time.

(Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd)

I might have a hard time getting an interview with Colleen Atwood, but I'm going to find contact information for that costume mistress who's name I long ago forgot. She's a part of my story now, and I hope I'll be able to give her credit for it some day.

There's a first time for everything

Because I'm a rather voracious reader, people are often surprised when they find out I haven't read every book ever published. No, I've never bothered with a lot of Jane Austen because I didn't much care for the ones I have read. And just because I forced my way through the Lord of the Rings Trilogy doesn't mean that I ever got around to reading The Hobbit.

And yes, I watch a lot of movies, but there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to see every one of them. Talkies have been around for almost a hundred years now. That's a lot more movies than even I can manage.

But today was the end of an era for me. I finally watched The Return of the King all the way through for the very first time. After spending years telling people I had seen the beginning and end and parts of the middle about five different times, I sat down with a couple of friends and watched everything.

My conclusion? I'm really glad we didn't go for the extended version, and I really should have re-watched the first three because I haven't seen either of those since they were in the theater.

Maybe now I'll finally get around to reading The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mocking Bird. (Don't judge me. I'm sure there are plenty of classics I've read that you haven't.)

The Thin Man and the Southern Rogue

I love old movies, and get an especially big kick out of the Thin Man Series. There is something about Myrna Loy that is charming and funny all at once while William Powell pulls off that nonchalant genius better than anyone else. And the two of them together are just magic.

I had totally forgotten I've had the Manhattan Melodrama in my Netflix queue for a few years now and never got around to actually watching it. Until I watched Public Enemies last week and saw both Loy and Powell headlining in the movie along with another old favorite, Clark Gable. So up the "to-watch" list the Manhattan Melodrama went, and last night I sat down with my buddies Ben and Jerry to enjoy an old black and white.

This movie was so much better than I was expecting it to be! I laughed: "I was born at home, because I wanted to be near Mother at the time." I was intrigued by unexpected ethical and philosophical questions: "And I'm not sure, maybe ideals have ceased to exist. Maybe they're outmoded like oil lamps and horse cars. But they're mine, and I'm stuck with them." And I found myself fighting back tears: "If I can't live the way I want, then at least let me die the way I want."

I always forget how old movies have the ability to suck me in and sweep me away. I get distract by big names and mind-blowing effects. And while I'm sure the Manhattan Melodrama was a pretty big box-office draw when it first hit the silver screen, there is a simplicity about it that reminds me that sometimes less is more.

Christmas Traditions: Stories

The other night I was talking to my sister about all the great Christmas movies we used to watch when we were kids, like One Magic Christmas starring Mary Steenburgen. And then my friends over at the PBS Booklights blog mentioned The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket, a short story I read and loved a few years ago. So that got me thinking about some of my favorite holiday stories from years gone by.

You really can't go wrong with a classic, and you can't be any more classic than the poem by Clement Clarke Moore "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It has been re-told everywhich way, from Tim Burton's ghoulish masterpiece to the Cajun version I was interoduced to while living in Louisiana years ago. But it is the version of the poem I had as a child that stands out in my mind more than any other.

When I was really little, we had this pop-up version of The Night before Christmas illustrated by Michael Hague. Because it was the only pop-up book we had, it would get read all year long. We read it so often I had it memorized from the time I was about four, and to this day I can still say the poem verbatim.

As mentioned above, I am a sucker for family Christmas movies. I cried like a baby the first time I saw The Family Stone on a plane trip from Salt Lake to New York, and nothing gets me laughing like While You Were Sleeping. But my very favorite Christmas movie isn't really a Christmas movie at all.

When I sit down to watch Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, I know it's Christmas. Because I have missed a few Christmases with my family, the song Esther sings to her little sister Tootie about Christmas being more about who you have loved than where you are has a special meaning to me.

One of my best memories from high school is the Christmas play I was in. It was a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge was a self-centered rock star bent on driving himself to an early, lonely grave complete with the dreadlock-sporting ghost of Bob Marley and a tofu turkey for the hippy Cratchits. I really wish I could remember the name of the play, but it was too long ago and I can't find it in my old journals either. Oh well.

I didn't have a big part, but I did have this really dramatic fainting scene at the beginning when the kid who was supposed to catch me wasn't paying attention and I hit my head on the stage. I don't blame him, really. I tend to fall and hit my head a lot--I've even knocked myself out a couple of times. But getting back to the topic at hand...

I LOVE Christmas music. Seriously, I have about 12 hours worth of Christmas music on my iPod. Everything from the King Singers to Fall Out Boy. And all of that music tells a different story of Christmas, whether it's a depressing story of love lost and loneliness, or a song totally focused of the miracle of a baby born in a stable.

To me, one of the most beautiful hymns of the season is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. That song encompasses everything meaningful about the season. It speaks of tradition and peace, past and present, hope and fulfillment. The imagery is also so moving: "Still thru the cloven skies they come / With peaceful wings unfurled."

There is something so distinct about the stories written about Christmas. This is the time of year when everyone suspends their disbelief for just a moment and believes that magic and miracles and goodness really do exist in the world. We stretch our imagination and make ourselves a little vulnerable to feeling the spirit of Christmas, no matter if we believe in Christ or not.

And new stories of Christmas are still being created every year. Snowmen at Night by Mark and Caralyn Buehner is the perfect example of this.

What are some of your favorite Christmas stories? Are they books or songs or maybe even memories? Maybe it's a story a parent read to you or something you discovered one Christmas when you were far from home. But in this season of glad tides, I hope you are able to find joy and happiness in all your Christmas stories.

A Friday Five for the first time in...well, I really can't recall

1. I've bee thinking a lot about time again. As many of you who regularly read my blog (or talk to me when I'm in an existential mood) know, this is a topic that intrigues me. I am not a true chronomaniac as I am not obsessed with schedules and time management, and I am kind of the opposite of a chronocentric as I believe that you have to judge people based on their own time and not the time in which you are most accustomed, and I am definitely not a chronomancer as I believe that your fate is created by the actions you take and not what time you take those actions. So my question is, what is it called when someone is obsessed with how time flows and how the past, present and future interact with each other? With how many sci-fi books on time travel there are out there and how many time theories there are in physics, I can't imagine there isn't a term for someone like me. And this all started thanks to a decades costume party I'm going to tomorrow night.

2. I can't seem to make myself sit down and read a book, write a review, work on a manuscript or do anything else at the moment. It is all I can do to make myself post on my blog. I think it's because I changed jobs at work and now spend more of my day reading newspapers, editing editorial submissions and writing media responses. I think I'm kind of burned out at the moment. Hopefully going to Chicago for Labor Day will help pull me out of my funk.

3. I have finally finished unpacking. After more than a month in my new place, I unpacked my last box this week. As this is just a temporary place, I'll have to pack and unpack everything again in January. I don't know if I'm looking forward to that or dreading it.

4. I also organized my bookshelves this week. When I realized I had far to many books to fit, I took about 25 books to the library donation books. While I always deal with a bit of separation anxiety when I give away books, I know the books will go to a good cause--supporting my local library. I also feel a bit liberated by the fact I gave away a bunch of books I have owned for years and will probably never read. Those books haunt my bookshelf. There are so many good books out there and not enough time to read them all, so I need to be a little more selective in my reading choice. Okay, if I was really reading at the moment I would need to be more selective in my reading choice. Right now I just need to chose something--anything--to read.

5. I've been feeling nostalgic for 80's sci-fi movies this week like The Boy Who Could Fly, Flight of the Navigator and Space Camp. I often get in the mood to watch these movies, so I'm thinking I need to start buying some of these classics. I also just realized all of these movies were released in 1986--I wonder if there is any significance there.

Where is Wonderland?

I loved this movie. Mostly because it made me think and hope and feel. It also made me wonder why I'm not working on a masters degree.

Save 'Screen on the Green'

I remember my first summer in Washington , DC , when I was a 23 year-old intern and the amazing summer adventures we had. Inner tubeing down the Shenandoah Rive, cliff-jumping along the Blue Ridge Parkway, kayaking in the Tidal Basin, concerts and plays, museums and House debates. But one memory stands out from all the rest, a simple memory. A picnic with friends at the steps of the Capitol Building while watching Catherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. And now that I have returned to DC as a professional, I might never have the opportunity to create new memories with a similar activity.

Every Monday night during the summer, thousands of movie lovers gather with blankets and picnics, waiting for the sun to go down on the National Mall for "Screen on the Green"--classic Hollywood films shown under the stars in the shadow of the Capitol dome. But recently, HBO, a longtime co-sponsor of the movie night, announced it was canceling "Screen on the Green" due to lack of a funding partner.

When I heard the news, I was devastated. Seriously, I have been looking forward to attending "Screen on the Green" for six months.

To save "Screen on the Green", we need to find new sponsors. And even if you don't live in the DC area but would like to help me keep one of my favorite summer activities alive, click here to see how you can help. You can also join our facebook group here.

Don't let me and the 75,000 other Washingtonians who attend "Screen on the Green" every summer down.