Julia Slaughter

I did NOT see the Lightning Thief over the weekend, I have friends who have read and loved the books and they were unable to go so I put it off waiting for a time when we can all go. However, I did finish the fifth and final (?) book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. If you notice, usually I try to keep my reading library (on the left) up to date and when I finish books I tend to rate it and write a mini-review, but I didn’t do that with this series, the problem was that I read them all back to back to back so I’m having a hard time remembering where one book ends and another begins.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Hardback Complete Set

For Christmas I got the complete Percy Jackson set, and I love these books – they are technically children’s books (the age range is 9-12) but if you are in touch with your inner child or if you have a vivid imagination the series is captivating.

I love that the whole series is steeped in Mythology. (I am shocked by the negative reviews that comment that there are plot elements similar to Greek mythology – hello, Percy Jackson is Poseidon’s son, really you didn’t see that coming?) I’ve always loved Greek and Roman mythology so these were right up my alley. Once I picked up the first book it was almost impossible to put the series down until I was finished. They are fast paced and so much fun. Yes there are elements in the book that give a nod to some of the old school Greek Myths that we know and love, but I think it’s a respectful nod, not an issue of Riordan stealing from the classics.

I really enjoyed the characters, I liked that the series was chock full of heroes and heroines who were amazing warriors. I also liked that the characters were incredibly complex – the good guys weren’t without flaws and the bad guys were not bad beyond the point of redemption. I liked the dimension that this added to the characters and how, despite their super powers, it made them more real.

Now that I’ve read the whole series I am chomping at the bit to see the movie, I can’t wait to see how faithful they were to the plot and characters I’ve grown so terribly fond of.

It is a nasty habit that I have that during the holidays, everything suffers. I don’t read as much, I don’t see as many movies (though there seem to be plenty of movies to see), and clearly I don’t blog as much. (Though I am frustrated because I have been tweeting more frequently than my Twitter feed seems to indicate which means I’ve got to poke at that soon.) I will not make excuses, it’s life it happens and you really don’t want to read any excuses so let me instead get on with it…

I picked up some extra work days during the holidays, which means that I get to take a random day off later. I love having a holiday when everyone else is working – it feels decadent to me somehow. Frequently I use these days off to do one of the things I love to do best and I go to the movies early on a Friday.

Not surprisingly on one such Friday I saw Avatar again and I liked it even MORE the second time. I could regal you with charming details and other tidbits I’ve picked up about it since then but I won’t. Avatar has set records, has won some awards, and is nominated for plenty more. I am confident that you’ve heard of, if you’re here you probably know how I feel about it – I’ll spare you the rest.

The Book of Eli Poster

If you’re like I am you might have seen trailers for this, and felt like the trailers seemed interesting but perhaps not interesting enough to motivate you to actually go see it. I was motivated to see it because apparently the author of the material is a friend of my friend Kathryn. (Maybe I’ve found my link to Kevin Bacon?) Kathryn was adamant that I should go see and as she rarely leads me astray – off I went.

I was amused that there was a pair of tiny older Southern ladies sitting in front of me at the theater. (Okay, I admit that I wasn’t so amused when one turned to the other loudly and said “I don’t know why anyone would want to see that” LOUDLY during the Clash of the Titans trailer.) However about two minutes in when a cat gets shot for dinner and they physically recoiled – I was very amused.

I have been telling my friends that the movie is like Mad Max with soul. We’re in a post-apocalyptic world, where people are eating people for want of food (the people who have gone cannibal develop the shakes which identifies them as what they are) and there are people who are pulling together to try to rebuild some semblance of society, the good and bad parts of society are manifested in the various pockets of civilization that appear on the landscape. Eli is a nomad, making his way west, he carries a book and most trailers give you an indication as to what book it is, but I won’t spill the beans here.

I really enjoyed the movie, it was portrayed by a GREAT cast. In addition to Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, I was thrilled when Ray Stevenson flashed up on screen – I love him! I think he’s a tremendously talented actor. The plot has a twist at the end  that absolutely shocked me! It was something that I just never anticipated. However, I think that despite the sometimes grim and grisly scenes the movie brings in an unexpected audience because it has a powerful message.

I’ve seen a few other movies here and there, I went with a friend and her kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeekel (how the heck do you spell that?!?!). The next movie coming up that I am really excited about opens tomorrow Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – I’ll let you know how it goes.

I am going to try not to say anything spoilerish, but I can’t make any promises…

In July at Comic Con I saw 25 minutes of James Cameron’s Avatar and I was hooked, when asked later why I was hard pressed to come up with anything more substantial than “it’s pretty.” I didn’t mean that in a girly way I meant that I was looking at a completely rendered world and it was beautiful, colorful, and textured in such a way that made it seem completely substantial.

After months of waiting I finally got to see the movie, and I saw it with an odd assortment of people. There were those who were ardent in their fever to see Avatar, those who were apparently caught up in my excitement, and those who had the “misfortune” of being married to people who fell in one of the first two categories. At the end of the movie, we were all believers, and it was the first time for me in recent memory that we found a movie that we all liked.

I feel like there’s nothing I can say about the special effects of this movie that haven’t already been said – the movie is stunning, the special effects are amazing. The Na’avi were so beautiful and so realistically rendered that I often forgot that they were rendered, the 3D was used subtly – it added to the film, it never took away from the movie by doing any of the silly gimmicky 3D tricks. All of the technology helped submerge you into the film and enhanced the story.

I am shocked by the reviews that have taken issue with characters and plot.  I loved both. I really felt like I was swept up in the main character’s perspective, what started as alien and sometimes intriguing turned into something beautiful.  At several points I found myself so absorbed in the plot that I had tears in my eyes, and it was only through well placed humor that I was laughing instead of crying moments later.

I admit there was nothing about this movie that I didn’t like, and I had even expressed concerns to coworkers abut the length. (The film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, so when you add in 20 or so minutes of previews and commercials, I knew I would be sitting in the theater for three hours.) I’ve always agreed with Alfred Hitchcock that “the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” However, when the film was over I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t MORE film! It was the fastest three hours of my life.

If you haven’t seen this movie, if you aren’t even sure that you want to see it – go and see, consider seeing it in 3D if its available. It’s not just a movie, it’s an experience that no one should miss!

I love this time of year, not because I like shopping or even getting gifts, but because there are so many other things I love about this season:

Houses dripping in Christmas Lights, with Christmas Trees peeking out of the window. Even the most humble home looks grand to me, in all of it’s Christmas splendor and I love them all – from the humble homes “tastefully decorated” to the homes that set out to rival Clark Griswold.

Christmas movies. There’s not much that is unpredictable in Christmas movies but I love them all from various incarnations of  A Christmas Carol (though the Muppets Variety is my favorite) to A Wonder Life. My eyes well with tears and my heart skips a beat when the lessons are learned and love has reigned over even the coldest hearts during the holiday season.

Peppermint Ice Cream. Okay what’s funny about my love of Peppermint Ice Cream is that during the summer I’m an indifferent Ice Cream person at best. Every now and then I might grab a cone but even then I rarely finish it, but when December rolls around, the weather gets colder and the Peppermint Ice Cream hits the stores I can’t get enough of it!

Starbucks Christmas Treats! It was my love of peppermint that first brought me to Starbucks – Peppermint hot chocolate was what caught my attention the first time and then I saw Gingerbread Loaf, after that it was all over. I start doing driving by to check out Starbucks right after Thanksgiving and once I see the red cups, I’m in!

Oh sure there are other things I like that have nothing to do with things that you can buy and sell but those things are  so much harder to put into words…

I like that feeling of getting someone a gift that I know they are really going to like, a gift that says something about the way I feel about them. Sometimes I enjoy making gifts – baking them, creating photobooks, etc.

I love spending time with friends and family from near and far, everyone seems their best and brightest during the Christmas season.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I went away from home and visited some friends in Oklahoma, and it was fun and fascinating to participate in their Thanksgiving traditions. Despite my many blessings, Thanksgiving has never been a big holiday for my family (in fact we usually leave town), because I am a direct descendant of Mrs.Claus and Santa Claus.

My first scrap of evidence that I am related to Mrs.Claus came when I was in kindergarten, we had parents day and the next night I went to school and found a letter to me from Mrs.Claus! It talked about how she was making Pineapple Upside Down cake for Santa and that day when I went home from work I found my grandmother there in the kitchen making Pineapple Upside Down cake! (Aha! so that’s why I never saw grandpa – he was Santa Claus!)

The other supporting evidence is that my Mom has always been Christmas crazy! She puts up roughly twelve Christmas trees that range in size from 12 feet to 3 feet, there are elves and reindeer scattered through out the house, and tinsel and twinkle lights gleam from every surface that will hold still to tolerate such treatment. The decorating usually begins in October, it starts with mysterious boxes appearing from out of storage units and the attic and well before Thanksgiving it’s finalized, every piece of garland in place. I love our over the top Christmases but it’s always been a little much for me, I like to contain my Christmas decorations to the period after Thanksgiving and into the first week of January.

After Thanksgiving dinner, my Oklahoma friends piled up into cars and we headed to the Chickasha Festival of Light and it was a perfect end to Thanksgiving and a wonderful kick off for Christmas. There were horse drawn carriages to trot around the park in and a bridge that had been turned into a a tunnel of white twinkle lights. I giggled at the mermaids, seahorses, and ostriches and my heart swelled when I saw the huge tree and the 12 days of Christmas. It was wonderful.

I was so excited to get into the Christmas festivities that I ended up coming home and starting my own decorations, even though the weather doesn’t seem quite Christmasy enough yet.

I cannot help myself, I love this time of year. I love the smells of gingerbread, chocolate, and peppermint. I love seeing people in the season. I love twinkle lights and tinsel. I love it all, all of it but shopping…still not a big fan of that.

http://www.chickashafestivaloflight.com/

At work I heard a statement that I found completely and utterly fascinating. Theresa, one of my coworkers standing by the microwave announced “I don’t like Vampires, they are all ugly.”

I considered that for a moment, “All of them?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Even though, like people, they are all different?”

Theresa nodded again, and this was right before she confessed that she had seen and liked Twilight, the first movie in the Twilight saga. I desperately longed to ask more questions, but I wasn’t sure where to start or if the lunchroom was even the appropriate place for my questions.

If all you know of vampires is the Hollywood portrayals, really what’s not to like? Way before Twilight and Rob Pattinson, Hollywood stars and constellations alike have played vampires – Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Robert Sean Leonard, Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale, Gary Oldman,and of course how can we forget Keifer Sutherland and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Vampire movies go back almost to the beginning of films and they long ago abandoned the white (not pale but white) skinned vampires with black circles painted around their eyes clad in a black cape.

As my mind wandered down those lines I thought if her issue isn’t with the Hollywood kind of vampires, which I don’t see how it could be, does she know real life vampires? I don’t think that I do. The closest I’ve ever seen in Don Henrie from Mad Mad House on SciFi (back before it was SyFy) and while I don’t know that he really is a vampire, (Googling him reveals that there seems to be conflicting reports as to if he could possibly be a vampire or not) I know that he is of Asian American descent and a fairly handsome man. (I did not post a picture because I couldn’t bring myself to bother him by asking for permission for a personal blog.) In fact if you look at his MySpace currently – http://www.myspace.com/donhenrie, the picture there is pretty mundane. (He looks more like a model than anything else.)

I guess I assume that like every other life form on this planet, there are attractive and less attractive examples out there. I still can’t stop kicking it around in my head, Theresa knows ugly vampires, who knew?

I’m here to confess – I’ve read Twilight and the subsequent books in the series, I’ve even read what Stephenie Meyer posted on her website of Midnight Sun. I read the books under protest, my best friend Kim found the books and LOVED them. I caught snippets of her discussing them with other people, Edward this and Edward that, and I was 110% NOT INTERESTED.

Kim tried planting little seeds to pique my curiosity – “vampires, you like vampires.” Me, yes I love vampires – I’ve loved them since I was in grade school and we went on a field trip to St.Louis cemetery and I imagined all the little “houses” inhabited by sleeping vampires, waiting for the sun to set. I viewed vampires like stray dogs, you don’t have to be afraid of them but you have to be cautious and respectful until you’ve established a rapport. Nope, vampires had been in my life forever, I wasn’t interested in the “propaganda” that had suddenly made them part of the mainstream. I would not read Twilight.

Kim tried to draw parallels between myself and the author, mentioning how well read we were and how Stephenie Meyer and I seemed to read  the same books. I believe she saw this as a huge compliment. I was unmoved. I would not read Twilight.

Finally after almost two years and three of the four books being published later, Kim threatened me that our friendship was in peril if I didn’t read the books – I read Twilight.

I am shocked by how polarizing these books seem to be. People love them with a religious frevor – the disciples of Twilight study them, reread them, analyze them, debate them, and devotedly defend them. While people who hate them seem to crusade against them with an oddly intense zeal. I can honestly say that I’m in the middle – I read them, I enjoyed them, and I put them on the shelf and moved on to something else. Like many books in my life I revisit them on occasion, but I have yet to join the fight, on either side.

I don’t care that Bella might not be a great role model. I’ve never really looked to books for role models, well definitely not fiction books, if I encounter one I consider myself to be fortunate. I think Bella is a great “everyman” kind of character – she’s not flawless, she’s not the prom queen, she’s not a gifted athlete, she could be one of millions of girls. In fact I would venture to say that’s why her story has reached millions of people.

I’ve noticed Edward gets called a stalker and accused of being abusive by his detractors. I guess I’m terribly short sighted because I didn’t really see that either. He seems moody at times, but he is eternally a teenage boy so that seems fitting. He watches over Bella, but I never felt threatened by his presence in her world – on the contrary it seems to help her for more than hurt her.

I’ve heard complaints about Meyer’s reinvention of vampire lore. Chief among them seems to be “vampires shouldn’t sparkle” to which I would maturely respond with an exasperated whatever. The beauty of being an author is that you can create your own world and people it with whoever you want, as readers we have a choice to read or not to read. If your vampires *have* to be blood thirsty creatures, why would you even bother picking up the series? (I, personally, found John Carpenter’s Vampire Lore to be much more offensive…really, ask us to believe that vampires are hundreds of years old and yet sleeping in the dirt and hardly able to string a cohesive sentence together, please! He made them glorified cockroaches! I digress…)

I asked Kim once before I read Twilight what the appeal was and she told me it was all about the love that Bella and Edward share, and that he would do anything for her. It’s simple and straightforward but I think for all the Twilight Disciples – that’s it, and in today’s world I think many girls need to believe that there is an Edward out there.

We live in a world where a girl was brutally beaten and raped, a few scant yards from her school. Young men kept coming outside, some of them to join in, and not one of them to alert the authorities or get involved. I wish there could’ve been a gentleman with a conscience among any one of those men, he didn’t have to love her or be willing to die for her, but how about recognize that she was a human being and this was a terrible act of violence.

How can you blame girls who live in a world where that kind of thing can happen for taking solace in a character who watches over the girl he loves? He risks his life for her. Once he reconciles his feelings for her he treats her gently and with respect. He doesn’t constantly try to maul and paw at her – he romances her.

Twilight extols the virtue of love and respect and while I am not a Twilight disciple – I am a disciple of love and a firm believer in respect as it applies to humans, undead, and immortals alike.

There are so many things I love about Halloween – pumpkins for soup, bread, and even lattes; children living out their fantasies of being superheroes, pirates, and fairy princesses; candy, candy, candy; trying out a different persona for a night.

Last year I finally got to have the blue black hair I always wanted, my friends wanted to be vampires and I used the opportunity to vamp out – waist length blue black hair, straight heavy bangs framing my face, and make up heavy on dark colors. I’ve always wanted to try out blue black hair, well more blue than black, the kind of hair that seems black until the sun hits it and then it has a beautiful blue aura to it. Unconventional hair colors have always been appealing to me but I understand that they are not particularly appealing to conventional workplaces but at Halloween I can dabble in the unexpected.

This year my friends decided that we would all dress as the cast of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty so I was Sleeping Beauty’s mother, who is merely referred to in the movie as the Queen. I got to wear a fabulous renaissance style dress and I was covered in “pearls.” All the costumes were custom made for us by a friend and they were amazing.

All the fuss about costumes is because every year I have friends who throw a HUGE Halloween party. (I am responsible for invitations since I am something of a paper and font snob!) I was excited about my beautiful and elaborate dress, I graciously greeted Trick or Treaters and the occasional party guest – it’s all alot of fun.

However this is the first year that I became aware that the Mean Girls’ Theory of Halloween Costumes is true. There are people who use Halloween as an opportunity to be as scantily clad as possible. Womens’ costumes tend to trend towards lingerie with assorted tails, horns, and whatnot, however I noticed that even some of the men were getting in on the action. I particularly “enjoyed” the fireman who went so far as to get actual fireman gear and yet went around shirtless. under his suspenders. There were also some shirtless doctors and demons running around and a gladiator in a spangly speedo.

I enjoy watching these exhibitionist on Halloween and I wonder what would Freud say? I wonder what kind of fantasy they are living out? Food for thought I guess…

If you’ve peeked at my Twitter you may have noticed vague references to a wedding – my sister got married over the weekend and I was in the wedding. My sister and I are six years apart (I’m older) and complete opposites. When we were kids I was most likely to be climbing a tree or curled up with a book, she was playing with dolls or ballet dancing.  My sister has also always been the fashionable one, where I’m the one most likely to be in jeans and a tee shirt.

Considering our differences I suppose it’s no surprise that at various points in my sister’s wedding planning I got calls that I found alarming. The first was to announce that I would be wearing a purple dress. I’ve never really considered myself to be a purple person, but I was determined to grin and bear it. The next shocking announcement was that my sister had chosen a SILVER wedding dress! (Jasmine T134 – if you’re into that kind of thing, you can see it below.)

The wedding was beautiful, my sister was gorgeous, and even though the colors were confounding at first – I have to admit that Purple and Silver seemed to be a great combination. I loved seeing family and old friends again, it’s my favorite part of any wedding and I have to admit I also love that it is over! I was so worried that I was going to trip, step on my Sister’s dress, or in some way damage my own dress that I was able to breath a big sigh of relief when it was all over, the dress was back on the hanger, and the bobby pins were all out of my hair. (Though I have to admit that I am *still* brushing hair spray out, days later!)

I have to say, it’s nice to see two people make that commitment to each other – it would be even nicer if I could’ve seen it while wearing flats but still it was a beautiful and memorable day.

I have always liked to read book that give me a little peek into another time or another culture. I admit that I like reading Jane Austen just because it amuses me to hear terms like “countenance” and talk of cousins marrying without a crack made about being from Alabama or Mississippi. (After all this was British gentry!) However, I have to admit that books set in faraway places are also intriguing to me, particularly the Middle East. I suppose it’s because an area of the world that I know so little about and that seems so different from our own.

In was my desire to get a peek into the Middle East that caused me to pick up – Reading Lolita in Theran which I was less than impressed with. I think that the book was trying so hard to be one of the great works of literature in discusses and dissects in the book that it failed to entertain me. I was very impressed by how smart the author was, but my understanding about things in Iran was hazy at best. The meat of the story – the women and their relationships, left me feeling empty and unfulfilled.

My next attempt was Kabul Beauty School which was entertaining but it was the voice of an outsider looking in, and so I still felt like I didn’t quite get the inside view I really wanted. (I also though the author was a little off her rocker – marrying a man she could barely communicate with who was married to another woman but that’s a whole different issue all together.)

Finally along came Mahbod Seraji’s Rooftops of Tehran, here is the book I waited for!

First off this book is Fiction so there can be no shocking expose later to reveal that characters were fabricated causing me to question what else might have been fabricated, (Ala Kabul Beauty School) but the story was beautiful. I lived on that alley, and I laughed at the rash of pranks that erupted amongst the kids there, I cried at the loss of innocence and the loss of love. I carefully considered my own culture as it was reflected to me through the storyteller. (Seriously there have been times I wanted to wail with grief, why is that frowned on here?)

I took my time and cherished this book, I savored the highs and I mourned the lows. I almost wish there was a sequel so I could find out what happened to these characters that I grew to love but the ending was so perfect that perhaps it’s best to leave well enough alone.

This is a book I will reread and every time I expect to laugh and cry, just the way I did this time. What a fantastic book!