Tag Archives: crush

Dear New Moon

7 Dec

Dear New Moon,

Let’s do some quick math. There are approximately 8 young men among your characters. Five in the wolfpack, Emmett the vampire, and of course of course the eminently prominent Jacob* and Edward (aka RobPat**). Of those, 7 at one point or another remove their shirts.

Your running time is 2 hrs 1 min, or 121 min. Divided by 7, divided by total time spent by each of those boys on screen, minus the extreme lowness of RobPat’s pants during that one scene (I mean seriously, I wasn’t sure he was wearing pants for a while– do they let him film in the nude in order to get him on set?), plus the amount of time K.Stew spent biting her own lip while looking at the shirtless boys, multiplied by the slope of Taylor Lautner’s neck muscles…

…equals about 92.3% shirtless boy time out of total movie time.

This isn’t a complaint.

WHO AM I KIDDING? I LOVED THIS MOVIE. I laughed and sighed and said, “OH HIGH SCHOOL” more than once. I totally know what it feels like to have a best friend you don’t want to lose who feels more strongly about you than you do him. I totally know what it feels like to wear ugly sweaters and giant raincoats to math class (grew up in Seattle, people. Not that far from Forks). I totally know what it feels like to have go dashing off to Rome at a moment’s notice to save my vampire boyfriend from committing suicide, effectively choosing him over my wolf boyfriend who was finally trying to kiss me and hopefully will not transfigure too close to my face or I will die, and of course they are natural enemies but they both love me even though I am a basically lame girl who is supposedly not that pretty (probably designated as so due to the fact that I have brown hair) and who has no personality whatsoever. I TOTALLY GET IT.

[Ok, on a side note, I actually have heard of grown women leaving their husbands after reading Twilight. Because their marriages didn't measure up to the standard of love presented . (Which is what? The "I would die for you but I can't because I'm immortal" standard? Yeah. That one.) As one trained mental health specialist put it, "I would say they have larger issues than Twilight. I would also question this designation of them as 'grown.'"]

But seriously. Pure trashy fun. Perfect after you have turned in your final, revised poetry portfolios for your first semester in an MFA program***. Entertaining to the ninth degree. And did I mention the shirtlessness?

Yeah. That.

MM

*aka Boy Taylor who is dating Girl Taylor– Swift, that is. We don’t even have to come up with a stupid nickname for them ala Bennifer or Brangelina. They come with it built-in. No batteries necessary.

**aka international heartthrob of girls who like pasty white boys, aka boy who may or may not be dating/doing Kristen Stewart but sweet hell don’t ask the insensitivity of you people always asking questions like she’s a celebrity and this is an interview or something.

***Hello. My name is Margaret Michelle. I am currently getting my MFA in poetry. I also like Twilight. [The views presented here are not condoned by and not in any way shape or form representative of the management, the network, my employers, my professors, my classmates, my friends, my parents, my books, and/or anything that I ever may have touched or spoken to.]

Dear Young Adult Novels

17 Feb

Dear Young Adult Novels,

I’m talking Twilight. I’m talking Sarah Dessen (the author). I’m talking the lesser known yet still fantastic Lioness Rampant series. I’m talking all the way back to the Penny Parrish series, written by Janet Lambert starting back in 1941.

Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom (Louisa May Alcott).  Freckles.  And its sequel  A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton-Porter).

I’ll stop listing.  You can contact me for a more comprehensive bibliography.

Part of why young adult novels are great is because they’re forced to avoid this whole “explaining life” or its counterpart “explaining why we can never know anything about life” thing. Because teenagers already know life. They know everything. Yay stereotypes!

[If you want to disagree, let's talk about how every ninth grade classroom is made up of the same thirty kids. I recently started observing a creative writing class being taught in a public school classroom-- yay nonprofit contributions to education!-- and on my first day, I was like, Julian's still here? Jennifer!? Shouldn't you have aged? Why is that quiet boy whose name I never figured out but is probably Ben, he looks like a Ben, still sitting in the far right corner doodling? This is where stereotypes come from. Experience. Truth. And then, of course, mass generalizations and blatant misinterpretation and outstanding exaggeration.]

The other part of why young adult novels are great is because, for the most part, they’re written by adults, and unless they get way, way over-edited to “sound like a teen,” they do a pretty good job of sounding like teenagers. Sometimes.  The ones I like do.  In that they sound smart, and sarcastic, and like they know something of what’s what.  Like they’re thinking about the world and dealing with real problems like negotiating relationships and power struggles and trying to figure out how to let go and hold on at the same time.

Also sometimes there’s kissing, and somehow that always makes me blush.  And giggle.  There’s nothing quite like a crush…

And really, let’s be honest– you can hate Twilight or love it, you can be very proud of the fact that you have never read Harry Potter, but those series get teenagers to read.  At some point in the past, I started to understand that not every child got in trouble for ignoring her mother’s request to empty the dishwasher– because she was deep in the limberlost of Indiana in the late 1800s, and there weren’t dishwashers back then!

Reading is good.  Get in touch for more amaaazing young adult fiction.  If nothing else, there used to be (and possibly still is) a wonderful librarian named Gail at the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library…there was a book about a quilt, and something about roses in the title…she can tell you what it is.  Also, ask for the one about the older sister who gets sick in the summer.  And the one…I’ll stop.  If you want to be really up on what’s going down today, read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Plus, you can read young adult novels really fast.  Because they are not like slogging through Pulitzer Prize winners (highly overrated, as are many so-called classics).  It’s like reading large-print edition books because your library has too many holds on regular print.  You turn pages all the time!

Cheers,

MM

Dear Bill

27 Oct

Dear Bill,

You know that you will always be important to me. How could you not be? Even before I truly knew you, one of the first times I saw you, I felt drawn to you. “Why’s Bill on TV?” I asked my parents when I was eight. They laughed, and corrected me—we don’t call politicians by their first names, they said, you should say Bill Clinton or the President. But it felt right.

I know a sixteen-year-old who shook your hand, went home, and told her mother, I know why Monica did it.

I too know why Monica did it.

You are inexpressibly charming, a southern Democrat for the ages. The way you massaged that interviewer’s wrist last night is such a classic example of the way you make people want to give you what you want. When you talk, the enticing accent of Arkansas washes over me as I remember our times in Brainland and our vacations in Heartland, and I almost cannot go through with what I know I must do.

Bill, it’s over. There’s someone else. I have learned so much during our time together, and will never forget what you have taught me about how a face should look when one is praised publicly (half seduce-you-tonight and half yeah-that’s-right). But I was young when I fell for you, and I know now that it was just a crush. My new relationship has not been easy, but it is real and it is based in an understanding of adult responsibilities. We have common interests and are willing to do whatever it will take to make it work. Bill, I am in love with your wife Hillary.

You are charming, it’s true, but she is a fighter. I cannot resist the determination in her voice, the grit in her teeth, the way she loves me and my stories. Who else could make a comeback after what you did to her, could capture the white middle-class and the Black and the Hispanic vote, who else could morph into a shot-and-a-beer kind of gal while wearing an orange pantsuit and pearls? I think she wears animal print underwear beneath those jacket buttons. It makes her strong, it makes her audacious. It makes her want it all, and so she hungers after health care and money for the soldiers in Iraq, she craves not just relief for student loans, but rights for workers. And yes, things aren’t going her way right now, but she is still my candidate.

I hope you can forgive me. I care about you very much and wish you well. You will always be my first politician.

All my best,

MM

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