A Goal Reached, A Blog Born

Ah ha! I've officially passed the halfway mark in Peter the Great. What does this mean? This means I have learned 400 times more information on Peter the Great than I actually care to learn. There's probably something wrong when you root for Peter's nemesis, Charles XII, in hopes that he will bring about Peter's premature death, thus massively reducing the amount of material I have to read. Alas, it is Charles who dies the premature death. Oh well, all those monarchs are cocky little brats anyways.

ETA: Another milestone. Had my first car accident today. Aren't you proud of me? It was minor scuffle in the parking lot at about 5 mph. I'm happy to report neither party was injured save for a tiny scrape on the front/rear bumpers, negligible because both cars were well beyond their normal life span

So in other news, despite the (stolen) bit of witticism in my blog description, life and the movies are not meshing. (Maybe this is a good thing.) From now on, all movie reviews--coherency not required--will be posted elsewhere. So if you ever feel like reading the pretentious ramblings of a bored and obsessive teenager, this is the perfect place to look.

Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Saturday schedule: Lunch with family friends, Brattle, Dinner with Lindi’s family. Given that schedule, you wouldn’t think that Saturday was a day abounding in morbidity.

It all started out with this whole lunch business. My dad’s college classmate’s son was on his college visiting tour and surprise, Harvard was a mandatory stop. So from Harvard Square, we departed to a restaurant, where my dad proceeded to order the exact same dishes we ate the last time we were there. Anyways, the conversation turned into that college classmate gossip, and we started talking about people dying of cancer—more specifically his college classmates who died of cancer.

Speaking of dying of cancer, that’s also the exact topic of the film showing at the Brattle: Look Both Ways—a slyly observed Australian film heavy on accents and light on plot. At least the guy didn’t die in the end, or I don’t think so but I probably blinked and missed half the flash montage. There’s also something about train accidents, unwanted pregnancies, and the whole shebang. I actually like it, though I tend to tolerate movies better in theatres than at home.

Meh, and more dying of cancer. So Lindi’s family came and visited with their old neighbors, who now live in Acton. I vaguely remember my parents telling me about the husband dying after they opened a Chinese store in Acton. At the time, it didn’t jog any memories because I was probably in one of those self-absorbed hazes. But yesterday, the family came to my house (minus the dead husband), and I remembered. I remembered the wife and the two daughters, one of whose name is Sarah. I remembered the guy’s name. Shit, that guy came to our house before. I’ve even talked to him.

It’s a strange feeling to realize that someone you once knew is dead, even if it’s someone I only acknowledged peripherally. I’ve been lucky enough to not know that many dead people—the only other one I can think of now is my fourth-grade teacher who died of, again, cancer.

The fundamental tenets of egocentrism would explain why I always think of myself when I hear cancer. Funny enough, I once went through this episode when I convinced myself that I had cancer and had only a few months left to live. I vowed to keep my “cancer” a secret until the day I died, and they would open my body to find it ravaged by disease. I also made up elaborate plans of self-surgery that usually ended up as inadvertent suicide. And then there was that slight more merited episode when I was convinced I had skin cancer. The frightening odds are that I probably will die of cancer one day. Back to more summer-appropriate dalliances.

A Brush with the Royally Creepy

At the Brattle Theatre today:

Me: Hello. How are you?
Man: Good. I’m _____. What’s your name?
Me: I’m Sarah. <--Mistake # 1
Man: Oh good. What do you do for real?
Me: I’m a student. <--Mistake # 2
Man: Where?
Me: Do you know AB? <-- Mistake # 3

This was the beginning of one creepy conversation. Actually, the conversation was not creepy at all, but that guy was friendly…too friendly…so friendly it was creepy. Especially when the conversation careened into “We should get coffee together at Au Bon Pain next time you’re here” and “We should swap phone numbers.”

Now, if this were some hot Harvard student, I would be flattered with the attention, but this was a pasty, balding, beer-bellied, middle-aged, CREEPY man. And I couldn’t help running through my mind that I was talking to some crazy pedophile.

Seriously, aren’t all serial killers/rapists supposed to appear really friendly? This guy tried way to hard to impress me:

1. He says he used to teach fourth grade: Blatant attempt at making me trust him.
2. He disparages other people for not being friendly: Blatant attempt to make me feel special. (I just feel creeped out.)
3. He says he used to volunteer teaching English at Chinatown: Blatant attempt to appeal to common ground
4. He talks about drinking and smoking cigars: Blatant attempt at looking cool.
5. He says his students used to play in his backyard: Blatant attempt at making everything seem normal.

But it’s NOT normal! Not when he’s standing one foot away from me, and I’m pinned against the wall trying to get away from him. Not when I’m scared to go to the bathroom alone because I think he might attack me. Not when he keeps looking back at me during the movie. Not when he tries to teach me how to close the door by breathing down my neck.

Steff! You must come and protect me next week—I’m almost afraid to set foot in the Brattle in case I meet that creepy man again.

Am I being a cynical bitch or am I being sensible? How do you get rid of unwanted stalkers?

This is one of those days when I’m glad not to have a myspace or livejournal or a functioning xanga. Shit. Internet stalking is too easy.

A Brush with Royalty

Breakfast with Peter. Tea with Elizabeth.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of mass media is how easily stories are now shared. With the flip of a page or the click of a mouse, intimate portraits of centuries-old monarchs are accessible to even the proletarian masses. As a girl, I was always entranced by the grandiose tales of kings and queens and love and war. Who could not be roused with such stories of sacrifice, of love, of betrayal—of legend? There is a trend in history to deconstruct these legendary icons and paint them as ordinary people in extraordinary situations. But with Peter and Elizabeth, however, we only see that they are in fact Great.

Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
Progress update: Page 216 / 855. In a true test of endurance, I have managed to plod through a full ¼ of the mammoth tome. Actually, it is unfair to attribute it to endurance because Peter the Great is surprisingly readable and guess what—enjoyable. Peter, infallibly curious, daring and hot-tempered, is the type of guy that you might actually want to spend 800+ pages reading about. The book is painstaking researched (at least I hope it is, I don’t want to spend my summer reading a bunch of lies) and well written.

Elizabeth (Kapur, 1998)
History is sacrificed for drama, and this is a good thing—for drama, I mean, certainly not for history. The myriad of historical accuracies is secondary in this finely acted historical drama because its actors utterly convince you that everything happened just as it does in the film. For all I know, hot Elizabethan men walked about in chest baring shirts. Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, and Joseph Fiennes make the most of their juiced up roles, and a multitude of actors I adore turn up in smaller roles—Fanny Ardant, Emily Mortimer, Daniel Craig, Vincent Cassel, Kelly MacDonald….But Elizabeth the queen is to England as Cate Blanchett is to Elizabeth the movie—it is only with Blanchett’s glorious performance as the Virgin Queen that the film has any power. It might as well be Cate the Great. B+

More Offside Musings

According to Erik Erikson (yes, that is his real name), there are 8 stages of psychosocial development, where each stage represents a unique psychosocial conflict. The 5th stage is adolescence (ages 12-20), and the central conflict is identity v. role confusion.

While I can’t speak for the validity of any psychological theories—they seem to pop up and get discredited every few decades—I do think that Erikson is right about adolescence. There are no people I respect more than those who have a clear sense of identity—a direction to guide them into the future. I used to snicker with disdain at people with such tunnel vision, but I think I have come to a point in life, in adolescence, where self-understanding becomes expected.

I’ve recently been fixated on this search for identity because the emptiness of summer vacation lends itself to such contemplation. Due to the lack of chores, I’ve been wasting a lot of time on the Internet, where I was prompted today to “get a profile.” I’ve always felt that profiles are a cheap and lazy way to define yourself. Some cutesy phrases and emoticons plus a list of favorites hardly touch on your true character. Perhaps I’ve being overly lofty, but if you can distill yourself into such a description, then you are a shallow person indeed. I don’t think it’s possible, which is why I have always been reluctant to do it to myself.

Since Erikson says my most important responsibility is to find an identity, I’m off to do that now. But where to start? I don’t expect a sudden epiphany one day. I’m off to live life then. Carpe diem.