The fences are gone!
Month: August 2013
Three sentence movie reviews: the Spectacular Now
What was spectacular about the Spectacular Now was the acting and the actors. Both sank into their roles in a way that I don’t often see in a movie with teenagers and for that alone this movie is worth seeing.* I had problems with the ending–it felt revised and tacked on in an unsatisfying way–and I didn’t feel a tremendous depth, a problem I solved by reading the novel, which was quite good.**
Cost: $7.00
Where watched: Living Room Theaters with S. North.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/spectacular_now.html
*There were a lot of interesting non-standard teen movie things to like about this movie.
**In novel/book comparisons, I observed that it is very difficult to bring to the movie screen a book character like Aimee, the female protagonist/lead. I think the problem is that everything is shiny in the movies, making it difficult to project the inherent awkwardness/uncool persona that easily comes across on the page. Nerds live in books, easily. They don’t really exist well on the silver screen.
Prompt writing: Letters.
This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland. It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts. As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.
The prompt here was more complex and came near the end of the series. Everyone thought of a number between 8 and 80 and then wrote it down. Then we passed that number to the person on our right. The number passed to me was 15. Then, we had to write a letter to ourselves at that age. After we were done with that prompt, our next prompt was to write back.
Dear Patty,
In six years, you will shed that nickname, reverting to the three syllable name of your birth. It will be a relief, the metamorphosis, but you will always love those who knew you when your name was two syllables. Those boys? All of them? They are all consuming, I know. And they will be for awhile and let’s face it, your teachers aren’t going to be fabulous the next few years. A few standouts, sure, but academically, you are going to be a bit bored. So get some homework done somewhere, but there’s nothing you can do about the boys.
You are going to stop writing creatively. Not because you aren’t good, but something will happen and it will go away. But keep writing in those journals. The writing will come back eventually and the feeling will be tremendous.
You will have your heart broken and it won’t be easy, knowing what to do when you feel like that. You will make a lot of wrong choices. I wish I could say differently, but I can’t. It sounds grim, no? But you get out. You leave the town, your friends and your family–everything–behind and it’s all you ever wanted it to be.
Your twenties will suck too, but in a different way. I don’t even want to go into that now, it’s too soon. But you are fine. You will muddle through and you will look back on this time with a crimp in your heart and you will laugh at your joys and sorrows. And you will never want to be fifteen ever again.
Sincerely,
38
Dear 38,
Wow. Could you make it sound any worse? I mean, Jesus Christ, according to you, school is going to suck, boys are going to suck, writing will suck and it will just keep on sucking for a long time. You’re really making me want to fucking age, chica. But the getting out sounds good. And I’ve grown to hate being called Patty. It’s too much sorority tea party and not enough bad-assed rebel.
Am I really fine? Will any of those boys every like me back? I mean really, you skimped on some pretty important details. What about Craig? He seems promising. Does anything happen with him? Oh! Or Shawn? Maybe things move in a good direction there? Come on, I need more details! Just about the boys!
Yours,
15
Postcard from San Antonio
Here’s an actual postrcossing postcard, not one from my friends. This postcard is from Diana, who tells me that this is the Riverwalk at Christmas, but that San Antonio also has a Sea World and several large Army and Air Force Bases. As I’ve not been to San Antonio, this is handy to know.
Postcard from Norway
This arrived after the naked hiker, but was written before. It’s from Sara too. She was loving Norway.
I experimented with trying to trick people in to thinking I’d been to the fjords myself by taking a picture of the postcard, but I’m working with a different camera (great sad story there, which I won’t tell now) so I couldn’t get a crisp shot.
Awesome skirt!
I couldn’t quite catch up to her so the picture is blurry and farther away than I would want. But this skirt was fabulous! Brown dotted Swiss with these very bright turquoise gores. I loved it.
Postcard from Norway
At least I think it’s from Norway. Check in the comments, after Sara reads, there will be a yea or a nay posted to that query.
This is from Sara and is funny on many levels. One: naked hiker. Two: Sara picking it out and actually purchasing it from the clerk. Three: oh, I’ll just let Sara tell it.
“How could I not send this to you! You know I was embarrassed to purchase it and had a funny interaction with the Eastern European clerk. The other funny thing is that this was just one of the almost ten version s of odd nudity in the woods/fjord/skiing, etc. I hope you got a laugh.”
This is from Sara and is funny on many levels. One: naked hiker. Two: Sara picking it out and actually purchasing it from the clerk. Three: oh, I’ll just let Sara tell it.
“How could I not send this to you! You know I was embarrassed to purchase it and had a funny interaction with the Eastern European clerk. The other funny thing is that this was just one of the almost ten version s of odd nudity in the woods/fjord/skiing, etc. I hope you got a laugh.”
Yep-per. I did indeed.
A stack of movies not watched.
Oh vacation. You start out one way, hopeful that there will be much leisure time. And then you go in an entirely different direction. I think I watched one of these movies. Maybe not even that?
Art Building. Signage.
Hey look. I’m back to work. And things are getting close to finished. No “pops” of color, still.
And it’s not called the Art Building after all. It’s called ArtHouse.
A is for Apron. Provence Smock. Prepping apron for bias tape.
Here’s a closeup of the material for one of my aprons. It’s green seersucker with lemons on it. So cute! I’m finding the apron directions hideous, so soon there will be directions illustrated and adapted. But in the meantime, here I am stay-stitching and trimming.