 Balls and Books |
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Just when I think I cannot love Before Sunset any more, I watch it again and love it all over again. The scene in the cab kills me. And even knowing now how it all turns out, watching the slow walk up the staircase always brings me back to how I felt the first time I saw it and how I was tied completely up in knots in the theater, holding my knees up to my chest and squeezing them, practically writhing in anticipation. God. I love this movie. Will someone please tell me that after 275 pages it's not time for me to give up on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? I'm trying, people. I wanted to read this book for ages, and I got it for Christmas, and I AM TRYING. It has its interesting moments, but just when I feel like I want to read more about something, like Stephen or the fairy, it shifts into something else that I don't care about at all. I was trying to think of a word to describe it the other day, and the only one I could really come up with was precious. It's precious, and it's cute, and it's twee, and it's just a little too proud of itself for being such and seems to be unable to actually get anywhere. I don't hate it, and I still think it might redeem itself, but mother of GOD. I've found myself rolling my eyes a lot. A book that didn't make me roll my eyes was I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere. It's a book of short stories translated from the author's French, and it's kind of scrumptious. I tore through it and really liked the stories, but I can't remember which reader recommended it to me. Please remind me who you are, and thank you for the suggestion. I know I'll read it again. The ball was as ever crazy and funny and silly. Seeing Shelley perform in a silver costume, waving a prop gun around and doing dips and twirls, brought me back to her countless dance recitals and talent shows and competitions I attended when we were kids. At the recitals, I would sit with her parents and her dad would put his arm around her mom's shoulder when the lights would dim and say loudly, "Honey, can we neck?" I still remember the songs she danced to in her contests -- one year it was a Whitney Houston song because we loved her unabashedly, once it was an instrumental from Stealing Home, once it was Aretha Franklin's "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman." I even remember her costumes and the time I stood on a chair so I could crane to get a better view of her and I fell caterwauling to the ground and practically busted my head open, much to the embarrassment of our friend David who didn't know what in the hell to do with me as I lay there in a lycra micro-miniskirt while little birds chirped in a circle around my noggin. So many of my memories of her in our childhood and adolescence are wrapped around those dancing days. It's hard not to notice that Shelley still likes to strut her stuff when she dances. I think it's one of the times when she's the most herself. About this time in ...
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