01/03/10: Thoughts on James Cameron's Avatar
I saw Avatar in 3-D on New Year’s Eve. My expectations were very low as I walked into the theater. Pre-release interviews and pieces like this one by Annalee Newitz gave me the impression that the movie was a science fictional version of Dances with Wolves, a futuristic tale of noble savages and the white man who “goes native” to save them because they can’t save themselves. Grr. I’m also a CGI skeptic, and thought that the effects might irritate me with their blatant fakeness or creep me out by falling into the “uncanny valley”.
My reaction was a lot more complex. There are serious problems with the depiction of the Na’vi, the world building, the dialog and the characterization, but I still found the film to be both thought-provoking and occasionally moving. Spoilers below the jump.
My reaction was a lot more complex. There are serious problems with the depiction of the Na’vi, the world building, the dialog and the characterization, but I still found the film to be both thought-provoking and occasionally moving. Spoilers below the jump.
12/31/09: Bye bye, naughties
I'm going to just say it: in many ways, this was a crappy decade. G-dubs stole an election and somehow remained president for 8 whole years; 9/11 happened, followed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the U.S. trashed its reputation around the globe with arrogant, irresponsible, and occasionally criminal behavior; and the economy became tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk. There was a lot of upset and sadness in my personal world, too. Both my parents died, as did my half-brother and my beloved cat. My partner of over 10 years broke up with me in a slow and messy way. I had a nervous breakdown that it took me almost two years to get over. And some of my closest friendships senselessly exploded in flames.
And yet... if there is one thing I have learned this decade, it's that life is chock full of data of all kinds. At some point, you have to decide what you are going to focus on, because you just can't comprehend it all. And savoring the positives is healthier emotionally than dwelling on the negatives. New-Age-y platitude? Yep, but also true.
Putting on the rose-tinted glasses, I see that the past ten years had some serious good in them, too. I got my driver's license at age 31, ushering in a new era of mobility and independence. Several trips to Europe expanded my mind. I got a well-paying job with a non-profit company whose work I truly believe in. I had quality time with both my parents before they died. I bought a house that I love. The art of television truly matured and gave me some of my favorite shows ever: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, Firefly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Wire, and Mad Men. Social networking on Facebook and Twitter revolutionized my internet experience and reconnected me with many old friends. My ties to the world of feminist science fiction grew stronger, WisCon became my spiritual home, and I even got published. Connections with old and new friends and family delighted and supported me through hard times. And last but not least in this hardly-exhaustive list: Obama was elected president. That alone could restore one's faith in a just universe.
As the new year and a new decade approach, I am feeling hopeful. Goodbye 2009, hello future!
And yet... if there is one thing I have learned this decade, it's that life is chock full of data of all kinds. At some point, you have to decide what you are going to focus on, because you just can't comprehend it all. And savoring the positives is healthier emotionally than dwelling on the negatives. New-Age-y platitude? Yep, but also true.
Putting on the rose-tinted glasses, I see that the past ten years had some serious good in them, too. I got my driver's license at age 31, ushering in a new era of mobility and independence. Several trips to Europe expanded my mind. I got a well-paying job with a non-profit company whose work I truly believe in. I had quality time with both my parents before they died. I bought a house that I love. The art of television truly matured and gave me some of my favorite shows ever: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, Firefly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Wire, and Mad Men. Social networking on Facebook and Twitter revolutionized my internet experience and reconnected me with many old friends. My ties to the world of feminist science fiction grew stronger, WisCon became my spiritual home, and I even got published. Connections with old and new friends and family delighted and supported me through hard times. And last but not least in this hardly-exhaustive list: Obama was elected president. That alone could restore one's faith in a just universe.
As the new year and a new decade approach, I am feeling hopeful. Goodbye 2009, hello future!
02/19/09: Mom's obituary
This is the text of the obit that appeared with slight edits in the Times Argus and Caledonian Record:
Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 76, died Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
She was born May 25, 1932, in Montpelier, VT, the daughter of Edward Brunelle and Dorothy (Dunton) Brunelle.
She married George Siekierski in 1951. They lived in Montpelier, VT; New Haven, CT; and West Springfield, MA and had a son, Keith. They divorced in 1962 after a period of separation.
For several years she was a reporter for the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, writing human interest stories. There she met Lee Dawley, originally of Gowanda, NY; they married in 1963. After their move to S. Ryegate in 1964, she worked at the Caledonian Record in St. Johnsbury and the Orange County Council of Social Agencies. Lee was stricken with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, and as his condition worsened she spent more time tending to him. From 1985-2004, caring for him was her sole occupation.
Always an advocate of higher education, she was late to attend college herself. She studied at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT from 1976-1980, first focusing on the visual arts before pursuing a B.A. in Philosophy. She went on to a four-year graduate program at the State University of New York at Albany; she received her Masters in Philosophy in 1990. Studies in linguistics also led her to summer programs at Ohio Northern University in Ada, OH and Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, Hungary. Her engagement with ideas was lifelong, and she continued to read in history, philosophy, and neuroscience until her final hospitalization.
She was predeceased by husband Lee Dawley, son Keith Siekierski, brother Philip Brunelle, and sister Kathleen Haggett. She is survived by brother Robert Brunelle (and wife Jackie) of S. Barre, VT; two daughters, Andrea Sharp (and husband Steve) of Essex Junction, VT and Janice Dawley of Burlington, VT; and son Hugh Dawley of Burlington, VT as well as several nieces and grandchildren.
A memorial ceremony will be held at 1:00 PM in the Fellowship Hall of the S. Ryegate Presbyterian Church on May 25, 2009. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the American Heart Association or the American Civil Liberties Union.
-----
The Times Argus created a guest book that anyone is free to sign. I was surprised to see that my mother's childhood friend Claire Buley signed it soon after it appeared, even though they hadn't been in touch in decades. That tells me that out of sight is not out of mind for a lot of people, and that each of us leaves an impression on the world as we pass through it. You are not forgotten, Mutti.
Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 76, died Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
She was born May 25, 1932, in Montpelier, VT, the daughter of Edward Brunelle and Dorothy (Dunton) Brunelle.
She married George Siekierski in 1951. They lived in Montpelier, VT; New Haven, CT; and West Springfield, MA and had a son, Keith. They divorced in 1962 after a period of separation.
For several years she was a reporter for the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, writing human interest stories. There she met Lee Dawley, originally of Gowanda, NY; they married in 1963. After their move to S. Ryegate in 1964, she worked at the Caledonian Record in St. Johnsbury and the Orange County Council of Social Agencies. Lee was stricken with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, and as his condition worsened she spent more time tending to him. From 1985-2004, caring for him was her sole occupation.
Always an advocate of higher education, she was late to attend college herself. She studied at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT from 1976-1980, first focusing on the visual arts before pursuing a B.A. in Philosophy. She went on to a four-year graduate program at the State University of New York at Albany; she received her Masters in Philosophy in 1990. Studies in linguistics also led her to summer programs at Ohio Northern University in Ada, OH and Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, Hungary. Her engagement with ideas was lifelong, and she continued to read in history, philosophy, and neuroscience until her final hospitalization.
She was predeceased by husband Lee Dawley, son Keith Siekierski, brother Philip Brunelle, and sister Kathleen Haggett. She is survived by brother Robert Brunelle (and wife Jackie) of S. Barre, VT; two daughters, Andrea Sharp (and husband Steve) of Essex Junction, VT and Janice Dawley of Burlington, VT; and son Hugh Dawley of Burlington, VT as well as several nieces and grandchildren.
A memorial ceremony will be held at 1:00 PM in the Fellowship Hall of the S. Ryegate Presbyterian Church on May 25, 2009. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the American Heart Association or the American Civil Liberties Union.
-----
The Times Argus created a guest book that anyone is free to sign. I was surprised to see that my mother's childhood friend Claire Buley signed it soon after it appeared, even though they hadn't been in touch in decades. That tells me that out of sight is not out of mind for a lot of people, and that each of us leaves an impression on the world as we pass through it. You are not forgotten, Mutti.
12/22/08: Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 1932-2008
My mother died on Friday, December 12. She was 76 years old.
I've been working on an obituary over the past week and wondering how to distill her life and place in the world down to a single column in a newspaper. It's hard to do, so I ended up copying the structure of the obituary she wrote for Dad in 2004. Lots of names of relatives, educational milestones, jobs she held. Those are all meaningful, because they highlight things she valued: family, professional achievement, the life of the mind. But they only hint at some of her most characteristic traits -- her shyness, her tough-minded skepticism, her strong sense of humor, her imagination.
I loved her very much. I will miss her.
11/30/08: Life lessons
This is a story about my engagement with the life and work of Robert Downey Jr.
It starts with a series of roles I saw him play in movies in the last couple of years. A Scanner Darkly (hilarious motor mouth double-crosser), Zodiac (drunken reporter sliding into the trash bin of life, delivers my favorite line of the movie to Jake Gyllenhaal: “You’re doing that thing, the thing we discussed, the thing I don't like, starts with an ‘L’ ” (i.e. looming). I remember quoting it for Art Sousa one day at work and him looking bemused), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (hapless petty thief drawn into a crime investigation in Hollywood; lots of back and forth funny banter with Val Kilmer, who plays a homosexual private detective nicknamed “Gay Perry”), then the biggie, Iron Man (I have a lot of misgivings about this movie. It is really violent and disturbing, the Afghanistan characters are simplistic to the point of stereotype, and the final battle between Iron Monger and Iron Man is a lame coda to the film. But… every moment Robert Downey Jr. is on the screen is redeemed for me by his light touch, line readings that are perfectly natural and funny and surprising in a genre that tends to sour brooding and leaden delivery. He’s not being ironic, either. It’s obvious he’s enjoying himself, that he loves the material). Tropic Thunder sort of an after thought. There is apparently a whole series of movies he’s done that focus on his powers of mimicry (Chaplin, Heart and Souls), and this is another in that vein. He is completely unrecognizable here, even apart from the “pigmentation procedure” (i.e. blackface), he speaks in a deeper voice than normal and enunciates in a bizarre faux-ghetto vocabulary and rhythm. The effect is striking, but not particularly worthy in itself. The one exception is the scene in which he pretends to be a Chinese rice farmer, speaking Chinese with a ghetto accent that even to me, almost completely ignorant of Chinese, sounds absurd and hilarious. The fact that the child drug lord he is talking to briefly seems to believe he really is Chinese proves to me that the “movie within a movie” is actually three levels down, that there is a movie within a movie within a movie. At the very least, his character has three levels. (“I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”) Talk about metafiction!
It starts with a series of roles I saw him play in movies in the last couple of years. A Scanner Darkly (hilarious motor mouth double-crosser), Zodiac (drunken reporter sliding into the trash bin of life, delivers my favorite line of the movie to Jake Gyllenhaal: “You’re doing that thing, the thing we discussed, the thing I don't like, starts with an ‘L’ ” (i.e. looming). I remember quoting it for Art Sousa one day at work and him looking bemused), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (hapless petty thief drawn into a crime investigation in Hollywood; lots of back and forth funny banter with Val Kilmer, who plays a homosexual private detective nicknamed “Gay Perry”), then the biggie, Iron Man (I have a lot of misgivings about this movie. It is really violent and disturbing, the Afghanistan characters are simplistic to the point of stereotype, and the final battle between Iron Monger and Iron Man is a lame coda to the film. But… every moment Robert Downey Jr. is on the screen is redeemed for me by his light touch, line readings that are perfectly natural and funny and surprising in a genre that tends to sour brooding and leaden delivery. He’s not being ironic, either. It’s obvious he’s enjoying himself, that he loves the material). Tropic Thunder sort of an after thought. There is apparently a whole series of movies he’s done that focus on his powers of mimicry (Chaplin, Heart and Souls), and this is another in that vein. He is completely unrecognizable here, even apart from the “pigmentation procedure” (i.e. blackface), he speaks in a deeper voice than normal and enunciates in a bizarre faux-ghetto vocabulary and rhythm. The effect is striking, but not particularly worthy in itself. The one exception is the scene in which he pretends to be a Chinese rice farmer, speaking Chinese with a ghetto accent that even to me, almost completely ignorant of Chinese, sounds absurd and hilarious. The fact that the child drug lord he is talking to briefly seems to believe he really is Chinese proves to me that the “movie within a movie” is actually three levels down, that there is a movie within a movie within a movie. At the very least, his character has three levels. (“I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”) Talk about metafiction!
11/08/08: A beautiful sight
08/05/08: Dispatch from Oahu
We're having another slow morning today, downloading photos off our cameras, blogging and recovering from our marathon day trip to the big island of Hawaii yesterday. Beth booked a trip with Polynesian Adventure Tours that required us to get up by 4:30 AM and didn't get us back to Oahu until about 9:30 PM. It was a difficult schedule, but worth it for all the ground we covered, and the cool sights we saw. These included: the Mauna Loa macadamia nut farm and factory, an orchid farm, the Kilauea caldera, the black lava plains of Kupaianaha, and a distant view of new land being made where magma is spilling into the sea. It being daytime, we couldn't actually see any red glow, but the huge acidic cloud hovering over the outlet repeatedly pulsed with brownish explosions. Hot stuff!
The other big day trip so far was to the Polynesian Cultural Center just north of us in Laie. It was a total tourist trap, complete with staffers who took photos of each group to be sold later at $18 a pop, some sketchily differentiated "island" areas with timed programming of music and dance, an Imax theater, a buffet-style luau, and a final stage show titled "Horizons" that had some cool fire-juggling at the end. The weirdest thing about the place is that it is owned and operated by Brigham Young University -- a Mormon college with 95% Mormon students. Being a skeptical person, I kept wondering what religious agenda the place was trying to promote, but I never identified anything. It just seemed like a money-making venture.
The rest of our time has been spent in Honolulu at the zoo or various restaurants, hiking, swimming in the deliciously warm ocean at the beach, and driving on roads with names like "Kamehameha", "Likelike" and "Kalanianaole". It's all starting to seem normal. Nice!
I hope to post at least one more dispatch before we leave next week. In the mean time, check out the new Hawaii photo album in my gallery.
tags: Hawaii
The other big day trip so far was to the Polynesian Cultural Center just north of us in Laie. It was a total tourist trap, complete with staffers who took photos of each group to be sold later at $18 a pop, some sketchily differentiated "island" areas with timed programming of music and dance, an Imax theater, a buffet-style luau, and a final stage show titled "Horizons" that had some cool fire-juggling at the end. The weirdest thing about the place is that it is owned and operated by Brigham Young University -- a Mormon college with 95% Mormon students. Being a skeptical person, I kept wondering what religious agenda the place was trying to promote, but I never identified anything. It just seemed like a money-making venture.
The rest of our time has been spent in Honolulu at the zoo or various restaurants, hiking, swimming in the deliciously warm ocean at the beach, and driving on roads with names like "Kamehameha", "Likelike" and "Kalanianaole". It's all starting to seem normal. Nice!
I hope to post at least one more dispatch before we leave next week. In the mean time, check out the new Hawaii photo album in my gallery.
tags: Hawaii
07/15/08: Reasons to be cheerful
I just watched the first episode of Joss Whedon's web musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It is hilarious, in the vein of silly superhero creations like The Tick and Mystery Men, but with Sondheim-esque compositions! It stars Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion! It was independently produced by Joss and his relations! It is the future of entertainment financing and distribution!
No joke, I watched it five times already (via iTunes download, because the demand caused the free web site to crash). You will love it. Go see.
And that's not the half of it! I still have a new Hellboy movie to watch; the Batman movie comes out in a few days; the X-Files movie premiers July 25; and my birthday follows two days later. And then I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks. My head asplode. Yay!
tags: Dr. Horrible
No joke, I watched it five times already (via iTunes download, because the demand caused the free web site to crash). You will love it. Go see.
And that's not the half of it! I still have a new Hellboy movie to watch; the Batman movie comes out in a few days; the X-Files movie premiers July 25; and my birthday follows two days later. And then I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks. My head asplode. Yay!
tags: Dr. Horrible
07/06/08: R.I.P. Thomas M. Disch
I just learned from Making Light that Thomas M. Disch, the author of 334 and On Wings of Song -- two of the best works of SF I've ever read -- killed himself two days ago. Damn. Fucking damn it. Yes, he was a bastard sometimes, particularly lately, but he wrote some amazing stuff that spoke of a larger spirit and artistic sensibility than most people ever know. I wish he had had a better life.
ETA: NY Times Obituary
tags: Thomas M. Disch
ETA: NY Times Obituary
tags: Thomas M. Disch
05/24/08: At WisCon
It's a couple of days into WisCon, and I'm struggling to keep up with all the programming, people, and basic physical needs like eating and sleeping. But I'm hanging out with Liz and John and getting reconnected with lots of other folks and blogging, and it is good. I plan to write something up after the convention, but in the mean time I've been posting to Feminist SF -- The Blog! Go there if you're interested in up to the minute reports.
tags: WisCon 32
tags: WisCon 32
