Book Club: Why it's easy to fall in love via letters.

 

Late in January my book club at Southwestern University had possibility the most sprinted book club discussion I’ve ever witnessed.

The book we were discussing was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

The action in the book is set just after World War II, and is focused on the recounting of events that occurred during the (real-life) Nazi occupation of the island of Guernsey. The island is located in the English Channel, and it’s so close to France that it was where a lot of exiles ended up during the French Revolution!

The novel is centered around Juliet, a journalist whose light articles made people laugh during the war, and whom I had a soft spot for. (The depiction of funny women in literature who read on a regular basis is awfully sparse, and it’s always good to have another one.) Thus, I identified with Juliet a little more than some people might.

Apparently several members of my book club had a hard time getting into the book, because it’s an epistolary novel, constructed entirely of letters. 

On the other hand, I was all excited when I first started reading the novel, because I was excited that, maybe, the epistolary novel was making a comeback.

When the novel turned out to be a somewhat unconventional love story, I wasn’t in the least surprised. That’s because I’ve found it easier to fall in love via letter than almost any other way.

The intimacy, the detail, and, often the confessional are all part of the appeal of a real-life epistolary romance.

Then again, in real life, there’s always the part where the letter never comes, the in-box never pings, and one ends up writing vague blog posts about the experience.

Your mileage may vary.

I’m against spoilers, but it won’t be much of a spoiler if I tell you that I saw the end of this book coming a mile away. No one else in my book club did.

The again, maybe Arcade Fire explained the magic of falling in love via letters way better than I'll ever be able to.

Pop Culture Remixing: Why it matters that we keep remaking familiar pop culture properties.

At 11 p.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, my husband and I walked into the Chaparral Ice rink in North Austin. Despite the warm day, I was carrying my winter coat, hat and gloves. We were going to the theater!

Less a traditional theatrical experience and more of a chance to see a comedic trainwreck, we had tickets for Aliens on Ice by The Old Murder House Theatre.

Yes, we’d paid to see the movie “Aliens” recreated at an ice rink by a cast just slightly beyond being able to stand up on their ice skates.

That Saturday night was do-it-yourself (DIY) theater at its finest. One theatrical set was comprised of hand drawn illustrations on cardboard that were attached to a pink ironing board. You could clearly see the duct tape holding things together.

Costuming wasn’t much fancier. The mostly male cast changed characters by adding or removing wigs in full view of the audience. One alien picked up his headpiece as he skated by. It had fallen off during a dramatic fight scene. This show was a very long way from Broadway.

Despite the ludicrously low production values of “Aliens on Ice” the audience was mostly eating it up, laughing along at the comedy.

That night at the ice rink, we’d happened to sit next to our friends Charles and Charlene Smith, who’d left the kids home and who were out on their date night. Charlie Smith, 31-- whom I know from my own lower-rent theatrical collective/charity project of Scare For a Cure—had actually worn out the VHS tape of “Aliens” when he was younger. Later, Smith owned up to having played “Aliens” on the playground, much the way some kids played “Cowboys and Indians.”

Before that ice show, I’d never seen the movie “Aliens.” Yet I laughed so hard during the production that I managed to send myself into coughing fits.

I wasn’t surprised to see the rest of the audience also enjoying itself. During the show they were immersed in pop culture, something that’s as comfortable as a pair of much-loved flannel pajamas for many Americans.

“Aliens on Ice” it isn’t alone in allowing people to immerse themselves in pop culture.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed an increasing number of creative projects based around the idea of “remixing” fictional properties created by a different author.

I’m defining “remixing” as someone taking a fictional universe created by one person, then creating another project based on that universe.

Thus “remixing” might include what happens when the works of Jane Austen are updated to become “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” or when people revisit characters first found in L. Frank Baum‘s “Wizard of Oz” books resulting in the musical “Wicked.”

Being There with Wilco

Once upon a time (in the early 1990’s) a dude I was smitten with took me to see a band called Uncle Tupelo at Liberty Lunch in Austin, Texas. My date was always broke and had a radio show on the student station, so I know we must have gone because he was on the list!

At the end of the show, I remember my pal walking up to the stage and handing Jeff Tweedy what was (at least in Austin slacker circles) the early 90’s business card of the gently employed. That improvised business card was a torn off portion of his deposit slip-- the part with his phone number on it —for the next time the band was in town. They chatted for a bit while Tweedy was packing up his gear, and my date and I left.

The early 1990's was a time when alt-country was just starting to become a going concern. I may have hopped on the alt-country bandwagon a little more easily than some.

You can take the girl out of Pasadena, but it's hard to take the Pasadena out of the girl. Growing up just outside of Houston, I heard a lot of country music before I was old enough to drive. How chicken-fried was my upbringing?  My orthodontist was across the street from Gilley’s, the bar made famous by the movie Urban Cowboy.

The aftermath:

After the Uncle Tupelo show that night, I was impressed enough went out and got Anodyne, the Uncle Tupelo album that the record store had in stock.

Once Tweedy and Jay Farrar of Uncle Tupelo went their different ways, I stuck with Tweedy.

Sounds of the Budapest Subway....

One of the things I loved most about Budapest was the sounds that the vintage subway made. It's the cutest subway in the world!
I have no idea why these sounds aren't offered as standard text tones on the iPhone!

Samurai Culture is in for Christmas

 A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to spend nearly the whole month of December in Japan. I fell in love with Japanese food--not just sushi--and realized just how little I really know about Japanese history and culture.  (Sure, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, I'd taken a class on "Japanese Literature to 1600" but that was really just hitting the highlights!)

During that time in Japan in 2009, I was even lucky enough to spend most of a day exploring Himeji castle, which is located not terribly far from Kyoto.

Coming back to the US, it took a long time for me to reconcile my own impressions of Japan with the way that culture is portrayed in America.

Last week when I stopped by Target, I noticed that several toy designers were also influenced by Japan. And while I'm no more than a tourist in Japan, I was gobsmacked by this piece of colored plastic. Partly because as far as I can tell, it looks far more like a version of a back-lot Chinese castle than it does a feudal Japanese defensive structure.



Just a few toy displays over, I was completely dismayed by the aesthetic choices behind the Samauri outfit that Barbie's main dude Ken was wearing. Why had they put him in dreadful red satin, not in some nice cotton, linen or silk hakama or even in some decent robes?