Crazy Reader's Poll

Have decided purely out of curiousity to see who my readers are, which is admittedly gutsy, because it is more than possible that no one will respond and I'll look silly, which is why I haven't done this type of poll before (I've done plenty of polls, just not about my own journal). Not sure what's worse in internet land, critical responses or no responses at all. At least with the trollish/critical ones, you know people are reading. When you don't get any, you have no clue, there's a limitless number of possibilities.

Please note, the title of my lj is spontaneous musings, so while it is possible that I may honor your requests below, it is also highly unlikely. Than again you never know. There are admittedly a few posts that I still do that I've decided might be unpopular or really turn folks off and am considering discontinuing, so responses below will probably affect that decision to some extent.


[Poll #1234457]

Movie Reviews and other stuff

Saw two flicks this weekend. Tell No One and I'm Not There. Also ate a lot of scrumptious exotic dark chocolat from this new place near me entitled The Chocolat Room. These included chocolat caramel popcorn (which is amazing), chocolat covered cornflakes (mixed views on this) and truffles(also mixed, the best was the one with pepper and the one with a praline/framboise liguer filling). Yes it is that time of month, can't you tell.

Tell No One is a French thriller. It stars, believe it or not, Kristen Scott Thomas, as the lesbian spouse of the protagonist's sister, as well as his best friend and confident.
The story is about a man who loses his wife one night while skinny dipping in a pond. She disappears, after he was knocked unconcious. Eight years pass. We learn she was killed and for a while the police suspected him, since it happened on his property and even though he was knocked unconcious and thrown into the water, someone pulled him out and called 911 saving his life. On the anniversary of the event, the police discover two bodies on the same property where the protagonist, Arnaud's, wife disappeared. One of the bodies has a key on it, which is to a safety deposit box belonging to Arnaud's wife. At the same time, Arnaud, a peditrician, gets an anynomous email with a video of his allegedly dead wife, and the message: "Tell No One, they are watching". The story takes off from there. While it does drag in places, it is suspenseful and stuck with me long after it was over. Tightly written and each visual item or piece of dialogue does twist back on itself in an interesting way. So you should watch it carefully. Also it has a remarkably satisfying ending, even if I found it a tad predictable partly because I've seen far too many of these types of stories in my lifetime.

The title is rather interesting, for it does not just refer to the video but to a lot of things in the film and is in some respects a political commentary on our society. To tell more would give too much away, so, I won't. At any rate, an interesting film on quite a few levels and worth a visit.

I'm Not There is an ambitious if at times confusing film. If you rent it, you might want to check out the bonus features first, particularly the introductory material which explains what the filmmaker is doing. I didn't and can't help but wonder if it might have aided in the watching. The film is not so much a bio-pic of Bob Dylan as an examination on why it is impossible to do a bio-pic on Bob Dylan or anyone else for that matter. That we can't really know a celebrity, particularly someone who has become one via the route of entertainer. Bob Dylan like many actors, has spent a lot of time constructing a false persona to show the public. You don't see the real Dylan, so much as bits and pieces intertwined with fabrications. Who is the real Dylan, the film asks, the Woody Guthrie poor black folk-singer , the prophet and born-again Christian, the counter-culture hippie hanging around the Beatles, the drifter, the rock-star/celebrity with the disastorous marriage...or any of the above. The stories jump in and out of each other, with only songs as a guidepost. We flip from Cate Blanchett's Jude (who deliberately sounds and looks the most like Dylan next to possibly Christian Bale's Jake Rollins) to Heath Ledger to Richard Gere to Brad Whinshaw to Bale and back again. We also jump between color, black and white newsreels, black and white film, and locals. It's a story that is not told in traditional linear narrative style, it jumps about.

I found it difficult to follow at times and somewhat dull. Telling me very little that I did not already know about Dylan or his music. I did appreciate what the filmmaker was attempting however, hard not to, and found the style rather interesting at times along with the message. But I think he could have done it a lot faster and in a lot less time. The film felt repetitive in places and drug quite a bit.

Quick comment on previous post. If you haven't responded, please do. No worries about me changing my posting style - this is more out of curiousity than anything else. I'm just testing how people are perceiving me. One response threw me a bit and since they chose not explain themselves, I've decided to ignore it. The majority has more or less spoken and told me to please continue doing whatever I'm doing - apparently they like the spontaneous nature of the posts. Thank you for that by the way. If I write these things for anyone it's for folks like you.

Also, it is oddly reassurring to see so many people now supporting Obama who in previous polls were either undecided or supporting McCain. Dare I hope this election will be different than the last two? And regarding Twilight - if you've never heard of it? I'm envious.
As far as I can determine from thumbing through the book and reading reviews, not to mention the red_shoes line by line critique - it is basically a teen version of either the Moonlight tv show romance or Buffy/Angel circa S2, beginning of - except the female character is more like Buffy in the episode Halloween, when she lost her memory, was wearing the long black haired wig, and swooned a lot. (If you didn't see that episode or are unfamilar with Buffy, imagine a really insecure teen, with beautiful black hair, who swoons a lot). And, it has a lot of adverbs. Apparently some editors don't mind any more if you use a lot of adverbs.

Okay, maybe that wasn't so quick? Bit frustrated this evening, just realized it's past 7 and need to make dinner. Also that the editor I was going to send my book to - would cost me $825 smackers, can't afford that, have been advised to start writing queries (ack!) and send them.
Ugh, I hate writing query letters. But you do what you have to do. Heck, if Stephanie Meyer can get published, anyone can.

Rambling kitchen sink post

This is really odd, but of the 14-15 people who responded to my poll, 95% love the rambling essays that make little sense. Reassuring that. Also a good indication that I have no clue what turns people on or off. Tonight while talking with my father, a writer, I said that I didn't think I'd ever be a published writer, with books in libraries. I wasn't sure I appealed to people enough to leap that hurdle. And wasn't certain my current novel would ever grab a publisher or agent's notice. It's not that it's not well written, I know for a fact that it is better written than Meyer's. Heck every post on my livejournal flist without exception is better written than anything Meyer's written, not to mention most of the fanfiction I've read. It's that I'm not sure it is marketable. And that in our current environment is 95% of the battle. Can you market it to the masses?

When I said all this to my Dad, he said - don't write as a vocation, write as an avocation, because you have to. Because it makes you happy. If others want to read or get something from what you've written, so much the better. But you have no control over what turns them on. You can't write for them or try to. You can't predict what they will like or won't like. All you can do is write what is inside. The man speaks from experience since fifteen years ago when he first began to seriously try to sell his work, he studied every book out there on the topic, studied the market, and queried potential readers. He attempted to write for others. And it didn't work. Rejection, after rejection, agent after agent, he even had one for a while who couldn't sell a thing. So, finally, he decided the heck with it, he would write what was inside him, self-publish it, and enjoy it. Let those who wanted to read his work, read it. Ignore those who didn't. Thick skin, he tells me, writers need to develop incredibly thick skin.

His words oddly enough echo every writing teacher I've ever had, whose told me I should write for three reasons and three only: 1) I've got something to say, 2) I feel driven to do it, and 3) part of me loves it. Not for money, not for fame, and not for prosperity -since all of the above are fleeting when and if they ever come.

Writing and storytelling is in my blood. I remember Jacob telling me that he was shocked at how many posts I put online, the length and how fast. Plus writing a book at the same time. How did I do it? How did I find the time? I made the time. I found it relaxing and the net, allowed me to peddle my work to readers...I didn't want much in return, just to be read and to read in return. What Jacob didn't know was even before the internet, I wrote, long letters to friends and family, often ten to fifteen pages, short stories, poems, books.
Perhaps it is the Irish blood, I've got a lot of it, and a good percentage of my relatives on my Dad's side of my family are frustrated writers - frustrated in that they remain unpublished. Cousins, Uncles, and of course my Dad.

Yet, in a way loving to write is a curse, because I can't bear the rejection that comes hand in hand with it. What I write is not what most people wish to read. It's not romantic. It's not a mystery with a cool detective and a tight plot. It's not horror. And it's not well,
memoir. My humor is much like my father's, dry and subtle, and most don't get it. And I think at times, my insecurities show through the cracks. I play with words, like a child might with mud, making mud pies, not like someone finishing a crossword puzzle. My favorite authors, the one's I emanate or admire tend to be stream of conscious or literary, people who play outside the lines, not those who stay inside them. And I'm stubborn. I will not cater to others. In that way too, I take after my father more than my mother I guess. I'm flexible about many things, but not my art, for some strange reason. Perhaps because I have such a low opinion of popular opinion? And always have. How can I take seriously people who consider Titantic the best film ever? Or would spend money on the Twilight series, James Patterson, and the Da Vinci Code? I don't consider myself a snob, but I guess in a way I am, at least on some issues. And I'm not afraid to throw my opinions out there - well not in writing anyway, person to person, at work? Yes. I say little there. But here? I will tell you more or less what I think. Perhaps it is because I can't elsewhere? Too much at stake.

For me, sharing my writing is a bit like walking across a high wire, without a net. You know someone will hate it. You don't know if anyone will like it. But if you don't walk across the wire, you are stuck forever on that cliff face, staring at the opposite side, wondering what it is like. While the fall is painful, it doesn't kill you, you may wish it would, but it doesn't. And even though the climb back up the cliff to that wire is a hard one, it's a necessary one, or you are stuck forever on the ground resenting those who walk across the wire above you.

I watched the film Under The Tuscan Sun tonight, which I've been told is nothing like the book in which it is based. It is a surprisingly good film. With Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh playing lesbian lovers, albeit briefly. And Diane Lane playing a woman who finds her way out of a painful divorce through the rebuilding of a villa. I found it reassuring and hopeful. A gentle simple film. The sort that makes one oddly happy.

Also watched Doctor Who's finale this weekend. I cried at the end of Journey's End - the Donna storyline touched me in a way that none of the other companions quite did.
It was so tragic. Far more so, I think than Doc Horrible or much else I've seen of late.
And it parralleled other Donna tales - Turn Left and Forest of the Dead. It seems she is doomed to forget her life of adventure and the self-esteem and confidence that came with it.
I'm not sure I like the underlying political message in these episodes regarding women and our place in society, but by the same token I'm not sure I'm supposed to. I may write a longer post exploring my thoughts on this topic at a later date if time permits.

And Californication S1, courtesy of netflix. I'm not crazy about it. Watched it mostly for David Duchovny, whom I watched X-Files mostly for as well. Duchovny is quite charming and good in it. It is described as a comedy, but I did not find it that funny, except for one scene - which was sort of absurd. Best way to describe it is - that it felt a lot like the most recent season of Nip/Tuck - without the misogyny/misanthropy, the plastic surgery scenes, and nicer characters. Don't see myself watching S2.

Time for bed and continuing a letter to my grandmother. I've decided to write to her, regardless of whether or not she can truly understand what I've written. Don't know if that is selfish or not, right now, everything feels a little selfish.