Now that my jet lag is mostly gone, I can write coherently about the entertainment choices on my fifteen-hour flight from Vancouver to Sydney — what little choice there was.

Having watched Coraline (marvellous!) on the flight over and having exhausted all the non-annoying television options, as well as too bleary-eyed to read with only two hours left on the flight, I turned to cheesy Hollywood comedy.

My choices were 17 Again (and how weird is it to have someone my age being the old one in a film like this?), He’s Just Not That Into You (not touching that), and I Love You, Man.

At least I Love You, Man has Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones.

Oddly enough, it turned out to be a smart, thoughtful movie. Yeah, I know. I wonder how it ever got funded, too.

Peter is a guy whose friends have always been women, even as a child, and he doesn’t really think about it until he realizes he has no male friends to stand up with him at his wedding.

No one ever suggests one of his female friends, but he doesn’t seem to have many of them, either. He has a fiancee and a lot of acquaintances, but no real friends. This is a guy who just doesn’t connect with many people, and he realizes he’s missing out on something that most other people have.

So he goes hunting for a guy friend. You’d think this would be the point where it would all go horribly wrong, but it doesn’t. His fiancée, Zooey, thinks it’s a great idea and is wholly supportive of him, even when one of his dates kisses him goodnight.

Did I mention the astounding absence of homophobia in this film? I can think of one instance involving a very minor character we’re meant to dislike.

In fact, Zooey supports him every way she can. The inciting incident, when Peter notices he has no guy friends, happens when he overhears Zooey and her friends talking about him. The friends gently (lovingly, I’d say) mock him for it and Zooey defends him. I think it’s important to distinguish that she defends him, not herself or her choice of him; nothing her friends do or say in this film make her doubt her choice. The only thing that does that is Peter himself later on.

The characters, with the exception of a few broadly-drawn stereotypes, are all rational, likeable adults who make thoughtful decisions, recognize their mistakes, and seek to change themselves for the better. The (deliberate, I’m sure) stereotypes, on the other hand, serve to emphasize how complex and real the other characters are. The main characters are people, not archetypes. They all have faults, they’re all a little selfish and self-centred, but in the way your own friends are, not in the way most movie characters are. They love and respect and support each other even when they act like asses.

The comedy comes from the characters’ wit and the reversal of genre tropes, not from humiliation and stupidity. It’s refreshing and well worth watching at least once.

I’m vaguely pleased with myself that I finished Anathem. It’s not that it’s a bad book (it’s a great book) or that it’s too long (I’m sure I’ve read longer) or that it’s dull (I missed two meals while reading the climax) but that the narrator’s voice is so soothing that I kept falling asleep after a few pages.

Tea, in pretty much any form. I put it in miso soup the other day.

Anyway, I’m Magpie_Lark over on http://www.steepster.com

I’ve been writing a lot and reading very little except free stories on the internet. It’s almost sad.

Read

Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link
The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land, by Diana Wynne Jones

Watched

Don’t Look Now
Little Miss Sunshine
The Golden Compass
Tron
Sunshine
When Worlds Collide – A movie about people failing to adequately plan for a disaster they have ample warning about. I wanted to throw things at them all.
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Impromptu
Forbidden Planet

It’s weird, but I don’t remember my first experience with science fiction or fantasy. Large swathes of my childhood are a blank to me — blank, or all jumbled up together. I can remember discrete happenings, but not pinpoint them in time.

Fantasy’s easy for a kid — starting with Dr Seuss (Look what we found/in the park/in the dark/We will take him home/We will call him Clark.) and Saturday morning cartoons. I got A Wrinkle in Time and one of the Pern books from my elementary school library (I could even now tell you where they were on the shelves). I probably got a whole lot more from Scholastic book sales. I remember watching the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon and loving Wizards and Warriors (which I imagine was quite bad). I saw Labyrinth twice in the theatre. I own all the crappiest fantasy novels of the eighties and I still love them so.

I watched Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and possibly Battlestar Galactica.

I saw Star Wars at a friend’s birthday party, shown with an actual film projector.

I loved Battle of the Planets.

I remember watching Doctor Who as a kid, but I didn’t get to watch it every day–or even most days–because it was on at dinner time. That’s probably why I don’t have any memories beyond the vaguest impressions; I can’t have gotten much of a story out of it. I did, however, get an amazing shock of recognition when I first saw Tristan Farnon on All Creatures Great and Small much later.

Does Mork and Mindy count? Does Knight Rider? Was Polkaroo an alien?

Star Trek came on right after Who but it didn’t hold my attention at the time. I didn’t really get into Trek until I hit high school — one of my friends was a fan. This was probably 1987 or so. I watched through all of the original series. Every Saturday I’d get home from my riding lesson with just enough time to wash my hands before Trek would come on. Star Trek and the scent of that soap are linked indelibly in my head.

I discovered The Next Generation during season two. I immediately developed a crush on Marina Sirtis (her hair! her voice!) and was hooked.

I own all of the Blish novelizations, most of the Animated Series adaptations, most of the Bantam novels and short story collections, and a hell of a lot of the Pocket Books novels. I didn’t actually get to watch the Animated Series until last year, when it came up on my Quickflix queue.

Max Headroom was my favourite thing ever.

I watched Alien Nation and V and Quantum Leap. I watched whatever older stuff was in reruns — Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man. I watched every superhero show available. Superboy, Wonder Woman, The Flash…all of them.

I don’t remember when I got into written SF (you know, aside from Trek), just that at some point I got a subscription to Asimov’s and started collecting books from writers I found there. I also read everything I could find in the library, which wasn’t much; I lived in a pretty small town.

I wrote a post-apocalyptic story in grade eight. Or was it four? I remember the classroom, but I spent both grades there. More likely it was grade eight and I was still traumatized by The Day After.

All this is by way of saying I’m really damn excited about the new Trek movie.

_______________

Culture Blogging – December and January
Read

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
Red Dwarf – Backwards, by Rob Grant
Much Depends on Dinner, by Margaret Visser
Buffy Season Eight, Volume Three, Wolves at the Gate
Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs

Watched

Black Sheep – My god, this movie is hilarious, and has the most realistic movie gore I have ever seen.
Waitress – I was really, really bored.
Slings and Arrows, Season Three
Cloverfield
Thank You for Smoking
The Big Bang Theory
The Italian Job

I made a new set of ornaments this week, out of Lucky Wishing Stars from Folding Trees. The paper is cut from old issues of Writer’s Digest, which has colourful full-page illustrations for some of its articles.

So cute.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of new pictures to my Flickr photostream. There are more shots of the tree there, as well as the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle.

First off, the skirt I made for Armageddon Con 2008:

I was going for a kind of steampunk look, so I took one of The Mathematician’s discarded shirts, cut it up, and sewed it back together. I basically just cut the front and back apart and sewed them back on overlapping. See the curved bits? Those used to be the arm holes. I like how assymmetrical it is along the bottom — the front is pretty straight, but the sides are different and the back has the curve of the shirt-tail.

There are things I’d do differently now — the drawstring waist is like a sack on me — but overall I’m pleased with it. When I’m done a few other projects I’ll remake it with an actual pattern and fabric, mostly because it tends to unravel the way it is.

Also:

My arm was killing me and I felt I had to wear my brace, so I took out the metal shank and made a matching cover for it. This was really only wearable for one day, although it could easily work with more thought.

I made jewellery, too, from the bits that came with some of my action figures.

Vampire Willow’s manacles became a necklace:

And random zat guns became earrings:

Seriously easy and totally reversible. The toys are now on the geeky Christmas tree.

Like so:

Lastly, Mouse, aka The Most Expensive Domestic Short-Hair in the World, shaved in three places after her near-death experience a few months ago:

The market was full of peaches the other day, and I cannot resist the scent of fresh peaches. So I have breakfasted on oatmeal with peaches that was more peaches than oatmeal. There is something to be said for grey, rainy summer days that allow for a hot breakfast.

I have many things to post about, when I manage to get the pictures edited and uploaded.

October was a slow month for reading, because I discovered a stack of Games magazines with unfinished crosswords in them. I’m saving some of them for the next fifteen-hour flight I take, but the obsession is strong.

Anyway,

Read

Negotiating with the Dead, by Margaret Atwood
Runaways, Volumes One and Two, by Brian K Vaughan – Sadly, I’m not pleased with the art in the back half of Volume Two.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, by Chris Fuhrman
Howard’s End, by E.M. Forster – If ever there was a book that makes me glad I don’t live in an earlier era, it’s this one. Not that I had any romantic notions, but this just made it obvious to me.
House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski – Impressive in many, many ways. I’m fairly sure the lingering questions I have are not the same as the lingering questions most people have after reading this book.

Watched

Stargate: Continuum
Nip/Tuck Season Four
Boston Legal Season Two
Quantum of Solace

Read:
Delicious, by Sherry Thomas – Readable*, and as food porn I wholly enjoyed it, but the romance itself left me a bit cold. I was more invested in the secondary romance and in the heroine’s relationship with her son than her relationship with the hero.

Faker, by Carey and Jock – It’s an interesting premise, if you can choke down the insulting stereotypes and bad science. Also? Vomit warning.

Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland – Odd, but you’ve got to love the characters, and I certainly can’t disagree with the central premise.

* and by “readable” I mean I finished reading it. I’m not above stopping if I don’t like a book.

Watched:
Boston Legal, season one
Hot Fuzz – I sometimes wonder how many jokes I’m missing by not having watched more action movies.
War Games

I’ve just run out of my new favourite hair product, so it’s time for a random rec.

Marc Daniels Go Curly

I have wavy hair, sometimes obnoxiously so. It won’t lay flat and just looks unkempt, especially when it’s short (it just barely covers my ears right now). This product gives a significant curl boost, so my hair looks styled rather than dowdy. You have to use it for a few days to get a noticeable difference, but I’ve experimented with and without it and it really does work. I don’t even use it the way they recommend — I just put it in my wet hair, fluff it up, and leave it to dry. I can’t imagine what it would do if I used a diffuser and a blow dryer.

I use very little — just a stripe down the centre of my fingertip covers my hair. It has a mild scent, a little flowery, a little like perming solution, but it doesn’t bother my asthma and the scent dissipates quickly.

Now I must go buy more.