Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson

I don't have much to say about Michael Jackson that hasn't already been said a thousand times over today; my experience of him is pretty typical of a late-30s middle class American. "Thriller" was one of the first things I saw on MTV, and frankly "Scream" was one of the last (not being a REAL WORLD/ROAD RULES, etc. fan).

But as my husband will tell you I'm a blog-aholic, I read blogs from all over the world, and this morning I've been reading about how people in China are mourning Michael Jackson, people in Japan and Africa. Michael Jackson belonged to the world.

Read Amitabh Bachchan's blog about what it meant to be a Michael Jackson fan back in the day before the internet and You Tube, when the world was not so small as it is today, and music and videos from other parts of the world were harder to come by.

But in particular I like this collection of clips. Michael Jackson was a huge influence to kids all over the world - who didn't want to dance like Michael Jackson? Personally, I like the lawyer-trainee that does a dead-on Michael Jackson dance sequence, and then makes it Bhangra. That's taking a thing and making it your own.

For me the clip that best sums my feelings up is not available on You Tube. It's that sketch from Robot Chicken, when the strange Michael Jackson we've come to know is confronted by the Michael Jackson we all fell in love with back from the "Beat It" days, the original nose, original pigment Michael Jackson. And the strange one turns out to be an alien in space who kidnapped the real Michael so he could take his place. Then the two have a dance-off and the real Michael wins. If only that were true, and we could have our real Michael Jackson back.

Well, enough with the maudlin; I have fictional characters that need torturing now. Back to work.

EDITED TO ADD: The clip is available on the Adult Swim website here. Not the ending I remembered...

This and That

So I'm on Day 3 of my week off from work and school, pushing as hard as I can to finish the revisions on MITWA. I don't think I'll be done by the end of the week; having revisited my outline before starting my week off, I'm planning to completely rewrite a few chapters and add in six (SIX!) new ones to fill in some gaps or just delve deeper into things that got short shrift in the first draft. Still, progress is progress. My ultimate goal is to finish by the end of July, to prove to myself I can write and revise a novel in a year. That's the usual expection for novelists these days, a book a year, and if I can't do it I don't feel prepared for the next step, getting an agent and pursuing publication. I might give myself a little fudge factor, though. Oliver starts fourth grade math in October and compared to the earlier grades this frees up so much of my time I can expect my productivity to get back to my pre-Oliver in first grade level, or nearly so. I'm looking forward to it; these last three years have been really hard to soldier through.

On the topic of things already published: another review for Warrior Wisewoman 2 has turned up, this one from Nerinedorman. About my story she says:

Although Gardens of Wind by Kate McLeod is a delightful, love story in the face of adversity, I struggled to suspend my disbelief with regards to the science behind the floating cities. This is still a keeper, however. A thumbs up for Kate. She gave me the warm fuzzies with this tale.

It's a fair cop; the airships are believable but the floating villages are a bit harder to buy, I'll admit. I was assuming lots of hot air balloons and pretty much being at the mercy of the winds.

OK, one last thing before I get to work. File this one under awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!

Look, there's my name!

The Library Journal just reviewed Warrior Wisewoman 2 (it's here, a little more than halfway down the page). This one mentions me! Sure, as one of the "other contributors", but still - that's cool!

In which I state my lack of objection

All the cool kids are lambasting the casting of the Avatar movie these days. (For my part I'm irked at James Cameron for hogging the name "Avatar", so the movie will just be going by The Last Airbender). What I find most puzzling are the folks that expected Sokka and Katara to be played by Inuit actors. As drawn on the cartoon they both have blue eyes, and they don't have Inuit names (they both sound Japanese to me). I never thought the water benders were meant to be Inuit just because they live in snowy places. Why assume they are Inuit and not, say, Laplanders? I assumed they were meant to be Ainu. But with blue eyes.

To be honest, the idea that the different nations in the world of Avatar are supposed to represent different ethnic groups doesn't make any sense to me. We're talking about a world so small that Gran Gran can leave the Northern Water Tribe to live with the Southern Water Tribe to avoid an arranged marriage. That's moving from pole to pole, and it's not portrayed as any sort of epic journey (actually, they never explain how she did it. Did she have help, or did she paddle her own canoe to the other side of the world all on her lonesome?). How could distinct groups emerge in a world so small, so tightly connected and easily traveled through? The different regions have different clothing and lifestyles, but they all speak the same language. And I think if you stripped them down and removed any culture-specific hairstyling or tattooing you wouldn't be able to tell a Water Tribe person from an Earth Kingdom person.

They do all look Asian, though. I'll admit the casting of Aang gives me pause. But if I were M. Night casting any of these parts I would be looking for 1) someone who can act and 2) someone who can pull off the martial arts. You think it'd be just as easy to find an Asian boy who can do both as a white boy. But I'm not the type to scream "epic fail!"; I'll wait and see the film and judge.

What I am super-geeked about:

Dev Patel as Prince Zuko. Zuko was hands-down my favorite character on the show. He had the complicated arc, and boy did the writers make him suffer and fail before he finally succeeded. (And how sweet is the costuming? I'm already dying to see this movie and it's another year away!).

I'm also pleased with this piece of casting:

Shaun Toub as Uncle Iroh. My second favorite character (and apparently the Avatar character I am). I've liked Toub in everything else I've ever seen him in: Crash and Iron Man most prominently but also Lost, and apparently even Sliders (OK, I don't remember him in that one).

The relationship between Uncle Iroh and Zuko is just so wonderfully nuanced. Particularly in the third season, when Zuko desperately wants someone to just tell him what the right thing to do is, and Iroh says nothing, because Zuko needs to find those answers for himself. After Mako died they used the power of silence in a couple of scenes in really moving ways, even though the guy who took over the voice did it well. Just another cool layer to the show.

It's going to be tough to scale each season of this show to movie-length; I hope these two characters and their relationship doesn't suffer. They have some of my favorite scenes. Like this one:

Uncle Iroh: You're looking at the rare white dragon bush. Its leaves make a tea so delicious it's *heartbreaking!* That, or it's the white jade bush, which is poisonous.

Prince Zuko: We need food, not tea. I'm going fishing.

Uncle Iroh: Hmm... Delectable tea, or deadly poison?

(later)

Uncle Iroh: Zuko, remember that plant that I thought might be tea?

Prince Zuko: You didn't.

Uncle Iroh: I did... and it wasn't. When the rash spreads to my throat I will stop breathing. But look what I found! These are pakui berries, known to cure the poison of the white jade plant. That, or makaola berries that cause blindness.

Movies in May

Lots of things borrowed this month, from the library or from friends. July is looking to be the return of cash, but in the meantime I did see a bunch of things that didn't suck.

I wonder if Julia Sweeney regrets creating the Pat character? That was one that was funny in very small doses, and it was pretty much the only thing she got to do on SNL. Which is a shame, as she is genuinely funny. I've read a lot of essays and things she's written on aetheism, and parenting without religion, and I know she's done shows on those topics but all I could dig up from the library was God Said Ha!, her monologue about when her brother got sick and eventually died of lymphatic cancer, how her whole family moved into her cute little single-gal-who-likes-her-personal-space house and took it over for the sake of caring for her brother, and about how she got ovarian cancer at the same time. And somehow she finds humor in all that. It's funny and sad and thoughtful, and I really wish I could see more of her shows.

In a similar vein are Kevin Smith's Q & As, An Evening with Kevin Smith and An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder. The man can tell a story. The man can, in fact, tell a hugely inappropriate story about his wife and make it incredibly funny and full of heart all at once. You can see why she would refrain from killing him for over-sharing. I liked the second Evening better, with disc 1 in Canada and disc 2 in England. The crowds there asked better questions, and the little segments out on the street of those towns looking for authentic Canadian cuisine or seeing if Jay's pick-up lines worked on English women were fun.

In the realm of things I did shell out cash for: Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Kevin Smith and Seth Rogan working together? It's all good. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with Clerks 2, so I went into this with muted expectations, but it's Smith at his best: funny and raunchy but so full of heart. It's really a romantic comedy, but not one with a "meet cute" and slapsticky misunderstandings. It's much realer than that. The struggle to pay the bills, the deeply shitty car that makes getting to work a job in itself (it is in fact the same car I had when my husband and I first moved in together; and the bit in the deleted scenes where he can't get the door open, and then later when he can't get it shut again - I laughed so hard it hurts. Been there, done that). I can't recall a single thing I've seen Elizabeth Banks in, but she's wonderful here; you believe her as the kind of girl who would be best friends with a guy like Zack. It's a movie about two friends who have known each other forever but are completely out of step with each other in the whole falling in love thing. So yeah I liked it a lot. Although those I'm a Mac/I'm a PC commercials have just gained another layer of amusement in my mind.

The Reader. Nope, didn't like. Wait, that doesn't quite encapsulate it. OK, I fucking hated this movie. How's that? I could give a whole long rant as to why, but this sums up most of my feelings pretty well, particularly the patently manipulative use of Kate Winslet nudity. Imagine if the film had been about an illiterate male Auschwitz guard who deflowered a fifteen-year-old German girl. I doubt the guard in question would be winning an Oscar (I'm picturing Harvey Keitel myself). But at least it wouldn't be a film that was using a naked body to engender sympathy. Or at least that's not the usual response to Harvey Keitel's penis.

(Mostly the movie pissed me off because it made no sense. She has no learning disability, we see this as she teaches herself to read while in prison by listening to Ralph Fiennes reading stories out loud, not an easy trick. But how did she manage to get through life without ever even picking up the word "the", the first word she teaches herself to read? At some point you'd work out that all the stores that sold bread had "Bakery" on them, every bottle of Coca-Cola says Coca-Cola. You have to be willfully not learning to avoid picking up any words at all. Which I suspect was meant to be a metaphor for the German people being willfully ignorant of what Hitler was up to. But as a metaphor it just doesn't work, because it trips up against literacy-not-as-a-metaphor too many times, and as I said it makes no sense. You don't have to know how to read to know that locking people inside a burning building is the wrong thing to do, and it doesn't matter who wrote the report, they all stood there and let it happen. It's possible the novel this is based on makes more sense, but the movie insulted me over and over again. I hate to see fine acting talent wasted, particularly the teenager who played the young Ralph Fiennes, but this movie sucked, sucked, sucked).

Looks like I went on a long rant anyway. Apologies.

OK, I checked out Gone Baby Gone, because who doesn't want to see how Ben Affleck handles directing? I liked this movie, Casey Affleck is terrific, as is the supporting cast. It handled disturbing subject with a delicate touch. This movie didn't make me feel emotionally manipulated. I hope Ben does more films, this one was good.

Gone Baby Gone was based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, so I thought I should check out another film based on one of his novels: Clint Easwood's Mystic River. Kind of a mistake. It's an excellent film, Clint Eastwood is very good at letting actors do their thing and not ruining their performances with an overly-exuberant musical score. All of the actors in this were chillingly good. But this movie upset me deeply, to the point where I actually considered shutting it off. Only I was afraid that the ending I made up in my head would be far worse than what I was about to see and I'd be better off just sticking with the movie. (Which is true, actually, I was so afraid for what Tim Robbins was going to confess there at the river bank that when he finally did tell all it was a relief).

A few days after seeing this movie I came across a quote from G.K. Chesterton on why we believe in fairy tales: “Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” Which I think is why movies or stories like this upset me so much. It says there are dragons, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about them.

Black Snake Moan I admit I only picked up because Justin Timberlake is in it. It's set in Memphis, with Samuel L. Jackson as a once-bluesman, now-farmer who finds Christina Ricci drugged out and beaten on the side of the road and takes her home to fix her up, in a lot of senses of that term. It was an interesting film, reminding me a bit of Lost in Translation in the depiction of an atypical relationship between an older man and a younger woman, although Lost for me is hampered like many Woody Allen films are, in that I can't really understand the problems of the idle rich who wander the world trying to find themselves, trying to figure out what useless skill is what they're meant to be doing. Must be tough, she said sarcastically (Alice aside; I liked how that ended with Mia Farrow deciding just not to be the idle rich anymore). Black Snake Moan is sort of the white trash version of that journey, the one where you don't actually go anywhere beyond the borders of your rural stomping grounds because you don't have the gas money. Plus Christina Ricci's character has real problems, the kind that don't have solutions just ways of dealing with them a bit at a time, as Justin's character eventually learns to accept. I liked this movie, there were some fantastic scenes like when Samuel L. Jackson plays his electric guitar during a storm that makes his electricity dim and threaten to go out. It was an eerie and cool effect. But it was a tough movie to get into in the beginning because the tone was so uneven. There were scenes in the beginning that I wasn't sure were meant to be played for laughs or not. (And Christina Ricci is naked here as much as Kate Winslet, but for reasons that actually matter to the story and her character, reasons that make her the opposite of sympathetic at first. The sympathy comes when she stops being physically naked.)

Namesake is the latest from Mira Nair, about a woman who marries, leaves Calcutta for the US and raises her family there, and about her son who's father named him Gogol and his long journey to understanding and owning his own name. Tabu played the mother, and I always love her. She has a gravitas that works well in this part. (She's also a gorgeous dancer, which she doesn't get to show off here, alas). Gogol is played by Kal Penn, whom I sincerely hope hasn't given up acting entirely to work for Barack Obama. He's got this whole smart/funny thing going on that I really like.

(Gogol is the name of a Russian writer, and I'm not going to say why Kal Penn's character is named that, but I will say that there was a point when I was 19 or 20 when Gogol's "The Overcoat" was my favorite story evah, but I had since forgotten about it until I saw this movie. Such is my fickle nature, obsessions come and go. But it was nice to revisit this one.)

Which leaves only my two Bollywood movies for the month. Golmall Returns was amusing when I watched it. I certainly remember laughing and enjoying it. But I can't really recall the plot now. Something about Kareena Kapoor watching too many soaps and suspecting her husband is having an affair, because that's what all the husbands on soaps do. Plus there was a little homage/joke with a prostitute pretending to be Rani's character from Saawariya, I remember that. Hmm. Guess the movie was just a bit of a time-pass.

More memorable was Chandni Chowk to China. Perhaps you remember I was looking forward to this one. Well, it didn't disappoint. It's everything I love about Bollywood, with Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone both being so fun and likeable. Plus it's everything I love about the funny sort of kung fu movies, like Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle or even Kung Fu Panda. On top of that, it's a genuinely good story, with a main character who has a meaningful arc (his relationship with his deity even matures during the course of the film; how many times have you seen that?). Deepika plays her Indian self as well as her Chinese twin sister, and she pulls it off. There's the requisite band of kung fu henchmen, a long montage set to my new favorite martial arts song (just edging out "Mortal Kombat"), and a very clever fight scene that involves Akshay only thinking he's throwing the punches.

There are actually lots of clips with music and scenes from the movie at YouTube, but they are official from the film company and they won't let me embed the video. (But check out "Chak Lein De" in particular). So this month's video clip is an oldie, from the movie Bichoo. This one is like the siren's call, it lures men to my office. Or one man anyway. Of course he says he's just heading into the laundry room, or to get something from the closet, but I'm not fooled. I know it's really Malaika Arora in tiny skirts. Particularly when she goes "yeah!".

Books in May

Lots of nonfiction this month, mostly on account of research. And for a short story, not even a novel. Considering how much I get paid for short stories, compared to how much I spend on research books... While, I'm not in it for the money, am I? (I think I'm in it to justify the really cool books I use for "research").

At any rate, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer is a great overview of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, etc. with lots of photographs of the artifacts. Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization by Sir John Marshall is older, and reads like it. Many was the night I sat down to "do research" only to be woken up an hour later by some family member asking how the research was going. I've also been working a lot of extra hours, so I can't totally blame Sir John for that, and the book does have a lot of really cool fold-out maps of the buildings. In fact, this book was too massive to read in the bath, which is a large part of why it took so long to finish it (that and the naps).

The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan wasn't intended to be research. After watching several movies that dealt with Partition and its fallout I was just curious to connect the dots I already knew. This is an excellent, informative book, an engaging if disturbing read. I was continually reminded of one of my favorite episodes of Angel, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been", when a Thesulac demon is whispering to the inhabitants of a hotel, playing on their insecurities and feeding on their paranoia until the entire place erupts in violence and Angel is left swinging by his neck from the chandelier. In fantasy worlds, Angel can't die because he's a vampire and slaying the demon takes care of the problem. The real world is no where near that easy to deal with. Whispering paranoia demons are easier to understand than the real world, though, when people just get caught up in paranoia spirals. It's clear from this book that no one involved in the creation of Pakistan as a separate state had any inkling of how bloody a process it would become (and still is).

Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman was a nice antitode to that, a picture book of a poem he wrote for Tori Amos' daughter. It reminds me a bit of Rudyard Kipling's "If", filled with all the hope of a young life just starting. Gorgeous illustrations to boot (I even caught Aidan looking at this one on his own).



Two more Larry Niven books this month, both written with Jerry Pournell: Inferno and its sequel Escape from Hell. I enjoyed these, retellings of Dante that only occasionally rubbed me the wrong way (hard to avoid with a topic that by its nature is going to get preachy). I'm not sure how particularly the second one is going to age, some of the references are very current events (will any of us really remember Anna Nicole Smith in 20 years?)

OK, time to get back to teaching math...

It's out in the world!

Warrior Wisewoman 2 is on sale! You can get a copy at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or at an indie bookstore near you. How geeked am I to see my name on an Amazon.com page? (Answer: very).