Shutter Island

When the previews for Shutter Island first started coming out, I knew it was a movie that was instantly going to land on my must-see list.  But try as I might, I couldn't convince Dean to go see it with me, and because I dragged my feet and waited too long, before I knew it the movie was gone from the theatres.  So I did what I probably should have done in the first place: I read the book. 

If I didn't actually have to go to work in the morning I probably could have finished this book in a couple sittings.  And not because the length is super short, but because the book is so good and so suspenseful that it's hard to find a good place to stop.  Let me quickly set the scene.  The year is 1954 and Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have been sent to Ashcliffe Hospital to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates.  While the two are working their way through a seemingly impossible case, a massive storm hits the island and Teddy and Chuck are separated.  Fearing that he has been fed psychotropic drugs and convinced that radical brain surgery is taking place somewhere on the island, Teddy tries to hold on to his sanity when it seems like everyone else around him has lost theirs.

I'm not going to be able to reveal too many details, because I don't want to reveal too much about the book's ending.  I will say that I have been waiting to read a book like this for a long time.  I'm a sucker for the mystery genre, and an even bigger sucker for a few good plot twists and a surprise ending.  This book delivered all that and more.  The character development throughout was done very subtley with conversations between the characters, and also plenty of inner-thought monologue from Teddy.  I found the characters to be instantly likeable, and pleasant enough to follow for 200 pages or so.  

My one gripe is hardly a gripe at all, just something minor that caught me off guard.  The book ends very suddenly.  It's almost like the author was in the middle of building up another scene, and then just decided enough was enough.  Don't get me wrong, the ending works, but I wasn't quite ready for it when it happened.  Plus this is one of those books that has a preview section at the end with sample pages from the author's next book, so I wasn't prepared to reach a conclusion when I still had pages left to turn.  It's a mental thing..... 

This just goes to prove my point that any movie which started out as a book should always be enjoyed in its natural form, in other words don't be lazy.....read the book.  The movies are usually still enjoyable, and sometimes you get lucky and will stumble across a great adaptation, but the book is still where the real magic happens.  That being said, I cannot fairly compare the movie and book version of Shutter Island because I have not yet seen the movie, but I'm glad I got to experience the written form of the story first.  So maybe everything does happen for a reason.  

American Idol Wish List

For the past couple years I have been a consistent viewer of American Idol.  The show is alright.....I could do without the beginning weeks of tryouts where they highlight some of the worst and most ridiculous fame seekers to grace this earth, but all that aside, I still get into the show when the competition heats up.

If you watch the show, you can't help but notice some very distinct patters in both the judges and the contestants.  Doesn't matter the season or the situation, some of these things are so predictable it will drive you insane.  Below is a list of some things I hope to one day see/hear on American Idol.  You know, just to shake things up.

1.  I want to see Randy Jackson make it through an entire episode without using the words "dog" and "hot" in his critique.

2.  When a contestant has a really bad performance and gets ripped a new one by the judges, I would like just once for them to acknowledge that, yes, they kind of did really suck, not offer a bunch of excuses or try to explain how they think they actually did alright.

3.  For any and all contestants to quit telling us they "really had fun" during their performances.  No one cares if you're having fun.  You are on this show to win and kick some ass, not because you were feeling kind of bored and thought you would try this American Idol thing to see how much fun it was.

4.  Somewhat along the same lines as #3, I would really appreciate it if the audience wouldn't boo Simon or any of the judges when they tell contestants that they didn't have a good performance.  The truth hurts, and the judges are not there to pump up people's self-esteem. 

5.  Everytime one of the contestants doesn't do well, the judges (not all, but most), will try to pump them up by saying that they look great and that they are such awesome people.  Honestly, I think that is more crushing than getting a bad review about their singing.  This isn't a modeling competition people.  Review the singing and let the hair and wardrobe people worry about how the contestants look.   

6.  To see the contestants actually sing the group song at the beginning of the show....not lip synch.

7.  Maybe Ryan Seacrest could go on vacation for all of next season and we could find a guest judge to fill in.  Ryan has been especially obnoxious this season and I'm not sure how I am going to stand him until the finale.

16 and Pregnant

My sister and I have this addiction to Lifetime movies.  We can't get enough.  It's kind of sad, really, but try as we might to fight this addiction we keep getting sucked back in.  Awhile back I literally went months without watching anything on Lifetime, and then the network came out with "The Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal", and that was it for me.  One year as a joke, I bought my sister a classic Lifetime Movie titled "16 and Pregnant".  Some of you may have seen it, a sordid tale of teen pregnancy and the effects it has on the young mother and her family.  Kirsten Dunst gives a stellar performance as Tina, the young soon-to-be-mother whose loser of a boyfriend knocks her up then ditches her for a less fat girl, leaving Tina and her family to raise the baby.  I'm telling you, this is drama at its best.

Okay, but all joking aside, I think we are all aware of how big an issue teen pregnancy has become in this day and age.  I'm not an expert, I don't have a huge number of statistics to throw out for you....although I did see a report the other day that noted teen pregnancy was once again on the rise after several years of decline.  Overall I think it's sad that we now are accepting teen pregnancy as "just one of those things."  It's no longer taboo, in fact in a lot of places it's more or less the norm.  I think there are a lot of tangents that go along with discussing teen pregnancy, such as the involvement of schools, parents, and even the lack of morals seen in a lot of today's youths.    

Which leads me to the bulk of this post.  In keeping with the theme of guilty TV pleasures, I will admit that from time to time I find myself indulging in the somewhat new MTV series titled......16 and Pregnant!  I'm sure the title to this show gives it away.  MTV follows around a 16 year old girl during her final weeks of pregnancy, highlights her relationship with the baby's dad and her own family, then shows a bit of the aftermath in what happens after the baby is born.  I can't always stand to watch this show.  Especially the one where the 16 year old girl AND her mother were pregnant at the same time.  Nope, sorry, just couldn't go there.  Here's the deal kids.  I have many beefs with MTV and not just because of the fact that they hardly showcase music anymore.  But does a show like this help to make a case against teenage pregnancy, or is the network in a sense glorifying it?

True enough, movies just like the one I described above are produced all the time showcasing teenage pregnancy.  But I feel like on a network like MTV, a network that is frequented by teens probably more than any other audience, maybe a show like this is a little dangerous.  I realize that most kids today are probably not so desperate to get on TV that they would go out and get knocked up....but isn't that kind of the message MTV is sending?  And while I haven't yet seen an episode that could be deemed "happy," and while almost every girl on the show ends up saying she wishes she had never gotten pregnant, isn't there something kind of screwed up in the fact that MTV needs pregnant teens to apply to be on this show, meaning that they actually need people that young to get pregnant? 

I could be reading too much into this.  And if any of you out there have seen the show, maybe you feel that in some sort of reverse-psychology way MTV is actually trying to tell teens that having a baby that young is just not cool.  But I just cannot get behind the notion of putting these girls on TV for thousands of people (including me, at times) to gawk at.  It almost seems obscene.  But I guess this is where reality TV has gotten us.  It's not enough that we simply know the statistics on teen pregnancy and recognize that it's a growing problem, now we have to watch these young, immature girls experience it firsthand.  

Maybe there isn't a right or wrong answer to this pondering.  And maybe the fact that 1/3 of all girls in the United States will get pregnant during their teenage years means that a silly reality show is the least of our worries (thanks for the stat, Google).  But is the show just that, a silly reality show?  Is there something wrong with the fact that we are turning these soon-to-be mothers into nothing more than an hour of entertainment value?  These days everything eventually gets made into a "reality" show, but I just can't quite get behind the enjoyment of watching two young, immature kids, talk about how excited they are to have a baby, and how they plan on being wonderful parents.  Some people are calling this show a wake up call.  I think it's just sad.

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

We can all use a good love story now and then.  Even if the story doesn't necessarily move along smoothly, or even in chronological order.  Such is the case is Audrey Niffenegger's novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife."

We are introduced to Clare and Henry, a couple whose bond to each other is decided when Clare is only six years old.  This is the age where she meets her future husband, Henry, only Henry is about 43 years old at the time.  However, we soon learn that Henry has an interesting code written into his DNA that allows him to time travel.  Forward, backwards, he is literally all over the place, only he does not get to choose where and when he travels....it is completely up to chance.

Clare and Henry keep track of his visits, and figure out when they will actually meet each other in "present time."  When this happens, the story really begins and their life together starts to take off.  And while some of their challenges are not typical to every couple (such as Henry disappearing when he goes out to water the grass, leaving behind only a pile of clothes), some of their tribulations are extremely relatable, like their struggle to start a family of their own.  Henry begins seeing a doctor who works with him to try and figure out how to stop the time travelling once and for all.  And while a solution appears to be just on the horizon, it doesn't seem like it will be realized in time enough to save Henry.  As the time travelling increases in frequency and in dangerousness, Henry and Clare are forced to realize that the thing which brought them together all those years ago could also be the thing that separates them forever.

I really enjoy reading love stories that don't seem like they are love stories.  It's refreshing to find a book that is able to capture the intimacy between two characters without having to focus purely on sex and mindless spoken sentiments.  It is really incredible the way the author develops the relationship between Clare and Henry.  It begins when Clare is still a child, and continues until she finally meets Henry in the present day.  In the beginning of the novel the author lays out a number of building blocks and foreshadowing circumstances that don't immediately make an impact on the reader, but pay off big time toward the end of the book. 

Aside from the story iteself, I think the overall layout of this book is one of its biggest triumphs.  Even though there is a lot of jumping around from past to present, the author does a remarkable job of keeping the story moving forward, and keeps the reader grounded in the story.  I didn't feel lost once, and what I really appreciated was that every seemingly odd passage or questionable action was explained by the end of the book.  So many times I feel like there are scenes thrown into books that are meant to throw the reader off track, or create some kind of surprise element, but then they are never explained.  When this happens I often wonder if the writer just forgot, or simply just didn't have a good explanation by the end of the book so decided it wasn't worth revisiting.  The author really does a great job of giving the reader the entire story, so by the time the book is over you really feel like there are no more questions.

My only qualm with the book is Clare and Henry.  It seems strange, I know, because while I really loved the overall story and thought the development of their relationship was superb, I couldn't quite connect to them as characters.  I tried, but there was something very bland about them, and honestly I felt like they were so similar (aside from the time travelling) that if you removed the names it would be like reading about the same characters.  In a way, for me, they were almost too predictable, and even though I liked them because of the story, I'm not sure I would have liked them set in a different story.  Maybe that doesn't make sense, but I just didn't feel a very strong connection.

This is really a touching story, and if you're an emotional reader like I am you will definitely experience a broad spectrum while reading this book.  It is so well written, and such an original story, I am beyond impressed with what the author has created.  In terms of the modern love story, I think this book is as good as it gets.

The Lost Art of Communication

There is a scene in the movie "He's Just Not That Into You" where Drew Barrymore is lamenting about how hard it is for her to get in touch with a certain guy.  In a nutshell, it goes something like this:


"I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies."


It's almost scary as to how true this sentiment actually is.  We live in a world where Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and instant message chatting reign supreme.  These days if I need to get in touch with someone I don't reach for the phone, I simply open up a new email message.  Most of us only carry around cell phones so we can text, and while you may not want to reconnect with some of your old high school friends, you can scope out all their drunk partying pictures by looking at their Facebook profile. 


I'm not in any way trying to say that these are useless mediums.  I'm on Facebook just as much as the next person, but I think the intensity to which some people use these sites raises some interesting ideas about how we communicate with others.  For a long time, the telephone was the lifeline of every teenage boy and girl on the planet.  Hour long phone conversations, anxiously waiting by the phone for some very important person to call you back (I guess maybe this still happens), and even though it's entirely juvenille, crank calls provided my friends and me some priceless entertainment during my adolescent years.  Of course this was before that annoying little gadget known as Caller ID.  Ahhhh....those were the days.


I'm going to presume that now instead of gabbing on the phone all night, most teenagers and others settle for hours of chatting with friends online.  Let's face it, cell phone minutes are worth their weight in gold and no one has a landline anymore.  Here's what I'm wondering: have all these fantastic online and satellite devices really brought us closer together?  Or were we better off during the days of personal phone calls, handwritten letters (I personally love getting these), and face-to-face meetings?  Unfortunately I think it's a double edged sword.  As opposed that some people may be to the Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn culture, there is no denying that these sites are serving as very useful ways for people to stay in touch and make not just social, but professional connections (although I strongly believe that MySpace is nothing but a pick-up scene, and I wouldn't be surprised if it fizzled out in the next few years). 


On the other side of the argument, should we really be relying on a computer to keep us connected to the people we deem important in our lives?  I'm not talking about your third cousin twice removed's ex-boyfriend, I'm talking about your siblings, close friends, maybe even parents and grandparents.  Sure, it's convenient, and I email my family members and friends on a weekly basis.  But couldn't I just as easily pick up the phone and share voice-to-voice contact?  Couldn't I make the effort to take 20 minutes out of my day and call my best friend in Walla Walla and simply see how she's doing?  Sure, I probably could, but then there's the convenience factor of email and the idea of saving time.....you see where I'm going with this. 


This is probably a discussion that could go round and round, pros and cons, blah, blah, blah.  But basically I think that we (probably not all of us, but most of us) have traded the personal touch for convenience.  We are a culture that is literally obsessed with making connections and being linked to hundreds of people in some way or another.  And finally we have the ability to flaunt those connections and make them work for us, not to mention make hundreds of more connections by friending the friends of friends and so forth (that was sure an interesting sentence). 


Communication is one of those things that is constantly changing and will likely keep changing in the years to come.  We have come a long way since the days of smoke signals and hieroglyphics, but these days it almost seems like some people need a crash course in learning how to communicate outside the confines of a computer screen.  Sometimes it's almost as if we are moving backwards, and doesn't that in a way speak louder than all the progression we've seen?
       

Woe is Tiger

I really didn't want to write about this, but it's been bugging me all morning so I'm going to just bite the bullet and rant.  Unless you live under a rock, you probably knew that today was the day Tiger Woods was FINALLY going to make a statement (a.k.a. apology) about the mess he made of his personal life by cheating on his wife with about a million different women.  And yes, that "million women" is not an entirely accurate count, but it seems like a new one pops up every day, so just give it time people.

First of all, let me preface this by saying that no, I did not tune in via internet radio, television, or any other media to listen to the press conference.  I did however read a brief recap of the event which in itself was quite riveting, but nonetheless told me that I didn't really miss anything too monumental.  Poor Tiger....the media, his fans, and golfers all over the world have been scrutinizing his life down to the tiniest detail ever since that unfortunate car crash back in November.  The man has not known a moments peace, has been hounded by the press, and has separated from his wife.  He has been so ultimately traumatized by everything that he has been unable to make any sort of statement about anything until three months after the fact.  Shame on you, media, for intimidating him so much.  Can't you see that the gravity of this situation has rocked him to the core?  (On a side note, I am hoping that my intended sarcasm is leaking through.  It would be much easier to pick up on that if this were a vlog instead of a blog).

I'm not a huge fan of golf, but even I know that Tiger Woods is literally the best golf player in the entire world.  I'm not going to sit here and rattle off his stats and talk up his athletic ability, because frankly that is irrelevant to the situation at hand.  Tiger Woods is, by all means and purposes, a celebrity.  He is (well, was) the face of professional golf and will continue to be so probably well after his career is over.  When you are a celebrity, you leave the realm of normalcy where the rest of us lowly minions dwell and are elevated to a stature of supreme pampering and idolization....people literally want to BE you.  If you ask me, that's a lot of pressure.

When this whole fiasco first became public, people were absolutely shocked, dumbfounded, even confused.  I mean, this was Tiger Woods we were talking about....a celebrity.....an idol.....they never make mistakes.....or do they??  See here's the thing, you strip away the sponsorships, the fancy golf gear, the multi-million dollar bank account, and what you have is a normal guy who happns to be really talented at hitting a little white ball into these little holes on a golf course.  What if Tiger Woods was everyday Joe Schmo at the local golf course just beating everyone left and right but never trying to take his game to the next level?  What if he was the one who cheated on his wife with all these women?  I sincerely doubt he would be hounded by every press outlet from here to Great Britian, and I doubt even more that he would check himself into a clinic for sex therapy.  No, I think Joe Schmo and his wife might divorce, and he would continue sleeping around kicking butt on the local golf course.

But wait, you say.  Tiger Woods is NOT this hypothetical Joe Schmo.  He is a real person who is in the spotlight, who thousands of people admire and idolize, so when he makes a mistake of this magnitude in his personal life we have a RIGHT to know about it!  The public demands answers and he must speak to us!  You can spout that nonsense all you want but when you get right down to it, that's garbage.  We might have a right to know about Tiger's performance on the golf course in nation-wide competitions, but his personal life is exactly that: his personal life.  If Tiger cheats on his wife, wears bikini underwear, and likes to eat beef jerky in bed, that's all well and good but there is absolutely no legitimate reason why we, the general public, have to know that stuff.  We are a culture of voyeuristic bloodhounds, and when we pick up a scent all we can think is, Give me more....give me more.

And that is exactly what bothered me so much about today's exclusive press conference.  It was basically just throwing meat to a pack of hungry wolves to tide them over until the next barage of accusations and rumors build up, then it will be time for Tiger to face the music once again.  In case you haven't heard anything about this morning's momentous event, let me give you the short and sweet: Tiger apologized and doesn't know when he will return to professional golf.  He apologized to a room full of reporters, while his wife is off in Sweden or who knows where, and she is the person he should be apologizing to.  Maybe he has already and I just didn't see it in the news....who knows, but how sincere does anyone think this apology really was?  I'm going out on a limb to say this is a classic case not of, "I'm legitimately sorry for what I did and truly want to make things right," but more along the lines of, "I'm really sorry that I got caught and called out on these horrible things I did.  Had I not been caught I would probably continue with what I was doing, but now that everything is out in the open I am going to say sorry in the hopes that it will all go away."

Look, I'm not trying to get up on my high horse and say that Tiger should be burned at the stake.  I think the majority of us have a basic sense of right and wrong, and if asked all of us (I hope) would say that cheating on your spouse is wrong.  No way to talk yourself out of that.  Tiger cheated on his wife, therefore he is in the wrong.  Just like our buddy Joe Schmo.  I guess what I am most annoyed about is that we have to have this whole media circus surrounding the incident, when really there is nothing newsworthy to report.  Why should we care about this?  Why should we care about any of the hundreds of thousands of stories that are published each and every day about celebrities?  Things like this happen to us real people all the time, but no one is beating down my door to ask me questions like what designer top will I be wearing out to dinner with my husband on Saturday night (Alfani, in case anyone wanted to know).

Tiger screwed up, and now he'll probably end up getting a divorce.  He has apologized, although I'm still not sure to whom.....his fans?  Other golfers?  His caddy?  The woman who bags his groceries?  Maybe all these people and more, this incident seems to have affected a lot of lives.  I'm just tired of the staged apologies and our incessant need to have all the dirty details about the lives of people we don't even know.  I realize that celebrity athletes, actors, writers, etc. often are powerless to control the amount of access that people demand into their personal lives.  But I for one have had enough. 

We hold these people up to impossible standards by literally expecting them to be perfect in every way.  Then when they fail, we take it as a personal attack against us and everyone who admires them.  Human beings were not designed to be perfect on the golf course or in their personal lives.  The sooner people realize this the less we'll have to hear about Tiger.    

A Wolf at the Table

I took the day off work this past Friday and spent a good hour of my morning finishing Augusten Burroughs's memoir, "A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father."  I was somewhat familiar with Burroughs's writing already, having sampled his other memoir, "Running With Scissors" last spring.  I thought that I more or less knew what to expect going into this book, but like all good writers Burroughs managed to throw in some curve balls.

In this book Burroughs recounts his childhood and his feeble attempts to create some type of fulfilling, nurturing relationship with his father.  For a lot of his adolescent years, Burroughs and his mother are constantly on the run from Burroughs's father and his alcoholic rages.  Despite these traumatic episodes, Burroughes desperately seeks any type of affection from his father, yearning for even the slightest hint of acceptance.  While the author never comes out and blatantly labels his father as psychotic, a disturbing picture is painted of a man who constantly threatens to murder his wife and son, kills his son's beloved guinea pig, and stands idly by while the family dog viciously attacks a neighbor.

At times the story is so unbelievable you're positive you must be reading a work of fiction.  The writing is raw and uninhibited.  Burroughs doesn't hold anything back and nothing is sugar coated.  At times reading this story made me feel sad, horrified, and uncomfortable.  I thought to myself on numerous occassions, How could anyone survive a life like this?  Well, survive he did.  And surprisingly Burroughs keeps in contact with his father until the man is lying on his deathbed.  And even then, he refuses to give Burroughs the affection he has been searching for all his life. 

The whole book is really a whirlwind of emotions and situations that seem too outlandish to be true.  I think that in terms of how to write a memoir, this is exactly what one should strive for.  The details are not overly obnoxious and do a comendable job of holding the reader in each scene.  Burroughs obviously had a lot of overwhelming material to work with when writing this book, but I never once got the impression that he was looking for pity because of what he had gone through.  His focus on the story was very evident, and never once did he stray off-course. 

The memoir is an interesting category of writing, and when it's done right the result is a very satisfying reading experience.  This is definitely a highlight of the genre, and definitely worth checking out.