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Wicked Weekend |
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the marku
I finally struggled through to the end of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. The book had been recommended to me and was well reviewed, so I bought it during my pre-vacation book buying spree. The central conceit is promising—the tale of Oz told from the witch’s perspective. The witch in this case is a green skinned girl with the fabulous name of Elphaba, and Oz is a land devastated by political, religious and social turmoil. The book is supposedly a meditation on the nature of evil and a clever reinterpretation of the Oz story. I found it to be a depressing, disjointed mess. The characters, including Elphaba, are never fully realized. The plot meanders and stalls: the timeline is advanced by sudden jumps in time, followed by long periods of plot inertia. The fantasyland of Oz is steeped in gloom and oppression masquerading as a tired Third Reich metaphor. Ultimately, both Oz and the book are utterly devoid of joy. The supposed “brilliant meditation on the nature of evil” is nowhere to be found. A couple of paragraphs of throwaway ruminations are just a retread of arguments familiar to anyone who is familiar with basic philosophy—the so-called ”problem of evil” is an old, old debate. There are maybe one or two passages that make interesting points along this line, and the rest of it is a bore—certainly nothing new or incisive. And the character of Elphaba herself never speaks to this because she is never portrayed as evil and doesn’t even act evilly: she is just misunderstood. Wicked only dovetails with the L. Frank Baum story at the very beginning and very end. There is some cleverness but ultimately, the author re-writes Baum’s story to suit his own purposes. The characters and events in Wicked only bear an archetypal resemblance to the story we are all familiar with—Maguire cops out on much. The book does get better towards the end, where the plot moves along in a somewhat cogent fashion. Still, the majority of the book’s plot points and characters are left at loose ends—I don’t want a completely pat ending, but some kind of closure would be nice. It is towards the end that the only interesting argument appears, to my mind—a brief look at religion as a “necessary evil” when Elphaba posits that religion, although a complete sham, serves a necessary unifying function in society despite the evil it often excuses. To the book’s credit, Maguire doesn’t take the easy way out and make Elphaba some kind of martyr. She is complicated and not always (or even usually) likeable. I wish her character had been more clearly drawn though, because certain personality elements and actions seem totally out of place. Perhaps I am missing a large extended metaphor or… something, but I’m sorry to say that I hated Oz, I hated the characters, I was frustrated with the plot and bored with the politics of Wicked. In short: I don’t get the appeal. If you did, I’d love to hear a rebuttal.
This weekend, my younger cousin Laura graduated from high school. She goes to a small, private, Catholic school in the Valley that is famous for having lots of rich blonde students—future members of Alpha Delta Alpha whose drug of choice is cocaine. The entertainment of the graduation was two pronged. First came the graduation speech, where the girl who was speaking started waxing eloquent about their class diversity. “There’s no single thing that defines us as Notre Dame Knights. We are all different…” Abby leaned over to me and said, “Yes, we’re all different. Some of us have blonde hair and some of us have… lighter blonde hair.” We started calling them the “Notre Dame Whites… I mean, Knights…” and giggled the whole time. That was a fun speech. The other entertaining thing was that there is a famous person in her class: Kirsten Dunst. She comes across in her films as a fully realized person—you’d never guess she was young enough to be graduating high school this year. But I saw it happen my friends, and can personally guarantee you that she is in fact that young. I have met her, but not through Laura. Oddly enough it was purely by chance, when we were sharing a lane at Jerry’s Deli bowling ally with her and her family. And I’m here to tell you that in person, she comes across as a young girl exactly her own age. The preternatural maturity shuts off when the camera does, and I say good for her. She attends parties and hangs out with her friends and goes to pep rallies and proms… a typical teenager. That impresses me, I think, even more than her acting. She must have great parents. The people behind us were being tres tacky—calling out “Kirsten! Kirsten!” even though they didn’t know her. They didn’t have the L.A. cool thing down at all. (No need to remind me of the time I saw David Boreanaz and lost my own L.A. cool. I remember it well.) Laura told me that last year, Tom Hanks’ niece graduated from their school. A ton of people were asking him for his autograph and had to keep saying, “I’m here for my niece.” I guess he must be used to that, but how embarrassing.
More Hollywood insider gossip is that Lucy’s in the middle of a four day stint on the MTV Movie Awards. Lucy told me she ran up and stood next to George Lucas just so she could say she did. And she was running a craft service candy table and, “Winona Ryder got candy from my table!” She got a picture of herself sliding down the on-stage slide. She told me that when Sarah Michelle Gellar won her award, she shoved her tongue as far down Freddie Prinze’s mouth as possible. In fact, both Seth Green and Sarah Michelle Gellar are attendees and of course, Lucy got to rub elbows with them, the wench. (Actually, my sister is more of a wench. She was an extra on Buffy and while she was on the set, Seth Green came up to her and said, “Hi, my name’s Seth, what’s yours?” and was super friendly and cool. You’d think I would know what episode this was, but I really don’t. Must find that out.) Lucy gets paid $150 per day for working on the awards. It’s a non-union job, so as a PA, she does everything from painting the floor to giving the boys of N*Sync their Snickers fix. She works 16-20 hours per day, though—I guess the trade off for all that glamour is a lot of hard work.
On Saturday night, I went out with Danielle and one of her new gay friends, a perfectly adorable guy who I’ll call Fernando. (We sang Fernando together at about three in the morning, so it’s appropriate.) There are a bunch of guys in Danielle’s gay harem who I do not like… I don’t know if it’s an L.A. homosexual thing or if it’s universal, but a lot of these men can be superficial and touchy feely: guys who call you “sweetie” and “honey” and invade your personal space within ten seconds of meeting you. (Danielle is the type of person to take that at face value and assume everyone loves her and wants to be her best friend, but I’m not quite so comfortable with phoniness.) Of course, by the end of the night, Fernando and I were doing an interpretive pas de deux on the dance floor, but we worked up to it gradually. The club we went to was called Makeup at the El Rey theater. It takes place on the first Saturday of every month. I had never heard of it before, but I was told it is run by Madonna’s brother and was profiled on E! as one of the 10 best clubs in L.A. I want to know what the other nine are, because they were right on about Makeup. It is really a mixed crowd, but the emphasis is on wild attire and dressing in drag. In addition to drag queens everywhere, I saw people spray painted gold and silver, goths dressed in wedding clothes, a girl wearing a bikini with some chain mail over it, people in lingerie, and everyone covered in glitter and wearing outrageous wigs. There was a surprising balance between gay and straight, couples and singles. My pink wig would have been totally tame in that room. The night was hosted by Alexis Arquette (brother of David and star of The Wedding Singer and Threesome) who came out in full drag and sang a Blondie song. His roommate, another drag queen named Andy Ass, is friends with Fernando. They played great music… the emphasis was on “glam rock” and 80s music which included Poison, Guns n’ Roses, Duran Duran, Human League, Queen, Motley Crüe, Abba, etc. Really fun tunes to dance to. There were go go dancers, of course, and at one point, a band came out and did a thirty minute set of Blondie covers. We missed most of that because we were talking out in the smoking area, but we can’t possibly miss next week: it’s an Abba tribute band. After leaving the club, we called Andrew the DJ, who I met early in May and developed an odd crush on, for lack of a better word. We actually called his radio show (on a big radio station down here) at 2:30 and he let us pick the rest of the songs for the night. We decided to meet up for coffee when he got off at three, and I was inordinately excited to see him again. Danielle kept making stupid sexual jokes, but I’m not sexually attracted to this guy at all. I mean, it would be completely pointless for one thing: he’s gay and we are both in love with our boyfriends. I’m not sure what it is, to tell you the truth. I am just very enthusiastic about the idea of being his friend. (As well I should be—next week he’s going to get us on the VIP list for Makeup, so we don’t have to wait in line or pay the $15 cover.) The night of discoveries continued, as Andrew took us to a 24 hour coffee shop right on the Sunset Strip next to Dublins… although I’ve driven by it a million times, I’ve never noticed it before. The place has candles and couches everywhere, yummy coffee, food that looks delicious, and a great, mellow atmosphere. Can’t wait to bring Matt there, because he’ll love it.
And I’ll drop one final batch of names: the names of some journalers, who I met (or re-met) at Nancy’s house last week. I didn’t get the chance to talk to everyone, but I really enjoyed meeting Shelley and her boyfriend, Tamar’s husband Dan, and Sophia and Darin Patterson/Adler for the first time. And it was great to see everyone else again—Mahrya, Nancy, the Atkinses, Diane, Tamar… I got to talk to Beth a lot, and if you ever met her, you’d be jealous of me for that. She kicks ass. I don’t know why I haven’t been reading Shelley, because she’s this amazing, personality plus kind of girl. I remember thinking, “Wow, it must be really exhausting to be her.” She has THAT much energy.. although meeting a bunch of journal people can be nerve racking and it could have been nervous energy. Dan is very much the other side of the coin that is Tamar… quiet, thoughtful, articulate. Darin is obviously brilliant, but also personable and confident. A lot of computer people (like Tim, for instance) tend to be socially awkward and introverted, but Darin? Not so much. And what can you say about the cuteness that is Sophia? My god, that child is adorable. Several people were surprised when I said I was on 80 notify lists or so, but I never got to point the finger of blame, so here it is: it’s Diane’s fault. I became hopelessly addicted to her journal long ago, when I was first discovering this journal thing. And one day, I realized that if she ended her journal, I’d be really upset. Like, say they canceled Buffy the Vampire Slayer. THAT level of upset. So I realized I was too attached and decided I had to start reading other journals, to fill the void just in case Diane quit. And now I’m on 80 notify lists. And I’d STILL be upset if Diane quit. |
marku:
 What I'm Reading: Re-reading Strange Days. elphaba greenJournal Quote of the Day: “He cried, I cried, his Mom cried. I asked him to go with me the next day. He refused. I was enraged. I was alone. My family didn't know I was pregnant, he wouldn't go with me. I went alone. ”Random Tidbit: I am totally addicted to MightyBigTV. They're doing Twin Peaks now!Work Days Left: 48Days Left To Be In The Same Room With The Crazy Dog Lady: 43 |
