Bold, Blonde, and Batman

Writing? What’s that? The ideas are percolating, the urge is there, but the time just isn’t. Consolation, I’m having fun with the kids this week, the first official week of summer. Since we are a movie-mad household (met my husband in film school!), one major source of summer fun is to see the summer movies whether they be good, bad, or indifferent.

“Batman Begins” helped to launch our summer movie binge. We, and specifically I, loved it. Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer would say. I wasn’t a fan of Tim Burton’s 1989 bore-fest “Batman,” in spite of a serious and continuing case of the hots for Michael Keaton (Johnny Dangerously, anyone?); never saw the sequels. But this new Batman incarnation is very good, with lots of action, lots of scenes with Christian Bale shirtless, and some philosophical mumbo-jumbo to give the film a nice “literary” touch. What’s more, it follows closely to the original comic book story.

The only thing I didn’t like about the movie was Katie Holmes as “stock crusading district attorney character #3” not only because her character had absolutely no depth but also because Katie Holmes looks and sounds like she’s 12. What’s the deal with that? I’ve noticed that more and more Hollywood heroines look like pre-teens. Bad enough young actresses have to be skeletal thin to get an acting job (except for the boobs, of course, which are allowed to at least look plump even if they are in reality rock solid lumps of silicone)… But now they also have to look like jail-bait. It’s creepy.

In Hollywood’s olden days, women were women with a capital “W” and men sure liked that. Ingrid Bergman was 27 when she made Casablanca and you believed her Ilsa Lund character was a mature woman capable of running from the Nazis with her hubby, Victor Laszlo. And risking everything to have an affair with Bogart’s Rick. Ilsa was intelligent, mature, smolderingly sexy, and yes, even vulnerable. And ultimately unforgettable. Katie Holmes is 26 and her “Batman Begins” character…uh what’s her name? (To paraphrase Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” movie characters had NAMES back then)… Anyway, Katie’s little girl attorney looks and acts like a cheerleader who’s misplaced one of her pom-poms before the big game—uninteresting, unmemorable.

Okay, that’s enough of a rant for now—but I’m not done with Hollywood yet. Next time: Where the old women at? Do you see any women over the age of 40 on TV today (with the exception of the feisty judges on Law & Order and gloriously scheming witches on the soaps)? And why does every crime show have to have a beautiful blonde on the team who’s brilliant but also damaged and emotionally unavailable? C’mon, they’re BLONDE, they’re BEAUTIFUL, they had a choice of many dates to the prom, even if they were from Whitetrashville. How damaged can they be? And why does every beautiful blonde who had a BAD childhood join the FBI? Or CSI? None of them could get a job at the DMV? Just asking…

Janet. No power in the ‘verse can stop me!

This 'n That...

No writing for many days… Feel like head is going to blow! Actually, I’m still kind of basking in the glow of completing “And the Angels Sing,” book 2 in my series, She Can Dot It: The Sunny Harte World War II Mysteries. Awesomely long title, eh?

Had a fabulous father’s day! My husband arranged his own special activities which included riding a train south to Providence and hitting the zoo there. All we (myself, kids) had to do was show up. It was fun riding on a train, which was built the year I was born and was as old and creaky as I am. I spent some time in that “writer’s trance” imagining Sunny and her pals on the train in 1943, what it smelled liked and felt like (besides being crammed cheek-by-jowl full of soldiers!)

The trip had many highlights, including a game of “spot the crap on the side of the tracks.” Chairs, sofas, tin cans, numerous tires, one of those plastic egg-shaped kiddie cars, enough Dunkin’ Donuts cups and bags to wallpaper Mt. Everest, and a piece of a washing machine. The washing machine was expected—did you ever notice that when you hike in the woods or in some remote place, you’ll inevitably stumble upon a washing machine (often with a dryer; they travel in pairs). Which begs the question, why? Why would someone take the trouble to drag a washing machine into the middle of the woods? To avoid paying a $50 hauling fee? I’ve got a secret for all you washing-machine abandoners: leave the thing on the corner; the town/city will get so sick of looking at it they’ll come get it for free.

The other two highlights were the amazing elephant projectile pooping at the zoo (do I really need to describe it?) and the wealth of graffiti decorating the overpasses and supports we passed on the train. Graffiti, as in urban art, not just the “F-word” in four-foot letters (though we saw plenty of that). Words sketched out in big, bubbly letters so distorted you can’t make them out. The letters look like letters, but put them together and you have no idea what the word says.

Who writes graffiti? Guys who’ve dragged their washing machine out to the tracks to abandon it and just happen to have a can of spray paint in their jeans pocket? And how do they learn to write such mesmerizing but ultimately unreadable graffiti? Is there a class they can take? "Graffiti 101, meets MWF, lab fee for spray paint." It’s quite the quandary!

Adventure over I’m now back to working, taking advantage of the last full week of school to get things rolling on my next tome. Not sure what it’ll be about, but I’ve already got a catchy title: Sex, Graffiti, and Washing Machines!

Janet – No power in the verse can stop me!

Hot enough for you?

It’s official… Mother Nature is really pissed. Winter in New England this year was looooong. Extra long. Long as in went all the way through May. I didn’t even have a chance to admire my tulips and lilacs this year because I was huddled inside, bundled up in layers and wool socks trying to keep from freezing. It was the coldest May on record in these pahts; I knew that when it was 44-degrees (or as we say it, fawty-fowah) on May 22nd and I wore my winter hat when I took the dog out. Winter finally relaxed its icy hold around June 1st. But Mother N. wasn’t through with us—the temperature promptly skyrocketed to 90 and it’s been holding there ever since. And just for kicks, she threw in the Triple-H recipe—hazy, hot, and humid.

That’s real bad weather for writing. I’m distracted by the heat, logy and groggy, merely pecking at the keys today, but at least I’ve got an explanation for such crazy weather. Forget Global Warming, forget gaseous emissions or any of that other science mumbo-jumbo you’ve heard, I know the truth: Mother Nature is going through menopause.

Well, why not? She’s been around a long time; it seems only natural that aging might affect her mood and ultimately lead to precipitation. In fact, every stage of her life has affected the weather we’ve had to suffer through. An overachiever in her formative years, she quickly learned how to count the months and divide them into seasons. In her teen years she suffered from severe PMS (planetary menstrual syndrome), what with all the volcanic eruptions and stormy Mondays. Then the mommy-track years with sunny days and pretty damn awful days (also known as the Dark Ages). So, now she’s matured and she’s at another turning point, probably the biggest in her life. Menopause; which means hot flashes, dramatic swings from hot-to-cold and back again, weepy days, and sudden surges of temper. That explains all the hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes we’ve been having lately.

And what about her senior years? Will she mellow and give us balmy, Florida-in-February weather or become a cranky old biddy? Guess we'll have to weather the storm—anyone hitting 10-billion has earned the right to be as cranky as they want to be!

Oh, wait, I see a thunderstorm is predicted for this evening (Mother just clearing her throat for attention), so maybe a break in the heat—and I’ll be able to write after all.

Janet - No power in the 'verse (except one mean Mother) can stop me!

And the winner is...

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m kind of disappointed in the identity of “Deep Throat.” I mean, who the heck is W. Mark Felt? I prefer the old guessing games that had Deep Throat as anyone from Henry Kissinger to Elvis to Pat Nixon after she’d had a spat with Tricky Dick and wanted to get even. It was fun to think maybe it was Diane Sawyer, then a young White House press aide in the Nixon administration. The concept of the woman who now lobs softer-than-softball questions at Brad Pitt and coos at him during interviews toppling the government just slays me.

Writing has been slow this past week, as I was preparing two manuscripts to send out to contests (synopsis & first three chapters). Writing contests are one of those love/hate things. Love the opportunity for feedback from the judges (who are often published writers) and the chance to get my work in front of editors and agents if I final. Hate the arbitrariness—judges are people too, and what they like/dislike, know/don’t know can impact their scoring.

I recently received contest scores that went something like this: 100 (out of 100); 96; 49. Why? The third judge was a former East German Olympic judge, tossed out of work by Germany’s reunification and taking out her frustrations on me, the capitalist romance/mystery writer… Just kidding (well, maybe not—where did all those East German judges go?). I don’t really know why the scores were so low except she said she didn’t like the dark, paranormal concept of my novel, didn’t think it fit in something purporting to be romance. With my combined scores, I missed finalling in that contest by a whisker.

I’m not alone in this strange, lop-sided kind of scoring; I’ve heard horror stories from other writers detailing the same thing. Especially from writers of historical works, who’ve been scored low because some judges’ knowledge of history is a bit squishy. Which doesn’t surprise me, with all the budget cuts in schools these days—“We can only afford the Cliff Notes version of history: Rome, not built in a day; Marie Antoinette, big hair, liked cake; Columbus, thought he was heading for Asia, typical man, wouldn’t ask for directions; Paul Revere, liked to yell; The Alamo, forget it; war, war, war, war; TV and Elvis. Any questions?”

But I keep entering contests, just as I keep plugging along with my writing and revising what I’ve already written. I LEARN from the experience—not only how to be a better writer, but also how to deal with frustration and sometimes negative feedback. I’m building that thick hide, so if some day I actually do get a book published and get a nasty review, I’ll be able to laugh it off (with the help of lots of Lindt Truffles, of course).

Janet - No power in the 'verse can stop me!