Meeting an Idol

I'd like to start off by saying that I am really, really sick right now, and was last night when this momentous event happened. I can possibly attribute the tears to feeling like I was going to die, but probably not. I'm sure I would have cried anyway.

Regardless, last night I went to the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series talk in Syracuse. Every year a handful of authors are invited to speak about their books, writing in general, and their lives to an audience of interested readers. Last night the guest speaker was none other than Laurie R. King, mystery writer and personal godess to yours truly. Her books about Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, has long been my favorite series, which I have spoken about before.

Last fall, when the 11th book in the series came out, she had an illustration contest for a microstory to accompany the book. Though I did not win, mine was the first submission sent, and in returen I got an awesome poster. I was determined to get the thing signed, so I carried it around in my car for months so as not to forget it.

Naturally, on Monday morning I woke up feeling like death, and only got sicker throughout the day. By the time my mom was ready to leave, I was actually contemplating not going, a true sign of how sick I was. I have worshiped this woman for at least a decade, I have a tattoo in tribute to her, and I was considering not going to see her talk. That was a low point in my life, I can tell you.

Fortunately, my mom convinced me to get off my butt, take some painkillers and go. I'm so very glad I did.

The woman dresses like Marilla Cuthbert in her promo photos, and doesn't change a bit in real life. She walked out on stage and spoke the first sentence from The Beekeeper's Apprentice and I began to cry.

"I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him."

Never mind that I was myself fifteen when I first read the book, and madly in love with all things Sherlock Holmes (still am, for that matter), but King has been one of my great writing influences since then as well. Hearing her recite the first words of one of my favorite, and certainly my most read, books of all time was quite moving. As I'm sure you inferred from the whole weeping thing.

Anyway, the rest of her talk was great, made better by the fact that the painkillers kicked in halfway through and I felt human again. She talked about her own practices when writing, the new projects she has in mind and answered questions from the audience, including mine. Once the talk was over my mom and I quickly exited the theater, attempting to find out where she would be signing books, having been informed by her Facebook page that she would be. We were then told by an usher that all of the signings had happened earlier in the day.

This was the second time that evening I was moved to tears, and this time it wasn't in a good way. My mother, bless her, doesn't take no for an answer and, in a move worthy of Holmes himself, figured out where the reception must be located by checking every door we came to.

I think we were technically crashing a party, but I don't care, since it was here that I actually got to meet Ms. King. I almost cried again, but I was able to hold it together enough to gush like a teenager at a Backstreet Boy's concert (or another, more relevant group). She is a lovely person, and seemed to genuinely appreciate the fawning, or at least had the grace to not be visibly appalled. It was quite a moment for me, and I only wish I hadn't been so damn sick, so maybe I could have formulated an intelligent argument for why she should let me write a screenplay of one of her books. Oh well.

At least I got my poster signed.

Red Carpet Movie Premiere!

Saturday was the much anticipated (for me, anyway) Syracuse premiere of Pope Joan.

First, a bit about the book. Written by Donna Woolfolk Cross, it gives a fictional account of the life of Johanna von Ingelheim, the woman who allegedly rose through the Catholic clergy until she was crowned Pope. The history surrounding Joan is hazy at best, much of the facts relying more on omissions than outright statements; but given the number of women over the centuries who have successfully lived as men, it is entirely likely that there was at one time a female Pope.

I digress. I read the book first in 9th grade English and loved it. I read it again a few more times and was trilled when I learned that not only is Sally a good friend of Cross, they were considering doing a fundraiser together centered around the movie.

For those who do not know, Sally is my mother's partner and also the director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, NY. The foundation always needs sponsors, and what better fundraiser than a mock red carpet movie premiere?

Sally got me a ticket for Christmas, so I had three whole months too look forward to a weekend out of Maine and a chance to dress to the nines. This premiere thing was serious - my ticket included a special talk before the film by Cross herself, as well as a complementary feather boa. Mom's and Sally's included a limo ride. I decided to go all out and have an entirely new look - I'd been wanting to cut my hair short for a while, so I finally took the plunge and got my first pixie since age 4. I rather like it, even though I realized belatedly that it makes me look even more like my mother than I already did.

Sally, my mom and I all got ready at the same time, and let me tell you, three women trying to use one bathroom simultaneously is quite a feat. A lovely woman at the Macy's at Carousel Mall did my makeup, so at least I didn't have to worry about that.

I fully recommend you use this service if you ever need semi-professional make up done. The people are friendly, they instruct you how to do it yourself, and often give you samples. Also, it's free.

The red carpet events themselves were a lot of fun - there were fake paparazzo and security guards (John and John John, who seemed to have based there performance on Joe Pesci), lots of alcohol and nibbles, and an hour long talk by Cross about the 13 year ordeal of turning a novel into a movie. She was lucky, as far as authors go, to have a major hand in writing the script. Most sell the rights to their book and that is the last they have to do with it. The crowd was predominantly female and politically liberal, so I had a lot of people to talk to.

Now, as for the move itself:

For the most part, it was pretty good. Adapted the story pretty well, I'm sure due at least in part to the author helping to write the script. The casting for Joan, both the teenage and adult stages, was fantastic - both actresses were great. John Goodman was an odd choice, and I for one could not get over the fact that it was John Goodman playing the Pope, and enjoy the acting. David Wenham was good as the love interest, and is sweet enough that we are able to overlook the fact that he is putting the moves on a girl the age of his daughters. The cinematography was phenomenal - sweeping landscapes and intense closeups. The climax does not shy away from tragedy, and we look on as one in the crowd of worshipers.

On the other hand, the film relied far too heavily on voice over, of which I am almost never an advocate. It can be done well, but not in this case. Long scenes are narrated in a way that makes me wonder why we weren't shown a scene of equal length that could do this exposition in a much more interesting manner. To quote the Newhouse mantra, "Show; don't Tell." This goes for the rest of the script. A lot of the dialogue was very good, but some, as with some of the situations characters are thrown into, was so heavy handed it had me rolling my eyes.

As usual, I prefer the book to the movie, but it wasn't bad. Certainly worth a watch, if for no other reason than to get you interested in Joan's life. If fiction, it is a good story - if fact, it is a remarkable accomplishment that should not have been buried in history the way it has been.

Humidity

I have lived most of my life in Syracuse, New York. I recently moved to Maine, but I am back in the 'Cuse for some vacationing.

Now, as anyone who lives in this area knows, Syracuse has a weather pattern entirely it's own. Winter begins in mid October, often causing Halloween to buried in a foot and a half of snow and tiny children dressed as fairies and pirates to all look like Eskimos. Winter ends sometime around graduation. It does not matter when your graduation is, that is when winter takes it's last bow, and shits all over everything. The alternative is that the snowfall ends on April 15th, and summer starts on the 16th. We literally had a weekend of spring a few years ago: we had a blizzard on Friday, it warmed up over the weekend, and by Monday, everything was in bloom and having sex with the air.

Summer lasts from the end of winter (there is no spring) to the beginning of October. Fall lasts about 2.5 weeks, and is cold as shit and precipitous. Then winter starts again.

The winter here is bad, but at least bearable. It can occasionally hit -20 degrees (without windchill - a lovely device that makes already cold weather REALLY FUCKING COLD) with lake-effect snowfalls of three feet a day. But that isn't the bad part of the year.

When summer hits, it doesn't just give Syracuse a little love tap - it punches it really hard in the gonads and stands there laughing, every once in a while throwing a brick at its head. It has, for instance, been in the mid nineties all week, with humidity well above 150 percent. How is that possible, you may ask. How can anything have more than 100 percent? Well, most places can't, and the humidity scale was constructed for normal places where humans can actually exist in comfort. Then Syracuse happened.
Another great thing about Syracuse is that, as the winter lasts 3/4 of the year, NO ONE has air conditioning. That's fine October-June, but what happens in between? Hell.

The humidity is like this:

• You need to take at least two showers a day to not smell like your pet Labrador
• These showers will be icy cold, in an attempt to lower your body temperature enough that you don't begin sweating again as you towel off
• When you open the freezer, vapor will come boiling out an cloud your vision, and while you wait for it to clear, you will get yelled at for wasting energy
• Toilet paper rolls become so damp that they bend and sag on their holders, making it impossible to unroll them without announcing to the rest of the house, via repeated clangs, that you are doing so
•  Every single window in the house is opened, and usually the doors as well, so there is a total lack of privacy and an inordinate number of insects flying, bumbling, biting and stinging their way around the house
• Becoming nocturnal does no good, as staying up until 6 am means you sleep past noon, and awake drenched in sweat and cranky as hell and hating life

No one in the world loves snow as much as someone who has to live through summers in Syracuse.

Spring Break 2010

Well, Spring Break has once again come and gone, and I should probably comment on it a bit. I didn't go to Cabo, or Tiajuana, or even Miami, but I had a blast. On Friday night Dave drove down from Biddeford (amazingly, our breaks coincided, so we actually got to spend it together) and we spent the first weekend in Syracuse. Sunday saw the Syracuse St. Patrick's Day parade, which was not very large - the highlight was watching bagpipers sidestep a pile of horse dung in the middle of the road - but still fun.

Pipe Band

Sunday night we drove to Allentown and spent the week there. St. Paddy's was celebrated with a pub crawl, during which we got a normally sober friend of ours hysterically drunk. After four car bombs, he was whining for piggyback rides to the next bar, demanding money from people, and, when he didn't get money, demanding a cat. Conversations that night determined that 'girls on the rag love pickles' (this from the cat man), 'gorillas are the bears of Africa', and 'a rat king could not beat an alligator in a fight'. A rat king, incidentally, is formed when a bunch of rats are kept in a cage, and their tails fuse together, creating a multi-headed monstrosity. The things you learn with the help of alcohol.
The rest of break was nice and relaxing, which was much needed, although it means that I now only have 7 weeks of school left, and I still have to finish a screenplay, find a place to live after May 16th, and, miracle of miracles, get a job.

Also, watched Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer. Best movie I've seen since District 9.