welcome to downtown coolsville

Tonight I made Little Brother watch E.T., because somehow he managed to make it to age thirteen (nearly fourteen!) without seeing it even once. I don't know how that happened. Clearly I fail as a mentor.

E.T. is something I'm slightly embarrassed to admit to getting emotional about, because it's about a white suburban kid who befriends a cuddly alien and that is pretty uncool! But I tear up every time I watch it anyway, because I am a sucker for stories in which Lonely, Alienated Children Befriend Strange Creatures.* Elliott is the first movie character I ever remember really relating to, and I really wanted an E.T. when I was little. Except one that looked a little less weird and ugly and didn't make so many fucked up noises. I also wanted a bike with a basket on the front like Elliott's with which to transport said E.T., and a really huge closet to store it in so my mother wouldn't find out about it. I didn't get any of those, not even the bike with the basket, but it was nice to dream.

Anyway, I think the movie would have gone better for LB if he hadn't just watched the video for "Telephone" fifty bajillion times in a row. He ended up giggling and singing to himself every time E.T. said he was going to phone home and, during the climactic scene in which E.T. goes back onto the spaceship, wondered aloud if Lady Gaga was going to be in there.

Kids these days.

Oh, speaking of Lady Gaga, would you like to hear about how she and Beyonce totally saved my life on Friday? ( You probably don't, which is why I put it under a cut! )

The night after Lady Gaga and Beyonce saved my life, I went to a costume party. I was waffling over what I wanted to be for a while- I've already been a riot grrrl, a zombie Catholic schoolboy, Daria Morgendorfer, and Donnie Darko, so I was starting to run out of ideas. And then I watched Velvet Goldmine twice in one week and started listening to Without You I'm Nothing again and, well, ( this happened. )

Things currently making my life:

The Iggy Pop/Gerard Way interview, still. Even though it is mostly a back-and-forth consisting of "You're GREAT, Iggy!" "No, YOU'RE great, Gerard!" "Oh, know what else is great? Green Day!" "And golf!" "And babies!" "Gosh, everything is so great." "Just like us." "Yeah."

This nostalgic post about the early days of the Internets. I find it difficult to picture a world without lolcats. I mean, obviously I know it existed, I was ALIVE, but still. Weird.

Health care! Granted, I'm Canadian so I already had it, but still, hurrah. (The Stupak Amendment is still getting me down, though.)

This. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Baby otters.

... my mother just poked her head into my bedroom to inform me that she stole a turkey. I think the poor woman may finally be cracking under the stress.


* The Iron Giant is also something I get absurdly teary over. Actually, E.T. and The Iron Giant are pretty much the same story, except one has kids riding bicycles into the moon and the other one has, um, atomic bombs. I think The Iron Giant is a better story overall, but I don't remember watching it in a pair of footie pajamas so E.T. has the upper hand when it comes to turnin' on the waterworks.

** His parents are Ukrainian-Canadian (hence the single-vowel name), he was raised partly in London, and he spent a good lot of his college years in Prague. Try to imagine what that sounds like. Then add a drawl, expressive hand gestures, a look of vague disdain, and a little black cap. Yep. TERRIFYING.

*** No, really, that's how I said it.

One of my favourite films (maybe even my favourite film, period) is Velvet Goldmine. (If you have known me for less than five minutes this may be news, but even then I doubt it.) I first picked it up four years ago mostly because of Ewan McGregor, and I've worn out my copy since then. It's got everything I require of a good movie- conspiracy theories, glam rock, gay sex, beautiful visuals, Toni Collette being her wonderful self, Oscar Wilde references, apocalyptic visions of the future, and sequins.

Um. I ask a lot of good movies, apparently.

This has always been one of my favourite scenes. Not just from this movie, but from everything. Context sees Christian Bale as a British schoolboy in the seventies and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the totally-not-David-Bowie pop star he's recently become obsessed with.



I've felt that way about music- not just about music, but about the people making it. It's a strange thing to be a fan, really, to identify so wholeheartedly with the words and music and art of someone who will probably never meet you. It brings you closer to them and at the same time reminds you of how far you are from this person you idolize. It even fucking hurts sometimes, because you think if I could just tell them, if I could just let them know somehow...

And you can't, really, because there's no way to say "your music changed my life" or "your book makes me want to write" or "your film is the one I come back to, always" and make someone fully understand that you mean it. How much you mean it. Art makes you responsible, and that can be scary- the idea that something that comes from inside you can actually change someone's life, can do for them what it did for you, can feel almost ludicrous from the outside. That's the frustrating aspect of being a fan.

But the rest of it is fucking awesome.

I know there are some people who disagree. They listen to music if it's on the radio, and they watch movies if there's nothing else to do, and they read books if they're stuck in an airport, and at the end of the day they can take it or leave it. I know that, objectively, but I don't really understand it because it's alien to my own experience. Being a fan makes you biased that way. (It even makes you a little self-righteous, sometimes.) Loving something so much it hurts doesn't really make sense from the outside, but it's also one of the most important things in the world. Feeling passionate about something, identifying with something, takes you away from that notion that life is all about eating and sleeping and passing on your genes. Being a fan is about that passion, in the same way that most important things are.

The things that people make have changed my life, and I fucking love that. I love that people have the power to create things that will make people sit up, take them outside the petty, mindless bullshit in everyday life and make them realize that there are whole worlds full of wonderful things and terrible things and beautiful things and twisted things and people like them.

Oh, no, love, you're not alone.

Because that moment where you stand up and you shout "That's me!" matters. It does.