Movies in May

This month I saw 4 movies in English, two on cable, one a borrowed DVD, and one I desperately wished I hadn't paid for.

The borrowed DVD was Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. I remember seeing Johnny and June perform together on countless music shows on TV as a kid. It made an impression on my young mind, the way he looked at her as if he didn't just love her, he really looked up to her. So I find this movie very interesting since I hadn't known all that much about his life. I found it very well done, although the scenes where he talked about his older brother who had died so young messed with me a bit, as Joaquin Phoenix also lost his older brother. I don't know how actors do it; I wouldn't want to relive those sorts of feelings over and over again before an audience and share it with the world. (For similar reasons, I think it's going to be a few years before I'll be ready to watch Batman: the Dark Knight. I don't separate fact from fiction so terribly well).

The first one I caught on cable was the very interesting but ultimately flawed Stranger Than Fiction. It's a brilliant idea, well acted, and very good for the first two-thirds. I particularly loved Dustin Hoffman as the literature professor who helps Will Ferrell figure out just what sort of novel he is trapped in (he can hear the writer, Emma Thompson, narrating his actions). This movie could have easily made it into my all-time fave list if it had only stuck the landing. Alas (SPOILER ALERT) for the ending to work the death of Will Ferrell's character needed to feel like the only possible conclusion to all the action up to that point, as if it had a deep and significant meaning, the sort of grand death that wins writing awards (since Emma is supposed to be just that sort of writer), but it didn't. It felt totally random and meaningless. So when she changes the ending there is no sense that she has found a deeper meaning. Instead you just get the sense the the screenwriters think that stories that end with death suck and no one should ever write them.

The second movie I saw on cable worked even less well for me, but since it was Adam Sandler's Click perhaps you won't be surprised. I only watched it because it had both Christopher Walkin and Sean Astin in a tiny, tiny Speedo. Mostly I kept wondering how if he had to work seven days a week late into the night just to afford to get new bikes for his kids his wife could justify not only not working even a part-time job while her kids were at school, but going to the gym every day with her friend (do you have any idea how much a gym membership costs, even the Y? There's your bike money right there). She just nagged Adam Sandler for putting on weight himself and never helping her out when she inflicts incredibly complex children's parties on herself (God forbid a bunch of kids should amuse themselves without having every minute of their evening filled with structured activities). Yeah, this one rubbed me wrong in a couple of places (Ooh! Here's another - double standard with how he talks to his son and his daughter about sex. No, I don't find the "I'm going to lock my daughter up until she's 30" sort of attitude endearing). Still, Christopher Walkin is the bomb.

The one I regret: Highlander: The Source. I know, skipping the theater release to head straight to a Sci-Fi Channel premiere is never a good sign. And I hated that animated Highlander: The Search for Vengeance movie. Still, Methos was in it. I wanted so badly for it to just be watchable. The best thing about this movie are the wonderful One Star reviews at Amazon.com (because Amazon doesn't let you give zero stars). Sharp and funny, and written by people with respect for Highlander and Highlander fans. I think the next time I have a hankering to revisit the world of Highlander I'll dig up some fan fiction online. Mathematically, it would have to be better than this film.

In the Bollywood category: Ek Aur Ek Gyarah was a caper film starring Govinda and Sanjay Dutt. Shika says that when she was in school in Delhi the boys used to cut school when new Govinda movies came out. Knowing his target audience was teenage boys helps to explain this movie. Still, I liked the title track.

Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa is the second Hindi film I've seen that involved a heart transplantee getting up and running and dancing around ridiculously soon after surgery. Salman Khan's wife (a doctor played by Preity Zinta) dies and leaves her heart to one of her patients (apparently they have no organ donor program in India and given the reaction to her not having all her parts at her funeral I think there is a religious conotation I didn't quite catch). The recipient's name was confidential, so when the girl in question starts working at Salman's office he can't figure out why he's attracted to her. This was a pretty likeable film (although the plot sounds vaguely like a Hollywood movie I never saw). It's filled with some familiar faces, all of whom get scenes which are amusing on their own but don't really move the story forward. (And apparently Ramen is the food of the lonely guy in every culture).

Garv reminded me a lot of the movie about Kashmir I watched last month. Both feature Arbaz Khan as the only Muslim you can trust, although this one tried harder to make the point that not every Muslim is either a terrorist or Arbaz Khan. It had some nice speeches to that effect, anyway. But it was too much of a Steven Seagal type of film to be taken seriously (good thing; the ending would have been brutal if played as a serious drama). Now I've seen many Bollywood films with questionable medical practices, this one shows the same freehand with police procedures. I mean, Salman Khan gets understandably frustrated with the bureaucracy that keeps letting the criminals he works so hard to catch go on technicalities, so he decides that arrest warrants could be read as "dead or alive" and goes in shooting (very Steven Seagal, yeah?). The unbelievable part? The government actually backs him. (Except the human rights types who protest, but all turn out to be on the bankroll of the big don who's trying to take over Mumbai from Dubai). Still, the scene where Salman Khan tries to pass off the first drug dealer he killed as self-defense was pretty funny. "Self-defense? You broke 17 bones in his body and shot him six times." (Did I mention the Steven Seagal?).

Tere Nam was even more violent, only without having the actual story to go with it. I think the writer looked at Romeo and Juliet and decided he could make a more depressing ending. Salman Khan has a really strange haircut, I think to cover the prosthetic they need for the one scene where gangsters ram his skull repeatedly into the front of a train. Not something I needed to see. (They won't show actors kissing on the lips, but bashed in skulls I get to see in far too graphic detail).

Phir Milenge was really Philadelphia, but this time it's a woman who has HIV and is fired. She gets it from Salman Khan, who got it from a white girl in New York. Because he didn't listen to Johnny Lever in Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai when he told them that all white girls are riddled with venereal disease. I did like Abhishek Bachchan as Denzel Washington, but this film had a decided lack of Antonio Banderas (clearly after getting HIV the only time she had sex, this woman has sworn off men and is just going to hang with her little sister). I did like the music. There was no real dancing in this film, so the music is more guitar-oriented pop.

The last film didn't work for me either, damn it. Aaja Nachle stars Madhuri Dixit, whom I love in everything. I'm not alone in that, actually. In the movie Kabul Express, two Indian journalists touring post US invasion Afghanistan are taken hostage by a Pakistani soldier who had been sent by his government to work for the Taliban, but since Pakistan had told the US they had never done such a thing he needs to get back across the border before he's killed. (A very good film. Not a musical, but an interesting non-US perspective of Afghanistan). At any rate, the two Indians catch the Pakistani singing along with their filmi and are surprised he knows it, as Bollywood films are banned in Pakistan. But pirated videos are everywhere (and Pakistan has since lifted the ban), and the soldier tells them the films are so popular Pakistan would gladly relenquish all claims on Kashmir if only they could have Madhuri Dixit. But the Indians sigh, alas she has married and gone away to America.

Which is true, she lives in Colorado. But she went back to India during her son's summer break from school to make a film. And she is wonderful in it, and still a dazzlingly expressive dancer. Sadly the story doesn't work. She plays a woman who lives in NYC but goes back to her hometown in India to save the theater where she used to dance from being torn down to make a shopping mall. So she organizes a show using the townspeople themselves to show them just how important dance is to the community. Now I'm all about the importance of doing things over buying things. I like the idea of pursuing an art for its own rewards, of acting or dancing for your friends and neighbors and not necessarily needing to hie off to Hollywood or Mumbai to do it.

Sadly the most amazing part of the film is the part that just doesn't work: the show. They do a 30-minute number based on the Leila-Majnu story (or as Eric Clapton would spell it, Layla). This show is very cool, but it's not remotely believable as a production put on by people who had never acted, sung or danced until Madhuri blew into town to get them all motivated. And the sets and costumes are beautiful, but who made them - heck, who paid for the materials?

The movie let a lot of plot lines just drop at the end, it was a frustrating "but what about..?" experience. My dream job? Script doctor. I hate when what should have been a pretty good film falls down because of lazy writing, and it would usually take such little tweaks to fix it. Alas, I'll just have to stick to doctoring my own stories.

Still, bad film or not, Madhuri is a terrific dancer. And she gets to wear the best clothes (this outfit is second after the dark burgundy she wore for the "Chalak Chalak" number in Devdas in my book):

Hooray for KG and Sam!

I was hoping they would win on Sunday, as it was the only game I actually got to watch, but it's cooler winning on your home court. I do keep my other office computer on ESPN.com so I can glance at the score from time to time; the outcome of this match was never in question (and I was kinda hoping they'd beat the Lakers by 50, but 40 is still humiliating enough.

I timed my break with the last few minutes of the game so I could see when they won, and my husband gave me a hard time because yes indeed I had tears in my eyes when Kevin was too overcome to talk to the reporter. Especially with the tough game he had on Sunday, he went out there last night and earned this win. And that grin on Sam Cassell's face was priceless. (My husband gets irritated by the sports commentators always calling Sam an "old man", as they are nearly the same age. But as I pointed out, it's all relative. If Sam were a senator, they'd be calling him a young punk).

I'm glad the Celtics won it. Having followed them in addition to (and near the end of the season, instead of) the T-wolves, I've become a real Paul Pierce and Ray Allen fan. And they have so many good bench players as well. Frankly, Kobe and his background boys got beat by a team.

Books in May

May was a YA month for me. There is a lot of terrific YA spec-fic out there, and I've been trying to catch up on it all (a huge chunk of my Christmas and birthday book stack is YA. Here it is five months later and I've scarcely made a dent...)

At any rate, the first thing I read was Ninth Grade Slays by Backspacer Heather Brewer. You know when a new character comes into town and he's a vampire slayer named Joss that this book is right up my alley. A fast-paced fun read, and if you're even remotely into vampires you're going to love all of the little references to other vampire stories that sneak in.




I've been hearing that Scott Westerfield is the bomb for some time now, so I picked up all four books - Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras - at Christmas. I admit I approached them with a bit of trepidation. I had also heard that Philip Pullman was the bomb and while I appreciated his work on an analytical level, I never really emotionally engaged with it the way others (namely, my husband) did. I was afraid this would also be the case here, but considering I blew through all four books in a week (and the real testament: stayed on the treadmill past the three mile mark just so I could finish one more chapter) you could say these really clicked with me. A lot of cool ideas, and some of the things I was longing for him to explore deeper when reading the first book were just the things he got into in the later books. Highly recommend. (Also, I really wish I had a hoverboard).

The next one actually got me into a bit of trouble: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, a story of hackers who run afoul of Homeland Security. If you're into sci-fi at all you've already heard this book talked to death (my assessment: they're right, it's brilliant). My trouble? Well, somewhere in the middle bit of the book the MC is talking about how he built his own laptop, and how it was tougher than building your own PC, which any rube can do. Now I've been using the same PC in my office since about 1997, and it was far from state-of-the-art then. Now it just barely lets me check e-mail and listen to music at the same time, and if I try to run my flashcard program on it I can actually hear it screaming (because in order to run the flashcard program I also have to run another program that lets me type in Devangari, and that poor little processor just can't take it).

My brilliant idea: why don't I just buy a new processor and motherboard? I have tons of hard drive memory (which I installed myself), and I don't need a new DVD player or power supply since I swapped those out fairly recently. If I can add my own hard drives and swap out my own power supplies, how much harder could installing a motherboard be? And it would be so much cheaper than buying a new PC.

Yes, I really should have known better. The motherboard wouldn't physically fit in my chassis, so I had to buy a bigger one. Then I realized my video card wasn't compatible with the new motherboard either, so that was another chunk of change, and we were venturing out of the range of money I had set aside for computer purchases (and into the realm of eating more Ramen noodles). When I finally had all the pieces I needed put together and pushed the On button, the little light came on but nothing happened. So I had Quin take the thing to work and have his IT guy take a look at it.

(I'm told that conversation went something like this: "My wife built this PC but she can't get it to turn on."
"Your wife built a PC? Is she a dork?"
"Totally. You'd like her.")

But he couldn't see anything wrong so in the end we had to take it to the Geek Squad and pay to have it fixed. What did they do? I have no idea. They were very recalcitrant when I attempted to find out what I had done wrong. I felt like Indiana Jones at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when he realized the only answer he was going to get was "Top men." No matter what I asked, they would only admit to "there were multiple issues with the way the processor was installed". And installing the processor seemed like the easy part.

I got the PC back with lots of little pieces busted off my new chassis, and it would power up but still didn't actually boot up. My storage hard drive had been fried and for some reason which makes no sense at all to me they had switched the setting on my master drive to slave. I spent a few days tearing my hair out over BIOS screens and in the end had to re-partition the hard drive and re-install Windows (losing everything, but that was backed up before hand because, evidence to the contrary, I'm not a total idiot). And you can add the cost of a new hard drive for storage to the bill.

So I had no PC in my office for a month and spent twice as much as I had expected, but it was still cheaper than buying new and I have a wicked fast PC now than can do more things at once than I'd ever need it to do.

The ironic bit is that Little Brother set me off on this path of aspiring to techy-hood. Somewhere around the second or third purchase of PC equipment from Amazon.com I tripped up my check card's security system. In the book, you're a terrorist until you prove you're not. In my world, I was a thief until I proved I wasn't. I got a very humiliating phone call in which I had to verify all the purchases I'd been making (and resist the urge to explain them, and it was a powerful urge. "And the charge for 18.95 to the Science Fiction Book Club?" "Well, the new Lois McMaster Bujold just came out... I mean, yes, that was me."). The irony was all the suspicious purchases were things I ordered online and shipped to my house. Not that the check card people knew that, but still. If someone steals your credit card but doesn't spend more than you have and ships it all to your house, that's a considerate thief.

So anyway, I wrapped up the month with a little non-YA, and something I've read about half of before: Notes from The Underground, The Double, and Other Stories (White Nights, The Meek One, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Dostoevsky). The movie Saawariya is a retelling of White Nights, which I first read in college and after seeing the movie in theaters wanted to read again, only to discover I didn't have the book anymore. Which is why I don't loan out books; I have no idea who walked off with that one. So I picked up a new copy as part of my Christmas haul. But I think I'll reserve specific comments for next month. So far June has been nothing but Dostoevsky, so I'll just discuss them all at once.

Blah.

Maybe it's all the Dostoevsky. Maybe it's the computer that is still in pieces that refuse to work together. But mostly I think it's the unremitting gloom:

And that's the next ten days, pretty much like the last ten days. I love snow and ice, but rain gives me the blues in the worst way. I'm so never moving to Seattle.

It's a shame Tropic of Thunder doesn't come out until August. I think Ben Stiller doing a Viet Nam war movie within a movie would be just the thing to bring me out of the funk. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. as an Australian actor playing a black American soldier? Brilliance, man. I always really liked him, it's cool to see him doing stuff again. And he was totally robbed of the Oscar in 1992 for Chaplin. He and Denzel both. Actually, I thought all the actors up that year turned in better performances than Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, but perhaps that's just me...

So, we had some hail on Saturday

It was thick as snow on the ground, and the whole neighborhood smelled of wounded trees. Both of our cars got dinged up, not to mention the house (the insurance guys will be looking it all over later this week).

Thick as snow:


Rather freakin' huge:

And did quite a number on the leaves in our whole neighborhood (and a few trees lost whole limbs). Then everything started steaming:

By the time I got home it was sunset, and when I went out back to survey the damage to my garden (*sob*) it was very foggy. (Quin took these pictures shortly after the hail stopped, when it was just a touch foggy. I should have taken some pictures of my own, the light was really cool when I was walking back there).

So I'll have to go back to the garden store and buy more plants. My tomatoes and peppers are a wash, although some of the more expensive perennials I had just put in the ground seem like they might make it.

The hostas got pulped pretty good, and it looks like my rosemary plant jumped straight out of its pot:

Movies in April

The coolest thing I watched in April technically wasn't a movie, it was season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. TV on DVD is worse than potato chips, you can never watch just one episode. This may just well be the best Sci-Fi TV show ever - well written, excellent special effects, not afraid of having a continuous story line with characters who grow and change. (Firefly is still my favorite, though. I can only imagine what it would have gone on to do in its third season. Sigh.). Gaius Baltar is my favorite character; the man just can't catch a break. The downside of catching TV on DVD: I have to wait a year to see what happens next. This is particularly tricky if one wants to avoid spoilers. This isn't always possible: Quin and I both revealed after the episode where Starbuck dies that we already knew that was coming (and had each kept it secret from the other quite unnecessarily as it turned out). And with so many NBA play-off games airing in ABC, I have to cover my eyes and sing real loud every time a commercial for Lost comes on, because just seeing what actors are still there is a spoiler in itself.

I also saw Live Free and Die Hard, which I liked. I like all the Die Hard movies and this was a worthy addition to the franchise. Kevin Smith had a cool little part (although it took me half the film to finally figure out that the kid with McCain was familar because he's the Mac in the Mac vs. PC commercials).

I'm still working my way through a stack of Bollywood films. Duplicate was an early effort from Karan Johar, before he started directing. The movies he writes and directs are all terrific, really intricate character studies that stand apart from the rest of Bollywood. So Duplicate was a bit of a disappointment. It steals lines and scenes from Dirty Harry and Desperado, and I swear I've seen the same plot in a Jackie Chan film (although I may be mashing two together in my head. But didn't Jackie play a chef who had an evil twin who was a gangster?). It was a fun enough film, and Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chalwa are cute together. Still, it wasn't remotely a Karan Johar type of film.

Kal Ho Naa Ho was. This is another one he wrote but didn't direct, but it's more recent and might as well have a Karan Johar trademark stamp on it. Very much a "you'll laugh, you'll cry" type of film. This is the third thing I've seen Saif Ali Khan in (he did the most brilliant Iago in the Hindi Othello, Omkara) and I'm quickly becoming a fan.

Maa Tujhhe Salaam. This one was in the 99 cent section at Eros (I'm a sucker for a movie that's less than a dollar). Quin wanted to watch this one, on account of Malaika Arora being in it (for one dance). It stars her husband Arbaaz Khan (Salman's younger brother. Moviemaking in Mumbai is very much a family affair). His first scene he is barechested, tying his hair back with a headband, looking for all the world like Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots 2 (I loved Hot Shots 2). Gradually I realized this movie was reaching for the same source - Rambo (it became clear when Arbaaz whipped out his impressive hero knife). The movie concerns the fight for Kashmir, a fight with three sides (those who want Kashmir to be part of India, those who want it to be part of Pakistan, and those who want it to be its own country). I think the filmmakers were intending a Band of Brothers type salute to the Indian soldiers freezing on the frontlines, but alas it was not quite that. It was more like Rambo, fun enough but not terribly deep. (And Malaika's dance was a hit around here. So were the ones Tabu was in. In general, I think my husband enjoyed this one more than me. Not as a movie, though, just as a vehicle for songs).

Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai and Yeh Hai Jalwa: For diehard Salman Khan fans only. 'Nuff said.

I mentioned Bollywood is a family business. Salman Khan is a second generation guy himself; his father was a screenwriter. His most successful films were when he wrote as half of the Salim-Javed duo. I've already seen two of their films: Sholay (their most popular film, and it really is very cool. It's sort of India's answer to Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. I'd highly recommend it) and Don (which I picked up when I couldn't grok the plot of the remake. It turns out everything that made no sense in the remake was something changed from the original. Yes, the original was very low-budget, very 70s, but at least it made sense. Plus Roma in the original kicks ass. She's clearly stunt-doubled by a short man, but it's the thought that counts. Roma in the remake disappears from the climatic fight entirely).

Being one who likes to track the careers of writers more than actors, I've been frustrated by the lack of prominent screenwriters in Bollywood. Salim-Javed are one of the few who actually had a track record (and were coincidentally key players in getting the screenwriters names put on the movie posters). They worked decades ago, so their films are dated, but the stories are all good. Trishul was a bit frustrating; the subtitles started out fine, but as the movie progressed they started disappearing for a few lines of dialogue, then coming back, then disappearing again. The last half hour of the film had no subtitles at all. Which was frustrating. I've been learning a little Hindi (1771 words right now, according to my flashcard program). I could catch enough to follow the story, but all the nuance was gone. And the scene where Amitabh Bacchan talks about what life as an unwed mother was like for his Mom - well, that was probably all about the nuance. I can't really say, all I know was he was talking about his Mom. Shame, really; it seemed like a good film.

I really loved Seeta Aur Geeta. Remember how I said that the original Roma kicked ass? This one has another great, strong woman. It's about twin sisters separated at birth. One grows up poor, a total tomboy running with the street boys. The other starts out rich, but when her parents die she ends up in a Cinderella situation, working as a maid for her evil aunt who keeps all the money that the parents left her. When Seeta runs away from her evil aunt (and her lecherous brother) the police pick up her twin Geeta by mistake, and Geeta terrorizes the whole evil family, while Seeta settles into life in the poor part of town, cooking and cleaning for people who actually appreciate her efforts. Cool to see a movie where two women rescue each other rather than leaving it to their love interests to do.

The last movie I saw in April was Shaan, Salim-Javed's answer to Bond. It's not about an Indian spy or anything (the two characters are two-bit hoods trying to make good after their older brother the cop is killed). But it has lots of Bond elements in it: the evil villain with the secret fortress on an island who kills his enemies in overly elaborate ways. Quin felt I enjoyed this one a tad too much. But you be the judge. Doesn't the evil villain, Shakaal:



Look a lot like sci-fi writer John Scalzi:

...or is it just me?

­There I am again!

I made the WOTF honorable mention category again this quarter. It's alphabetical, so scroll about halfway down to find me. The story in question is already in the next slush pile on its journey to publication.

Also, I've been very negligent in mentioning that the issue of Beyond Centauri with my story "Trifle" in it is now out in the world (and can be purchased in places like this). I really love the cover, and not just because it has my name on it.

Books in April

I finished off Heinlein in April with two collections: Expanded Universe and Off the Main Sequence. Expanded Universe is an apt title; it contains some non-SF Heinlein stories and tons of nonfiction pieces which I found very interesting. It was a nice way to wrap him up, to listen to him talk directly rather than through story. He occasionally comes off a bit curmudgeonly, particularly when he hits on the age-old "kids these days have it so easy" type arguments (although his piece on how to get a college degree without actually having to do any work or even learn anything was sharp and amusing). His story about going by the curtain to Cold War Russia was interesting as well. Off the Main Sequence largely collected stories I had already read, but I really appreciated the way this book was put together, with citations under the titles of where and when each story was orginally printed. I love that sort of information, but most anthologies either make you dig through the fine print on the copyright page to find it or leave it out entirely.


My Opposite of That ended up being Nick Hornby, largely because my brother handed me a stack of his novels and said "read these". Since I've already seen About a Boy and High Fidelity, he just loaned me the ones which haven't yet been made into movies. I liked the female protag in How to be Good (and parts of that book were almost painfully familiar), and his YA story of teenage pregnancy Slam was a good read. I like Hornby's way of avoiding the obvious mega-happy endings (although I think with Slam he could have gone a bit more bittersweet; it all worked out a shade to nicely in the end). But my fave of the three was far and away A Long Way Down, about four people who meet when they all go up to the roof of the same building on New Year's Eve intending to kill themselves. I understand a movie is already in the works ; it will be interesting to see how they cast it, and if they manage to get the tone right.


I also read the latest from Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants, which took about half an afternoon. It reminded me of George RR Martin's The Ice Dragon which I read last year; ostensibly for children (younger than YA), but the language is too lush to miss just because it's for kids. (Actually my favorite Gaiman book is arguably The Wolves in the Walls, which is a picture book, so I read much younger than YA). I of course loved the use Norse gods. It was a nice way to spend an hour and change.

I also read a couple of sumo books, The Big Book of Sumo by Mina Hall and The Joy of Sumo by David Benjamin. Research for the WIP. If you're looking for a book on sumo as an art form, pick up Mina Hall's; if you are interested sumo purely as sport, go for Benjamin's. Both were full of useful information for my purposes.

The last book was another one I finished off in an afternoon, Bellydancing by Keti Sharif. Another of my too numerous interests. I was looking for a book that would help me differentiate which sorts of dances come from which regions originally, and this book does a beautitful job of that. Plus it also breaks down different dances by the four elements, so I can do my own Avatar: The Last Airbender at home where I control the elements through dance rather than kung fu. Cool!

Busy, busy, busy

We homeschool year-round, but the end of April/beginning of May is unofficially when we transition. Most of what we do just sort of plods on at its own pace, so grade levels are pretty meaningless. But this is the point when Aidan finishes one math book and starts the next (Oliver is about six months off, though; we ditched the last half of kindergarten and jumped right into first grade six months early). And this is when we finish up one year's worth of history and science and move on to the next. So we usually take a few weeks off here, or rather they do. I have a year's worth of planning to do.

There are lots of different ways of homeschooling, from completely boxed curricula like Calvert where you complete and mail in assignments to be graded (I looked into this early on but decided it was too constrictive for me. I have mentioned it to Quin as his best choice if something happens to me and he still wants to homeschool. He loves those sorts of conversations). Some parents practice unschooling, which has no curriculum at all (so not for me. You have to be willing at any time to take advantage of a teaching moment, to be spontaneous. I can't do that. Even if I didn't have to work for half the day I still wouldn't be able to unschool. I would find my own way to fill the day and then get irritated at being interrupted. It's a matter of temperament; I have to have a plan).

We mostly follow the suggestions in Well-Trained Mind. Mostly. Their history curriculum Story of the World we absolutely hated. Aidan was so, so bored, and although it was a global history like I wanted, I was displeased with the way certain culture's traditions were treated as myth where others were treated as history. So we ditched it. History Odyssey from Pandia Press works wonderfully for us, and the few times it references SOTW, we just skip over. Actually, the course is very reading and writing intensive, so we skip over things a lot or it would take us two years to cover a one year text book.

Science is more of a challenge. Not surprisingly, it's hard to find good science curricula for homeschoolers, particularly in biology. There are other homeschoolers like us who teach evolution, but we are definitely a minority. So the bulk of my prep time is made up of deciding just what we are going to do with science. This year for Oliver I'm trying a curriculum package for the first time, REAL Science from Pandia Press. I'm hoping it works out as well as HO, but we'll see. They don't have anything in Aidan's level, so he's getting the usual Mom grab bag of books and experiments (although he does the actual experiments with Dad when I'm working; he likes to do that sort of thing more than I do).

After much internal debate I decided to let Aidan stop Latin even though he hadn't yet finished book one of the two book set. It is, after all, very dry. I did talk him down from pursuing Hindi next. Although Quin and I both like the idea of learning along with our kids (like Professor Bernardo de la Paz did with his students in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), I'm not sure if a foreign language is the best subject for that, or if with my current work load (part-time in name only) would allow for it at this point. So we'll be learning Spanish, something I took in high school and college so I'm a bit more confident I can't ruin him too badly with it. Latin is good for reading, but tough to be conversational in. I think he's going to like Spanish a lot more. But again, I'm not widely enthused by the curricula I've found so far so he's getting the Mom grab bag of lessons (which is fun for me anyway).

All that starts on Monday. I've been doing a bit of writing, but not as much as I'd like. My days of getting 1000 words down before dinner time are in the past, I fear. I'm lucky if I squeeze in 500. Still, it's not a full stop, and I'm liking the way this new WIP is shaping up. It's coming along slowly but I don't think it sucks. So that's good.

The Forbidden Kingdom

So instead of a date night we made it family movie night. Which was a bit of a risk; we usually prescreen PG13 films before letting the boys watch them. Some PG13 like the Will Smith movie Legend I would have put more in the R category (lots of scary images, but I think it's the scene where he has to kill his own dog that would have bothered my eldest the most). Then there are films like this, which I would have called a PG. Bloodless kung fu violence, it's like a live action Avatar (coming soon...)

I went into it expecting some good fights but a lame story. I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it's about a white boy that gets a magic staff that takes him back in time so he can return it to the Monkey King. But they never go with any fish out of water jokes, or things are so weird in China I just don't know how to behave! jokes, which I appreciate.

Clearly Jet Li had some screenplay input. From DVD commentaries on his other films I've gotten a sense of how he thinks kung fu should be portrayed, and this movie had a very Jet Li feel to it. Jackie Chan and Jet Li both teach the boy from Boston kung fu (which takes so long he grows a ponytail; nice touch). Jackie Chan tells him how learning kung fu makes a musician a better musician, and a butcher a better butcher. Jet Li tells him kung fu is like water - it doesn't fight, it moves around its opponent and wears it down.

The girl with them has her own story line which was very good, and ended exactly as it should (I'm refraning from spoilers, can you tell?).

Plus the boys really liked it, which is always good. Jet Li plays both the stern monk and the Monkey King, who is a total giggling spaz. Fairly early on the Monkey King insults the Jade Warlord and the two fight, the Monkey King playing tricks and generally amusing himself throughout the kung fu match. Oliver leans over to me to whisper, "The Monkey King is so cool!"

I did miss a chunk in the middle of the movie when some chunk of lint got stuck under my contact lens and by the time I got to the restroom to get it out the lens was completely shredded. So I had to watch the rest of the movie like it was a Monet painting, and apparently I missed the funniest scene in the whole movie. The boys couldn't stop giggling long enough to give a coherent account of just what had happened out in the desert. Oh well, I'll see it when it comes out on DVD (about a dozen times...)

Movies in March

Those of you who know me from Backspace will recognize this Joss Whedon quote from my signature line:

"The two things that matter the most to me: emotional resonance and rocket launchers. Party of Five, a brilliant show, and often made me cry uncontrollably, suffered ultimately from a lack of rocket launchers."

I love that quote (although in my case I would say it would be emotional resonance and kung fu fights), but until last month I had never actually seen a single episode of Party of Five. I watched season one on DVD. A good show, if often painful to watch (poor Charlie; it sucks to be him).

I only saw two movies in English. The first was the latest from the Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men. I liked the level of detail they bring to every aspect of the set, to every nuance of character. It's a very well-made film. Still, in the end I didn't like it very much. There were a lot of nice moments (Tommy Lee Jones describing his dream of his father in the last scene is a particular favorite), but I guess it was just too relentlessly hopeless. I don't mind violence in films, but violence in an atmosphere of complete despair really is too much for me. So: nicely made but I won't be watching it again. If the Coens follow their usual pattern their next venture will be a comedy. (I also watched The Hudsucker Proxy for the nth time, but this time with my boys so they can understand where the phrase "You know, for kids" comes from. I'm not saying they here that a lot around here or anything...)

I also watched I am Legend. Cool premise, and again a wonderfully shot film. But. The DVD comes with two endings and I didn't like either of them. Given a choice I thought the alternate ending was the better of the two, but still. I have this problem a lot with speculative films (more so than books even when the films in question are based on books - I shall have to meditate on the caue of that) - a story that is written to pose a question always crumbles for me in the end because the ending will try to answer the original question, which is better left unanswered, as no answer can satisfy without making the question seem much more black and white than it was when it was posed. Perhaps that's why I don't have this trouble with books - filmmakers shy away from open endings, but books have no problem ending on an ambiguous note. I don't know, I'll have to think on that more.

The last four were Bollywood, and three were quite good. Heyy Babyy (and as I keep telling Quin, that spelling isn't a Hindi convention, it's a nod to hip-hop) is something I've had the soundtrack to since it came out in theaters in India, so I already knew I liked the music. But it's meant to be a remake of Three Men and a Baby, and I wasn't wildly thrilled to see it. Still, I figured at least the music bits would be worthwhile, so I picked it up with low expectations. Well, the film takes care of the bits it wanted from Three Men and a Baby in the first 40 minutes, then spends the next 2+ hours telling another, more interesting story. I was very pleasantly surprised.

On a linguistically frustrating note, I mentioned I've had this music forever, and I had printed out the lyrics in Hindi. I do this with most of these films, but I never really know what the songs are about until I see the movie and the English subtitles. My favorite song from this film is called "Mast Kalander". Now "mast" I knew already; it comes up in many songs and means a sort of intoxicating, passionate joy. "Kalander" I didn't have a clue on. So when I finally watched the film I eagerly awaited this translation.

Apparently "mast kalander" means "mast kalander". This translation was later confirmed by Quin's coworker from Delhi. It just means, well, mast kalander. I suppose it's a bit like trying to translate something like "Dance this Mess Around"; you can't do it without breaking it.

(I generally watch these movies on Wednesday nights when the boys are out at the community center, and when they come home Aidan always wants to watch the musical numbers. "Mast Kalander" has a cameo from Shah Rukh Khan, and Quin was absolutely mortified at how both of the boys perked up when he appeared. Apparently we're all getting too into these things, so he says. Then I played the title song, and when Malaika Arora Khan came on screen he shut right up. Malaika is the one who did the dance on top of the train in Dil Se. He always shuts up when she's on screen).

I also picked up Shah Rukh Khan's first film appearance: Deewana. I don't think this one really stands the test of time except for those like me who like to study actors and how they change over time. Khan as a very distinctive style, and apparently he had it in full force right from the get-go. But he's not even in the first half of the movie. I would say this is for SRK completists only.

1942: A Love Story I had gotten from one of the Post-It note recommendations. How geeked was I to see that Sanjay Leela Bhansali cowrote it and directed the musical numbers (with Farah Khan as choreographer, natch). This one is well worth seeing, a good story with some excellent songs. I wonder if Bhansali picked the music as well as directed the musical parts; it has his style of not going for pop songs, and also has a song about the sound of the rain that reminds me of other scatting, playing with sounds songs like "Dhole Baje" and "Chalak Chalak". Also, his last movie Saawariya contained images from all of his previous films; I can now account for the umbrella the main character carries; it comes from 1942: A Love Story.

Another thing from 1942: A Love Story popped up in the last movie I watched in March, a movie that immediately jumped into my top five favorites: Main Hoon Na. I've praised Farah Khan's choreography, how she works with large groups so well and finds ways for the dance to reveal nuances of the characters, so that the musical numbers are an inherent part of the story and not just some strange aside as they are in so many of these films (especially when they are all filmed in the Alps for no clear reason, as if the characters hie off to Europe to sing at each other than get right back to their hometowns to carry on with things.) So it probably shouldn't come as a surpise that the first movie she directed would have awesome dance numbers. But the rest of the movie, which she wrote and directed, is all good. I got the same feeling I had the first time I watched Jaan-e-Mann, that someone went inside my skull and took all my favorite things and whipped them together into a movie just for me. How else to explain a movie that is equal parts Dirty Dancing, Grease, Clueless, 21 Jump Street, The Matrix, and anything from John Woo, and it takes all those parts to tell a story about Indian-Pakistan relations and about family (and of course is also a love story or two)? How many of us can there be who dig on all those things? (Here's another layer: the editor of this film was a certain Shirish Kunder, who later went on to direct Jaan-e-Mann. So my feeling of similarity between the two was perhaps not so coincidental).

Plot in a nutshell: SRK plays a soldier who works under his father as security for a general who is in the process of releasing a number of Pakistani prisoners who have been in prison for decades - farmers who wandered over the border in search of water and the like. Raghavan is a terrorist who opposes any gestures towards Pakistan and his attempt to assasinate the general lead to the death of SRK's father. The general fears the terrorist will target his daughter next, the daughter who has stopped speaking to him and refuses to leave college to go into protection. So SRK is sent to college undercover as a really old student so he can protect her from the terrorist, and while he is there he can attempt to find the half-brother whom he's never met, who is also a student. College in Hindi films is a lot like high school here; they have proms and Valentine's Day dances and having a 40-year-old guy in class is regarded as odd (certainly not my college experience; older students were few but not exactly rare).

The general's daughter is best friends with SRK's brother, only because he doesn't really notice her as a girl. She was an only child, and her current hatred of her father stems from never being the son he wanted. Her attempts to be more boyish for his sake are not serving her well. And I really felt her pain when she finds she only appeals to uber-geeks and older men (of course SRK isn't following her around because he's into her, but she doesn't know that). Yes, she eventually gets a make-over, but 1) SRK gets one first (although his sweater vest and button-down shirts made him such an adorable nerd) and 2) she decides that the total girl look is way too much work and if that's what it takes to keep her guy, she'd rather be with the uber-geek.

Farah Khan rocks.

(And the 1942 connection? Well, SRK crushes hard on his chemistry teacher to the point where the man who only knows army songs at the beginning of the movie finds that every time he tries to speak to her the words become lyrics, then the men with guitars and violins hop up behind him and he's singing "Ek Ladki Ko Dekkha" from 1942, to his great embarrassment, and he can't stop).

Yeah, I loved this movie.

But to pick just one musical number to share? How about the first song, shot as one long take with scores of dancers (or more correctly faked to look like one long take with computer editing, but still impressive). How abou the closing number, which serves as the credits? What other film lets you see not just the actors with their names, but the art crew, the sound guys, the hair stylist?

No, it's got to be "Tumese Milke Dilka Jo Haal", just after the general's daughter gets her make-over, and the violins now play for SRK's brother (and you get a little peak at the first of many appearances of John Woo's birds):

Books in March

There were five of them and they were all Heinlein (I've since finished him off. Still don't really know who I'm going to plunge into next, so I'm just grabbing some random things that have been sitting around for a while. But that's next month's book report...)

All right, so namely it was The Number of the Beast, Friday, Job: A Comedy of Justice, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I liked them all save Friday, which didn't really do it for me. From a writing stand point, it seemed to start out telling one story and ended telling another, which left me wondering how the first story ended, and what exactly was the point of the second one? Truthfully, the book never would have recovered from the early scene where our heroine gets gang-raped and one of the guys kinda turns her on (I had almost decided I could let that go when the guy in question turned up again. Blech.).

But the other four I liked. The world as myth was a cool idea, and the mixing of characters from all over the Heinlein universe was fun. I particularly enjoyed The Number of the Beast, when Hilda locked Lazarus Long in the bathroom (an act long overdue). And then there was this exchange, when the four characters realize they are traveling to fictional universes that all of them had read:

“Did Heinlein get his name in the hat?”
“Four votes, split. Two for his ‘Future History’ and two for ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. So I left him out.”
“I didn’t vote for ‘Stranger’ and I’ll refrain from embarrassing anyone by asking who did. My God, the things some writers will do for money!”

(And I recently read that Heinlein wrote Glory Road in 28 days. Which explains a lot. I would have to do some serious debating to pick my favorite Heinlein, but on the subject of my least favorite there is no doubt that is the one.)

RIP Mr. Eko

As it turns out, goldfish aren't good for frogs:



We have two left who are still swimming about, but one is moving pretty sluggish. I don't think the odds are good. They'll probably all be dead before our preying mantis egg sac hatches.

Here's a nicer pic: my boys working together on a puzzle book without bickering. A rare, rare moment:

Looks like I need another date night...

Yes, the foreign world seen through the eyes of a white person is in my top ten lamest plots for movies (I would much rather see China through Chinese eyes, and so on). This is very much that. But it's also a movie where someone learns kung fu; like boy-meets-girl, I never get sick of that.

Best of all: Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan. Dude, I'm so there.

Man!

Worked a bunch of overtime. Didn't even quite get that nice pay check in my hands before I had cause to spend it. Our oldest cat almost cacked last week. Many expensive little adjustments later he is doing much better (even bathing himself; he hasn't done that in months!). But he will be on thyroid medicine for the rest of his days and the vet recommended he only eat soft food (so he has to be separated from the others when he eats, because they have no qualms about knocking an old man aside and taking his tasty gravy-soaked meal).

I spent every spare minute I could find last week polishing up an old piece so I could have something to send to Writers of the Future by the 03/31 deadline. Then Monday came with lots and lots of sticky wet snow. I waited for my husband to get home from work with the car then tore off to the post office. But too late; I missed the last pick up of the night and my entry will have a 4/01 postmark. *sigh*. Well at least I have a nicely polished story already in for next quarter.

I have half-finished book and movie posts for March I'll be getting to soon, plus another about homeschooling and Heinlein. So hopefully that means you'll be hearing from me a bit more in April than in the last few months. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, apparently African frogs don't like goldfish. Or more correctly, they like them a touch too much. (File under things which weren't my idea. My husband thought the tank would stay cleaner with goldfish in it. I was dubious, more animals would surely mean more mess not less, but since the first fish looked like this the morning after we put him in the tank, and the second fish got it on day 2, we'll never know...)

Which reminds me, I never did get that video clip online*

Trying to break into the world of writing can be a drag. You will be rejected a lot. Even if you are good, if your piece isn't quite right for the publication, you will be rejected. It comes with a territory and you either grow a tough skin or stop submitting (sadly I've known a few good writers we have taken the second option).

The one thing I always say to myself when I file away yet another "I really liked this, but..." rejection: at least I'm not an actor. I didn't have to actually be there when the editor read it, and I didn't have to endure a face-to-face rejection. Because it's the same thing: you could be good but just not quite right for the part, but rejection always stings. Man, actors have a tough fight.

So I'm really pleased that an old friend of mine who went to Hong Kong to pursue his acting dream is getting his first little taste of success:





The sound guy with the boom mic and the earphones on is my old kung fu compatriot Pete Wong. Being in a commercial is like the short story sale of the acting world, it let's you take the "aspiring" off your self-descriptor. Hooray for Pete!

*The final diagnosis was the PC was just too slow to handle the video; it was glitchy when I got it to work at all. But it occurs to me this shiny new laptop of mine has a DVD burner. Might be worth investigating how that will work. Then I could show you some sweet kung fu...

Movies in February

Only eight this month, and none in English.

I watched two in Spanish: Volver from Pedro Almodóvar (so from Spain) and Ladrón Que Roba a Ladrón (quite honestly, I'm not sure if this is a Mexican film or an American one filmed in Spanish. At any rate, the action takes place in LA.). Back when I used to work at a movie theater, my boss was a huge Pedro Almodóvar fan. So for 20 years I've been intending to see a Pedro Almodóvar film but never quite got around to it. This was my first. I was mostly impressed by how low-key it was. Some pretty intense things happen, but these women all take it as a matter of course and just move on. If anyone felt any really strong emotions, it was in the past. It was also one of those movies that starts at some arbitrary point and rambles on then stops at some other arbitrary point. I'm a structure enthusiast - how stories are put together is nearly always more interesting to me than what the story actually is. And lack of structure is itself a form of structure, to be sure. Mostly I found this movie not too terribly moving, and given the subject matter of incest, rape and murder, it really ought to have been. But I'll have to dig up one of Pedro's older, more praised works before I write him off. (Sometime in the next 20 years I'll get to that. At the very least, I have to try one of the ones Antonio Banderas is in, yeah?).


Ladrón Que Roba a Ladrón I liked better. It's very indy: limited locations with the focus on witty dialogue. It's a heist movie with a bit of a message about not screwing over your own people. My husband watched this one with me, being a sucker for a heist movie. It was good, although perhaps not multiple-viewings good.



Next up is my first movie from Thailand: Citizen Dog. Aidan was studying Thailand for geography when I saw this review up at Andrew Wheeler's blog and thought it would be cool to check it out. The boys and I watched it while Quin was out of town and we all enjoyed it, even Oliver who has to really focus to keep up with subtitles (although at not quite 7, reading any subtitles is pretty cool, I think). He particularly enjoyed the teddy bear that smokes, drinks and swears like a sailor. Although like Wheeler says, you gotta like the quirky to get into this movie at all; it is exceedingly quirky.

The other five movies are all in Hindi (natch). My method of picking out which movies to buy at Eros is pretty arbitrary. Quin brings home a few Post-Its a month with recommendations from his coworker. If I find a director I like (Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Karan Johar, for instance), I get all their stuff. But mostly I'm stuck picking by actor. I've learned not to read the backs of the boxes; they summarize the whole film including the ending, which I'd rather not know ahead of time. Sometimes I've seen a few of the musical numbers already on You Tube (although frequently they are clips where some fan has taken that dance number and set it to music from a different film, so that can be confusing for neophytes like me).

In the category of things with cool dancing that turned out to be songs from other movies when I saw them on YouTube: Josh (not a boy's name; in Hindi every O is a long O) with Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai. It is sort of a Hindi West Side Story with a Christian gang and a Hindu gang duking it out on the streets of Goa. The dancing was of course top notch (Farah Khan was the choreographer, and I always love her stuff. She creates dances that reveal something about the characters. She also choreographs large groups really well and shows a lot of influences like Egyptian bellydance and western musicals old and new. I haven't yet found a list online of things she's done to specifically buy things she's done, but when I see her name in the credits it's always a good sign). I also learned a bit about the history of Goa in this film which cleared up a lot of things I had been wondering from seeing other films (apparently the Portuguese controlled Goa until 1961, far later than I had thought anyone had controlled parts of India). It was a decent movie, although I could see why the videos on YouTube are all set to music from other films', the music here was pretty unspectacular.

Next up was a Shah Rukh Khan/Salman Khan double header: Karan Arjun. It's the story of two brothers who are murdered. Their mother goes to the temple of Kali Ma and prays to the dark mother to let her sons be reborn to avenge (themselves or her? which ever). This is a much better depiction of Kali Ma than The Temple of Doom, but perhaps this is an unfair comparison. Her temple was a really cool set, with a waterfall behind the many-armed statue and bells hanging all around. This movie did quite a few things I liked: the prayers to Kali Ma were always accompanied by mom's blood (which satisfied the fantasist in me that magic comes at a price, although Wikipedia characterizes this as a religious film, so perhaps I ought not to call that fantasy). Salman Khan's character is realistically reluctant to accept the idea that he is the reborn son of this old woman (he's not disbelieving in reincarnation, just the idea of reincarnation on demand). There is a really cool interpretative dance bit in the temple of Kali Ma that was very reminiscent of those old Hercules movies. Not that I would recommend this movie to anyone, it is in fact rather cheesy. Car tires squealing on dirt roads and Salman Khan throwing a telephone pole like it's a javelin cheesy (I like cheese myself, but most folks don't. Like my husband, who stared at me through the very little chunk of this movie he actually watched with me).

Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega... stars Salman Khan, Rani Mukerjee, and Preity Zinta, all of whom I like generally but when they get together here and in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, the results are only so-so. This movie starts out being about a guy who moves from Goa to Mumbai to make it as a singer. Then he rescues a girl from being run over by a train and is mistakenly taken to be her fiance by the people at the hospital. Rani is in a coma so she can't clear it up, and her family instantly bond with him so he's reluctant to admit he's never actually met her before. Then things get complicated when he falls for the coma girl's best friend. Yes, as a matter of fact, that does sound a lot like While You Were Sleeping. I actually don't mind that Bollywood puts out their own versions of Hollywood movies. Yes, it's a lot like they are thumbing their noses at our copyright laws, but it's not like if they paid for the rights of the story that would be money that would ever find its way to the writers' pockets. Plus I'm just a sucker for different tellings of the same story. That said, this one wasn't particularly interesting. Which is odd; I've long told my husband that WYWS is only a few musical numbers short of being a Bollywood movie. The idea that these two people fall in love and decide to do nothing about it because it would be upsetting to other people is the very bedrock of Bollywood plotting (and the anti-Bollywood movie would therefore be Troy, where Paris and Helen hooking up is worth thousands of innocent lives because dammit, she's hot! or something). But for whatever reason this story just didn't make the translation well. The tone was all over the map, and some of the actors' performances were just weird, going for funny when the scene called for something quieter, that kind of thing. I blame the director.

Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge is largely forgettable as well. I like Salman Khan and Karisma Kapoor together, and parts of this story are quite funny. Karisma plays a girl who is basically a shut-in raised by three very demanding, very eccentric uncles. She runs away from home to take a tour of Switzerland and finds that the social skills she acquired to deal with her crazy uncles don't get her far in the real world. But when Karisma gets hassled by two drunken Swiss guys while she's dancing, Salman's character crosses the room and slaps her, then apologises to the two guys for making a scene. Then he bawls her out for acting like a European girl (she's wearing a suit of his since her luggage was stolen, so she's showing no skin at all, and her dancing was by no means suggestive). So she complains that he's not being a real Indian either, not defending her honor. So he goes back to the Swiss guys, smacks them both, then comes back to tell her "but this is still your fault". It was one of the most bizarre and creepy things I've seen. A few minutes later this brute of a woman slaps Salman's character hard enough to knock him out (not a punch, a slap. Right on the ear). Which made me feel a bit better, but the movie never really recovered for me. Plus the music wasn't all that great, which as my husband would tell you is generally the break point for me. I can put up with a lot in a movie if the music is good.

Last film Veer Zaara, which I had heard a lot of good things about. Too many good things, I fear, it didn't quite meet my inflated expectations. It's a Pakistani-Hindustani love story and it was well done, but it didn't hit it out of the ballpark the way I was expecting it to. Gorgeous cinematography, gorgeous clothes design, some nice cameos from Amitabh Bachchan, Kirron Kher and Anupam Kher. The old person make-up they used on Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta for the end scenes was well done, but really too well done. He's been in prison for 22 years. I figure he was maybe 30 when he was arrested, and she about to be married couldn't be more than 22 or 23. So why do they both appear to be in their 70s when they meet again? I can see how prison would age a man, but what aged her? Perhaps being separated from your One True Love will do that to you.

Books read in February

“Sometimes we buy books because we think we’re buying the time to read them.” — Warren Zevon
(A quote I saw on Higgaion a few days ago and just had to swipe it because it's oh so true).

I only read three books in February. Three! Granted I was out of town for a week and when I got back I had a long to do list filled with things that take three times as long as I think they should take. Like taxes. And setting up a wireless network so the laptop and PS3 will stop whining about how isolated they feel, always being unconnected, don't I know they have updates to download?!?

So anyway, three books and all by Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I Will Fear No Evil, and Time Enough For Love. Spanking-free; I actually enjoyed all three of these immensely. Which is not to say I never looked up from I Will Fear No Evil and ask my husband why he doesn't have a cute nickname for me like "Tits". Or ponder a future where women are all naked or nearly so, but still spend hours on their makeup and wear high heels. Which is an evil I will fear. It's the exact opposite of my fantasy, which is being Aishwarya Rai in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and wearing gorgeous clothes with the spinniest of skirts while always going barefoot (of course it seems in that movie that she never gets to leave her house, ever. I guess that would be a downside...)

It's easier to find things to say about books I don't like. And time is still short (I didn't quite take care of that to do list last week). I'm hoping to finish off the last few Heinlein novels in March so I can move on to other things. I'm feeling a strong craving for a little Opposite Of That. Opposite of Heinlein, hmm... Jane Austen, I'm thinking.

Back from vacation...

...and already back in the grind of school. I don't go back to work until Friday night, but I have a ton of stuff to catch up on before then. So this is just a short post to say we had a blast while missing the blizzard of the season. Both the boys have been devoting all their free time to building Lego versions of everything they saw at Disney World last week.

On the writing front, I have not one but two stories being held for further consideration for the Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel anthology, so wish me luck!

In the meantime, here is my favorite pic from last week:

I'll be gone for a week...

...visiting some warmer climes. In the mean time, check out what I did. Of course it's just quarter-finalist under a new name, and I already have seven of those. But still, cool.