In which I refuse to self-edit

Bogus review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:
I don't like Jim Carrey. Or Kirsten Dunst. Or Elijah Wood. And Mark Ruffalo was such a weiner. I actually fell asleep for ten minutes at the beginning. Yet I persevered because Kate Winslet is so pretty, and it's fun to listen to her talk with an American accent. Why do you think I've seen Titanic more than once? I have a real crush on her again now.

I really liked how everything played out in Joel's head, but I couldn't find it in me to care, to even want Joel and Clementine to be able to work it out. I blame this on Jim Carrey, because I did care about Clementine. I just wanted to steal her. Hellooooo, she works at Barnes & Noble and, you know, looks like Kate Winslet. What more could I want from a woman?

I'm not the only one who knew that the movie started after both their memories had been erased, right? I don't know if that was supposed to be obvious, because I fell asleep once the opening credits started rolling, so I'm not quite sure how we got into Joel's head, except that he found out Clementine had erased him, so he wanted to erase her (but I knew that going in). Anyway, the fact that the name Clementine had no associations whatsoever for Joel made it clear that he'd erased everything that had anything to do with her. No one is that cut off from the world.

Okay, so maybe if I hadn't fallen asleep, I'd have found a way to connect with this movie. But it mostly seemed like a fancy conceit without real characters to keep me interested. Like Adaptation--that had some really good acting in it, too, but, like, I didn't care. I really can't articulate it any better than that. Boo on me.

Anyway, that girl whose name I never seem to be able to remember has another new song! Whee! I spent all last night listening to it thanks to the lovely people at againtoday.com--and even worked out the lyrics myself, like, immediately. It's so good! I just don't know who wrote this one. It doesn't sound like Tim, so I'd say it's Brandi's--and for the first time, I totally love a lot of the words. Here:

"Avenue of Second Starts"
Icicles are fallin’ down
from the rooftops
of the tiny town
Behind the glass
(A winter land)
(Silent storms) in the palm of your hand

Tell me how can this be
I’m stuck inside a game in which I know I’ll only lose
I’ve never felt so free,
but I’ve never been so blue
I’m lost inside your love, and there is nothing I can do

Maybe we can meet again
On the avenue of second starts
And we have to fall in love because we both have broken hearts
Maybe it’s just a dream
that we’ll never live to see come true
But you’re out here by my side,
and I’m already missin’ you

Bicycles
Spinning wheels
Spinning round
That’s how I feel
The carnival
has moved away,
and all that’s left
are thoughts of you, night and day

Tell me how can this be
I’m lost inside a game in which I know I’ll only lose
I’ve never felt so free
but I’ve never been so blue
I’m lost inside your love, and there is nothing I can do

Maybe we can hitch a ride
to a faraway distant land
We can watch the clouds roll by
and write our names into the sand

Maybe if we close our eyes
we can let our souls run free
and meet behind the stars
in some other galaxy

Tell me how can this be
Tell me how can this be

I’m stuck playin’ a game in which I know I’ll only lose
I’ve never felt so free,
and I’ve never been so blue
I’m lost inside your eyes, and there is nothing I can do

I know this is epically nerdtastic, but "and meet behind the stars/in some other galaxy" made me think of Bastian meeting the Childlike Empress for real after the destruction of Fantastica. Whatever! I don't remember how it looked in the movie, because I have repressed the movie, but "behind the stars/in some other galaxy" calls up my mental picture of their meeting quite nicely. Any. Way.

Katherine Heigl, the girl who made me gay, no longer has any effect on me. Do you know how much I do not want to see 27 Dresses? And I watched some bad movies this girl did, just because I loved her. Bride of Chuckie, My Father the Hero, Wish Upon a Star--okay, I still kind of love Wish Upon a Star. And I mean, first season Isabel Evans will always and forever be awesome, but present-day Katherine Heigl, girl who made me gay though she is, is pretty much dead to me.

Now, the fact that she made me gay does not mean she was my first girlcrush--she was just the first girlcrush that made me, um, rethink some things. First real girlcrush? Jewel Staite, when I was eleven, and she had rainbow-colored hair. How gay is that? I keep forgetting that all the Whedon nerds know who she is now, because she was in Firefly and Serenity, but to me, she will always be Catalina, from Saturn's moon Titan, who had an invisible (not imaginary) friend named Suzee. It was totally bogus, too, when Jewel Staite got a job on the Disney Channel and left Space Cases to have Suzee take her place in some kind of dimensional exchange. Boo. Of course, I watched Flash Forward like it was my job, but she ended up falling in love with her boy best friend Tucker (Ben Foster!) at the end of the series, which I just haaaaaaate. I think even Sam and Clarissa had some kind of weird, but mercifully brief, romance thing. Did Alex and Ray? God, I hope not. I can't remember. Oh, oh! Before she realizes how she feels about Tucker, Becca (Jewel's character) dates a grotsky Ryan Gosling! I think that's why I can't stand him to this day. Anyway, back to the boy/girl best friend romance disasters: Pete and Ellen did it; even Zack and Jessie had that stupid episode where they were doing Snow White and decided they actually liked each other. The worst one, though: Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable actually start dating. (Shut up, I love cartoons.) You know how I feel about Georgie and Izzie. It happened in that stupid teen movie Whatever It Takes with Shane West and Marla Sokoloff, too. It happens in a lot of stupid teen movies, but that's the one that sprang most readily to mind. I only like stories about falling in love with your best friend when both best friends are girls. That's not yet quite enough of a cliche--only because it doesn't happen in mainstream media. But it's rather a large lesbian cliche.

Anyway, that was not supposed to devolve into a bitter rant against straight entertainment, but really. Girls can be friends with guys without sex getting the way. Why can't anyone accept that?

Oy, I can't believe I'm doing this--it seems so gauche--but I just found a blog post on afterellen.com about the character archetypes of Little Women being represented in television shows featuring gangs of women, and you know I was all over that, but I kind of faded out when I she mentioned "Southern hospitality" as an aspect of the book. I don't know what it is about books that take place during the Civil War (but I will blame Gone with the Wind), but they seem to call up an image of the South, rather than the land of us harsh Yankees, but come on, people. The bulk of Little Women takes place in Concord, Massachusetts (the rest of it takes place in New York City and parts of France). Then this got me: the blogger said Jo sold her hair for her sisters, which not so much. Jo sold her hair to take care of her father, to "mak[e] Father comfortable and bring him home" when he fell ill in Washington during the war. I mean, I do appreciate the idea of this post, but it makes me nuuuuuts when people can't get details like that right.

Okay, so the interesting thing was that the point of this article was that you can apply the Little Women characters: beautiful, maternal Meg; tomboyish Jo; shy Beth; vain, artistic Amy, to many of the female gangs on tv. The ones she used as examples, I can't comment on, because I've not seen the shows (The Facts of Life, Golden Girls, something else), but she did say towards the end that Sex and the City and even Cashmere Mafia could fit into this mold. So first I tried Sex and the City and immediately decided that Charlotte would be Beth and Carrie, Amy, but I was rather puzzled as to what to do with Samantha and Miranda. In the end, I decided Sam would be Jo and Miranda, Meg, because Samantha is bold and forthright and all that, like my dear Jo, and well, Miranda is more maternal than Samantha is, anyway. Miranda really doesn't fit as Meg. I'm not pleased.

Cashmere Mafia was even harder. I would put Zoe as Meg, because she kind of is what I imagine Meg would be in the twenty-first century, trying to be a working mom extraordinaire. Then I lost it. Caitlin would be Amy, maybe, because she kind of gets treated like a younger sister by the other girls--and she looks like Amy would have looked--and Mia could be Jo, brash and bold and not afraid to get into it with men. But Juliet is not Beth. None of them is Beth. Not even close.

Perhaps this is so hard for me because I have more than just a vague idea of these characters, having read the book and its sequels a million times. They don't match up to any other characters closely enough for me. So, conclusion: I don't buy it. Interesting theory, though. Very interesting.

I like Margaret Cho's theory on girl gangs better: "and then there's the ho." You know, you have one smart one, one nice one, and...then there's the ho. I think she used Charlie's Angels for that theory, but I cannot comment on that either, because I have not seen the television show. The movie, however... Cameron's the nice one, Lucy's the smart one, and Drew's the ho? I guess that works. It works for Sex and the City: Miranda's the smart one, Charlotte's the nice one, and Samantha's the ho. Carrie, as lovely as Sarah Jessica Parker seems, is...blech. Mia's the smart one, Zoe's the nice one, and Caitlin's the ho. Juliet is excluded, because I don't like her. Look! It even works for Little Women: Jo's the smart one, Meg (and Beth--but she dies) is the nice one, and Amy's the ho! "Look around, which one are you?"