Lindsay Robertson

My Special Thoughts About Amelia

Probably for procrastinatory reasons, I woke up this morning and decided to go and see the movie Amelia at my neighborhood movie theater by myself. It was just me and like four old couples. Anyway, it was bad, of course. It’s kind of heartbreaking that nobody I know is ever going to see it, however, because it’s one of those movies you want to tear apart with someone. Anyway, some things about Amelia:

* Biopics: seriously, is there just one guy out there who writes every biopic? They’re all terrible in all the exact same ways!

* There’s this pivotal scene when Richard Gere reads a letter that’s supposed to be “old” (though it can only actually be like four years old, tops), and in order to convey its age, the prop people actually did that thing where you burn the paper with a lighter in several places around the edges. You get a really good look at this letter, too - the camera keeps coming back to it, this piece of paper that has very obvious burn marks all over it. It’s so weird. I’m pretty sure Hollywood can make paper look old better than the average middle schooler. They have that technology now.

* The biggest mystery inherent in this story is not what happened to Amelia after her plane went down, but on her many 19-hour trips, WHERE AND HOW AND IN OR ON WHAT DID AMELIA PEE???????

* It’s very hard to watch a 2-hour movie of a pretty lady trying as hard as she possibly can to look as ugly as possible. It’s painful. I don’t know exactly how a person can act like they have huge gigantic horse teeth, but props to Hillary Swank for pulling it off.

* I’m not going to look it up, but I find it very hard to believe that on her first trans-atlantic flight, Amelia and her co-passenger both almost fell out of the plane, and were each hanging out at one point, because a door came open.

* I also find it hard to believe that Amelia Earhart took Eleanor Roosevelt on an impromptu late-night flight around DC one night after dinner at the White House, just for the hell of it.

* WE GET IT, MOVIE, THE LITTLE BOY NAMED GORE IS GORE VIDAL. Matthew Weiner could have taught this movie something about period piece subtlety, and that’s saying something. I’m surprised little five year old Gore didn’t have any lines like “Gee, I sure do like writing, and once I find out what sex is, I’m going to have it with men!”

* Um, there are parts of the movie where Amelia narrates over scenes when she’s flying, and the words she says are in some cases recognizably poetry? Like famous poetry? Like, specifically: Fog by Carl Sandburg is in there. I guess it would be awkward for her to say “copyright Carl Sandburg, 1919” or whatever, but I fear a whole generation of young girls is going to think Amelia Earhart wrote those lines, like my friend’s little sister did with the saying “If you love something, set it free…” and Demi Moore’s character in Indecent Proposal.

* This movie, and Hillary Swank, portray Amelia Earhart as so perpetually sunny and witty (though she’s not actually ever witty, she just says things with this self-satisfied smirk that conveys to us that she’s supposed to be witty. I just realized that kind of describes me too, but whatever), and she’s so totally PERFECT and ADORED all of the time, that by the end of the movie you hate her and want to punch her in the face so much that you’re not even sad when she dies. It almost seems like that was the point of her performance, actually, to get us all over Amelia Earhart’s death, as a nation. It worked.

Why Gawker Is So Wrong About Virginia Heffernan's Book Proposal

(I was just going to comment this on this absolutely WRONG post on Gawker but I read the other comments and, uh, you know, pearls before swine, so I’m putting it here instead.)

Hamilton, love ya, but have you actually read The Medium or any of Virginia Heffernan’s other work? We’ve all had two whole years to suspend our initial knee-jerk reaction to the concept of a column about the internet in a newspaper (displayed here today in this post and by everyone who has commented so far) and actually READ the thing and realize that it’s actually amazing that someone out there who actually understands the internet is thinking about it all the time. And not the way we think about it, as bloggers (people to whom the internet affords no pleasures anymore) but as a thoughtful writer who only has to write one column per week and thus can go down the kind of rabbit holes most bloggers, with ten deadlines per day or whatever, can only dream of. When was the last time anyone *who is actually a good writer*, *who actually knows the internet*, had the time to examine it with any kind of thoughtfulness? Like, never! Literally never! They’re all too busy blogging! To read the Medium each week is to live vicariously through someone who actually has the time to ruminate and luxuriate in the medium in which most writers, for the most part, either resentfully toil or don’t understand.

These fragments of a book proposal would sound ugh out of context but there is a context, and it’s Virginia Heffernan’s body of work so far, which shows she’s more than up to this totally ambitious task. Here are the archives of The Medium. Judge for yourself: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/virginia_heffernan/index.html (Full disclosure: I’ve met Virginia three times in six years. This bit of indignation is based completely on her writing.)

"Can You Eat the Bowl?"

Last night, I ordered from a new Mexican place in my neighborhood. I wanted a salad with an edible bowl, a dish of which I am something of a connoisseur (yes, edible soup bowls too, maybe one day I’ll start my edible bowl blog), and this conversation happened after I’d given my address information to the guy who answered the phone, who seemed to speak very little English:

Me: I have a question about the taco salad?

Guy: Yes?

Me: Can you eat the bowl?

Guy: Excuse me?

Me: Can you, like, eat the bowl? Is it edible?

Guy, sounding concerned: No, ma’am, you cannot eat the bowl.

(This has now aroused the interest of my friend who was over, who is now laughing)

Me: Oh, okay, because sometimes you can eat the bowl.

Guy: Don’t eat the bowl.

Me: Okay.

And then I tried to suppress a massive giggle fit while finishing the rest of the order, and basically failed. At least that guy had a good story to tell when his shift was over.

I Feel Petty

Last night I suddenly remembered the (unique and unusual) name of the guy I had my first camp crush on when I was 12, but who, upon finding out I liked him, told one of my cabin mates to give me the Heisman (which then had to be explained to me — every year when someone gets the actual Heisman I have a brief moment of confusion and empathy). Anyway, today I looked him up and he has no web presence at all other than a Facebook page (where, in the (cute) photo, I swear to god, he’s holding his hand out at an odd, Heisman-y angle, as if he’s been just waiting there for twenty years for me to find him so he could give me the Heisman again.) Anyway, I (still) win.

Stranger Danger

“Kissing Matt was like suddenly this cow in a sweater is bearing down on you, who will not take no for an answer, and his huge cow head is being flooded by chemicals that are drowning out what little powers of reason Matt actually did have.”*

It’s been two weeks and I still can’t get “Victory Lap” by George Saunders out of my head. Every person should read it three times, but NOT ON THE INTERNET, it must be printed and savored, the words rationed. I love it so much! Just read it. You will not be sorry.

*That isn’t even close to the best line, but almost anything else would be spoil-y.

editor's response

keithgessen:

Yesterday the news-aggregator site The Awl posted a reading of Mark Greif’s piece on abortion and gay marriage from the latest issue of n+1. It’s the old complaint, which boils down to: What is this intellectual mumbo-jumbo?? Speak English! I can’t understand you!!

(Here is where it starts being me, Lindsay. Tumblr isn’t showing that because it sucks.)

(And then there’s more.)

To begin this with “the news-aggregator site” is to lose most of your audience right there. No matter what Keith’s point was after that, it’s hard to take seriously when he basically started it out with “Yesterday, on Hitler’s MySpace page…” The Awl is not a news-aggregator site, and Keith knows it. I think Keith makes very valid points, but I think we need both voices: the ones who write the valuable but kind of pretentious lit mag essays and the guys in the back of the classroom who view them critically (and humorously — I’m glad that n+1 exists exactly the way it is, but one thing it does not have is a sense of humor, and it shouldn’t ever, ever try.) Everything doesn’t have to be funny or self-aware. Everything shouldn’t be! Some things should be earnest and sincere! In fact, MORE things should be! But they shouldn’t be protected from criticism. We need both voices.

(Also, I was not aware that Mark Grief wrote Afternoon of the Sex Children, which is a very, very good essay.)