ashley awesome

Pardon my inner Dwight Schrute (he seems to have escaped momentarily), but would anyone be interested enough for me to post my two-part essay on the cultural history of Superman? Would you actually read it? Or would you just say you read it and be all, “Oh, Ashley, that was awesome!” But you’d be totally lying? I’ve been meaning to type it up (lost the original digital copy way back when), but don’t want to go to the trouble if no one’s interested.

Anyway, let me know. (By leaving me comments. Obvious.)

This is my very first live Whedon finale of my lifetime ever in the universe of evers. I don’t know how to make that more clear to you.

Maybe I could just say it, but I enjoy hyperbole and this is my blog so I figure if I can’t talk like an ass here, there where can I? Anyway, I was late to join the Whedon wagon train (though not as late as some). My friend Mike forced Buffy the Vampire Slayer down my throat in 2004 and in exchange he promised to watch The X-Files. I slammed through the entire series in less than a month; it was my first experience with intensive TV on DVD viewings. By “Becoming,” I started having dreams, by “Once More With Feeling” I was in love, and when I hit “Chosen” I sobbed for an hour and a half straight. Buffy was my introduction into intelligent television and for that I will always love it. Without Buffy I never would have found Veronica Mars or Battlestar Galactica (both watched on the recommendation of The Joss). I spent the summer of 2005 watching Angel and I finished Firefly exactly one hour before Serenity premiered in the theaters. But I have never before watched a Whedon finale live.

Much has been written about Dollhouse: that it’s a show that had bad timing and bad luck, that it should have been on cable, that Eliza Dushku was a poor choice for a lead, that it shouldn’t even exist. And while I confess that it is certainly my least favorite Joss Whedon endeavor, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still lightyears ahead of almost everything else on television. You know, yesterday I was forcing my way through Marx’s Kapital when the dude actually wrote something kinda poignant (and which I immediately related to television). Marx’s thing is that whoever controls the material base of society also controls the ideological base, and that people who write or create art that propagates messages which go against that base are doomed to fail. I can’t think of a show that is a better example of this than Dollhouse. Hell, it’s not just telling right-wingers things they don’t want to hear, it’s telling everybody things they don’t want to hear. Or perhaps it’s as simple as Patrick Rothfuss standing up at a fan convention to yell at the fans:

“Listen,” I say unto them. “You’re all a bunch of whiny little titbabies. Joss Whedon is a storyteller and you’re upset because he isn’t acting like a music box, playing you your favorite song again and again.

“Joss Whedon made me care about the X-men, even Cyclops. He sold me on space cowboys. He made me sing in the shower and write fanfiction for the first time in my life. He told me a subtle story with Dollhouse and gave me the best character arc I’ve ever seen with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.”

“Why don’t you marry him?” someone shouts from the audience.

“Because of Proposition 8,” I shot back. “And because he never returns my calls.”

Patrick, my dear, I couldn’t have said it better myself. And now, to the liveblogging.

Continue reading ‘“Bring Back the World” — Liveblogging the ‘Dollhouse’ Series Finale’

1. Bought my cats a giant igloo to poo and pee in after I paid the vet nearly $300 to tell me that one of them wasn’t peeing outside the litter box because of a health issue but because they are crazy.

2. Returned an item at a store for cash back. When I buy, I buy for good, but being poor, I don’t really think that I need to go wasting $50 on something that doesn’t fit. So: back it went, and man did it feel weird putting money back on my debit card instead of the other way around.

3. Called 911. (Don’t worry, it was for a student and she’s fine now, but it was still scary. Also, I kind of liked it.)

This was mainly going to be a post about my new haircut until I remembered that it was Guilty Pleasures week over at The Collective, and I figured that the two things would work well together. After all, is a $50 haircut for a person technically living under the poverty line justifiable in any universe? I don’t really think so.

Funny story about my haircut. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to hair, mostly because it is the one thing that I am openly vain about. There are a variety of reasons behind the origin of this vanity — most of them having to do with high school — and all of them boil down to one thing: I didn’t have good hair until I was twenty-one years old. After that, my hair became a new toy. I grew it super-long, I curl it, I wave it, I wear it straight. People envy me. My roommates threaten to chop it off in my sleep. It should probably be considered a sin how much I love my hair.

With that said, because I love it so much, I rarely do anything drastic to it, it’s always trims and tiny adjustments. Which is why today I decided to throw caution to the wind — except that’s a lie because it was totally an accident. My hairdresser, Giancarlo, speaks with a heavy accent and sometimes I have a hard time understanding him. He was mumbling something about layers and faces and I was tired and distracted so I said, just to get him to shut up: “Sure. Do whatever you want. I trust you.” And I do trust him, for good reason. The man is a genius. He and his tight, homosexual Italian pants can do whatever they want as far as I’m concerned. So he says, “Oh, you shouldn’t do that!” Anyway, I ended up with bangs for the first time since I was six years old. That was almost twenty years ago (oh my God). I even came through the process relatively un-traumatized. Once I realized what he was doing to me, I had a moment of hot-flashing panic, but then it went away. Hey, the picture (↑) is proof; I just hope I don’t regret it come morning when I no longer have any idea how to style my hair.

My main problem in life is that I feel no guilt for doing the bad things that I do. I mean it. None whatsoever. I revel in my pleasures. In another life, I probably would have been considered a hedonist. For example, here is a not inconsiderable list of pleasures that I should probably feel guilty about, but don’t: watching 25+ hours of television per week, my shopping addiction, haircuts, watching bad movies in the theater, theater hopping, eating, not exercising, twirling my hair, cussing in front of my students, cussing on the internet, my borderline-stalker sexual attraction for Katee Sackhoff, believing in my heart that fictional people are real, speeding, farting in public, laughing at people when they fall down, buying too many books and then not reading them, not doing my schoolwork, my ability to eat ten cookies in a three minute period, my coffee addiction, feeling superior to dumb people, how all the electricity I use and books that I buy are killing the environment, sour cream and cheddar Ruffles, Mexican breakfast, etc.

But I do feel guilty about fanfic. I don’t want to talk about it.

Last weekend Lindsay went to visit Mia in Washington D.C. without me because I’m po’, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be jealous. Without me, she ate lots of good food and saw awesome national monuments. She also saw Julia Child’s kitchen without me and went dancing without me (although honestly I can definitely live without that part). Most importantly she visited Abe Lincoln without me and saw the bullet that supposedly killed him. You might not know this about me, but I am a tiny bit obsessed with our 16th president and liken him closely to both Superman and J.K. Rowling in the Ashley Halls of Awesome.

So here’s the thing about Abe Lincoln. Everyone seems to think he’s dead, but what they don’t know is that it’s a conspiracy. Guys, you’ve only been told he’s dead. Lindsay took a picture of this supposed bullet and then tagged me. We then had the following exchange:

Lindsay: That is Lincoln’s BLOOD. And BONE FRAGMENTS. And the BULLETS. Anyone else think that’s fucking AWESOME? Obviously sad, but also AWESOME.
Me: This is false. Lincoln is alive in the woods. He lives with Bigfoot in a log cabin. They are BFFs.
Lindsay: But…BFFs? Aren’t they like mortal enemies or something?
Me: They spar in the woods sometimes for fun. That’s probably what you’ve heard about.*

Now, the title of this post is misleading, because while of course I treasure your thoughts like cupcakes, I mostly just wanted to share this exchange because I think that it was exceptionally hilarious, and if you can’t make yourself laugh, then who else is going to do it? Besides professionals and idiots, I mean.

*In answer to your forthcoming queries, Abe would totally hand Bigfoot his own ass in a paper bag.

I know you’re out there, I can see the traces you make in my lovely stat page. It’s okay to introduce yourselves. I promise it will all be okay. It’ll only hurt for a second.

Ten People That I Find Less Sexually Attractive Than the Blue Guy in Avatar (Especially at the End Part When He Has Feathers in his Hair)

1. Tom Cruise

2. Justin Timberlake

3. Brad Pitt

4. Taylor Lautner

5. Robert Pattinson

6. Hugh Jackman

7. John Krasinski

8. Zachary Quinto

9. Johnny Depp

10. Sam Worthington

. . . is to not spend money on anything except food and bills, with minimal allowances (say $50 a month) for sanity and entertainment purposes. I cannot make any other resolutions because I will literally have to expend every ounce of the miniscule amount of self-will that I have in this endeavor.

And why am I attempting this impossible feat, at which I will most likely fail miserably? Because I am going to be twenty-five years old in March and as far as I can tell that means lying to myself about still being a kid ain’t gonna cut it anymore. I’m sick of worrying about money. I love shopping. I love it. And I am extremely talented at it. One might even call it a gift. You do not even want to know. But I have NO MONEY and lots of DEBT. Those are scary words. You know what else is scary? Bills. This means I’m going to be one of the following at all times (even more so than usual): whiny, petulant, in withdrawal, angry, violent, or morose. And you’re going to have to deal with it. Please (my mother always taught me to ask nicely).

It is really gonna suck.

A couple days into December, I was innocently updating my GoodReads (be my friend!) when I happened to realize that I was absurdly close to having read one hundred books this year. According to my GoodReads, I had read ninety. And you know how I love a challenge, especially one that seems to be waving a big red flag at me. I’ve been reading non-stop ever since, trying to make it to a hundred, and yes, I’ve been reading smaller books. Some might call this “cheating,” but I say it’s my game and I make up the rules.

So I did it, and I feel very empowered. I think I might make this a yearly thing. Now that I know it’s possible, and now that I have it as a goal, it’ll make it much easier to regularly achieve. When I told my family and Alison and a couple friends that one hundred books was my goal, they all gave me this look like, THAT IS A LOT OF BOOKS, but it’s really not, especially when you have it all listed out. And maybe it is a difficult thing to do and I should be proud of myself or whatever, but it didn’t feel difficult. For all the wonderful (and not so wonderful) books I did read this year, there are literally like seventy-five still on my shelf that I have yet to touch.

But anyway, my favorites. I discovered the joys of Neil Gaiman this year. I’d read Stardust before and loved it, but I hadn’t read any of his other stuff. Anansi Boys was actually my favorite, but I also read and enjoyed Good Omens, The Graveyard Book, and Odd and the Frost Giants. I just love his voice as an author. He seems so sure of himself, and if you’ve read as many fantasy books as I have, it’s incredibly refreshing to read an author with so many original things to say. He just has this way of making ordinary things fantastic, and in turn, regularly makes a habit of making the fantastic seem real. I love it, and can’t wait to tackle American Gods and Neverwhere in 2010.

It’s amazing, looking back, that I had time to read this many books, what with all the TV watching and schoolwork I was doing. But it’s easy to make time for good books, if you can find them, and nothing is easier to slip into when you’re stressed than comfort reading. And for me, comfort reading means fantasy. The best straight up fantasy book I read this year was by far The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Rothfuss is another original thinker, but he sticks to more traditional stories. The Name of the Wind is the first in a trilogy which he has called The Kingkiller Chronicles, and I am very eagerly awaiting the release of its sequels. I also read a few classics that I’d somehow missed reading as a child. The BFG and A Wrinkle in Time were both equally fabulous. Right up there with Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (which, the last time I read it a year ago, made me cry).

Other books I highly enjoyed: The City of Thieves, by David Benioff, which tells the story of two young men during the siege of Leningrad, except it’s funny (also: sad). I fed my Abraham Lincoln fetish with Manhunt, by James L. Swanson, a fantastically researched account of the search for John Wilkes Booth (Seeley’s ancestor) written like a novel. And in the vein of accessible history writing, I also read The Wordy Shipmates, which was my first Sarah Vowell, but it won’t be my last. I’ve got a signed first edition copy of another of her books, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (which I found accidentally in a used bookstore) marked to-read in 2010. Gilead was also a satisfying read, and I guess it has to do with history, too, although of a much different kind. There were many others, of course, but I’d be here all day, so you’ll just have to investigate for yourself.

And of course, dishonorable mentions to the following, for sucking on various levels of the sucktastic: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, What I Was, Brisingr, Home, and Sailor Moon, Vol. 1.

Here is the full list: Continue reading ‘the year in books / 2009′