Another Interview

The holiday season killed the momentum on several of the interviews I was doing for my series of straight spouse interviews on Northern Lights, and I haven't managed to get very many of them going again since then--as much due to my own busyness as to theirs. Miki Biddles, though, has been kind enough to keep going steadily through the interview and I've finally managed to put all my questions and her answers together and post them. Enjoy.

Wondering

A couple weeks ago FoxyJ checked out The Prestige from the library. A very cool movie, but the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was "Hey! It's Batman versus Wolverine! And look, there's Alfred!"

Then shortly after that Ken Jennings posted about "superhero crossover" movies where actors who have starred in superhero movies show up together. Besides The Prestige, Ken alluded to Wonder Boys as the movie that made one of his blog readers proclaim, “Holy smokes, Spidey and Iron Man are doin’ it!” So of course I went right to the library website and put Wonder Boys on hold.

As it turns out, this movie has more than superhero sex that should have made me like it more than I did. Besides having some great performances by Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., and Katie Holmes (Batman's girlfriend, by the way), this film has the Mr. Fob advantage of being about writers and writing. Once I realized this, I was excited--I'm a writer, so maybe this movie would somehow speak to the depths of my soul and tell me something wonderful and profound about writing. Perhaps it was this high expectation that left me feeling most disappointed in the movie with the aspects that had anything to do with writing. I don't know what it was* specifically, but it felt to me like a movie about actors pretending to be writers, not a movie about writers.

I remember feeling similarly about Finding Forrester, which like this was a great movie but felt somewhat artificial to me as far as representing anything like the world of writers that I know. Is it just that these are particular representations of a larger topic that I have a particular experience with, and because the particulars don't match up it seems fake to me? Or is it that they just don't do a good job of being movies about writers? My friends who (like me) are pretentious enough to call yourselves writers, have you seen movies about writers that rang true to you? Have the rest of you had similar experiences with movies about some other subject in your personal domain?

And is this why I was also disappointed by Unbreakable, which everyone told me I'd love as a comic-book fan, but ultimately felt like the work of an outsider to the genre?**


*After writing this post but before publishing it, I've figured out what I don't like about the portrayal of writing in either of the films mentioned above. In both writing is made out to be this magical process that somehow transcends the experience of mere mortal non-writers, but I don't know any writer for whom this is the case. You come up with an idea, you force it onto paper (or onto the screen), it's crap, and then you work and work until it's less crap than it was at first. There's nothing magical about it.

**Notice how I nicely brought the post back to the theme of superheroes, which is what I'd started with but otherwise had nothing to do with anything? Isn't that wonderfully literary of me?

Common Sense Wins in the California Supreme Court

(at least for the moment)


This makes me happy to be moving to California. Really, I don't see how anyone could see a same-sex marriage ban as constitutional in any context.

Vote 2008!

As FoxyJ hinted at recently, we're starting to think about getting a new vehicle. Our Chevy Cavalier has served us well for the past seven years, but we're ready for something newer, bigger, and hopefully more fuel efficient. More specifically, we're looking for a vehicle that (a) has power locks, windows, and remote entry; (b) has more cargo space for road trips, room for two car seats and a third adult passenger for when we give rides, and possibly for two car seats and a booster (this is not an announcement--I'm talking about sometime in the next five years here); and (c) gets more than the average of 23 MPG that our current car gets--not just so we can feel smug about being environmentally friendly, but so we can cut down on gas costs and most importantly contribute less to global warming. The problem is that (b) and (c) conflict. As of yet they don't make hybrid vans, so our options are a bigger sedan that gets better mileage or an efficient minivan that gets about the same mileage as what we currently get. It's a tough call because we don't technically need a van, but it sure would be nice to have that extra space.

What do you think? Should we be more Earth-friendly and get one of these hybrids:

Toyota Prius

Toyota Camry Hybrid

Honda Accord Hybrid

or should we be slightly less Earth-friendly and get one of these vans:

Kia Rondo

Mazda5

?

Foxy points out that we don't drive much and will probably drive even less in Davis, so it's not like we'd be guzzling all that much gas in either case. But I really like the idea of a car that gets 45 MPG. Any thoughts?

For The Record

A conversation at the grocery store this morning at 6:30:

CLERK: Okay, here's a trivia question.
MR. FOB: Um. Okay.
CLERK: What's the name of Donald Duck's fiancée?
MR. FOB: Daisy?
CLERK: (Overjoyed) No! Daisy is his cousin. His fiancée is Daffy!

I didn't argue because it was 6:30 and because I don't argue with people I don't know, at least not in person. But let it be known publicly in my passive-aggressive way that he was wrong and I was right. Daisy is Donald's girlfriend; Daffy is a male duck, which in theory would allow him to be Donald's fiancé (I didn't hear whether the clerk was pronouncing one or two e's), except that Daffy is owned by Warner Brothers and Donald by Disney. Not even Romeo and Juliet were that star-crossed.

Wisdom from Mr. Fob

Whenever you have to choose between doing it now and doing it later, just let someone else do it.

For My Birthday Girl

(As a sidenote unrelated to FoxyJ's birthday, this song featuring FOB singer Patrick Stump was supposed to be on the Roots' latest album but when it leaked a couple months ago longtime Roots fans cried "Sell out!" and the band pulled it off the album, except for the iTunes version where it appears as a bonus track. I bought the iTunes version just so I could get the song. Sell out or no, it's a cool song.)