MaryJanice Davidson's Blog, page 2

Cumberbimbos Never Apologize: I Explain My Crush on a Man I've Never Met

I've rhapsodized about several things on this blog, like my job and Benedict Cumberbatch and Cocoa Puffs. Rarely do all three coincide (guess what I'm eating while I write this?). But when my UK publisher saw I dedicated UNDEAD AND UNWARY to a man I've never met, they asked me to explain myself to the world. With pictures, if I liked.

If I liked? Wait, so just write up a quick 500 words (I turned in 900) on the deliciousness of Benedict SherKhan Cumbersomething who is, hopefully as I write this, clanking around a movie set in full armor playing Richard III because I lead a stupidly wonderful life? (I'm a Tudorphile, but my second favorite royal family are the Yorks.) Okay, the movie won't be out for two years, but I've got boxes and boxes of Cocoa Puffs to sustain me until then and writing, too, I guess, and maybe loving my family? Anyway, they asked me to write up a lustful account of his yumminess and look at tons of pictures of him, too, and pick the most drool-worthy and stick them into my rhapsodizing and this is supposed to be work? 

So, to recap: my job is the best thing ever, and so is Benedict CumberRichard III, and everything goes down easier with Cocoa Puffs. And, I dunno, milk too, probably.

(If you've got zero interest in my prose--and who could blame you?--there are pictures!) Here's why I'm into Benedict Yummybatch

I Foist UNDEAD AND UNWARY On People Who Never Did Anything Bad To Me

It shouldn't surprise anyone who spends time on my Facebook page, reading this blog, or reading one of my books: I'm pathologically immature. Usually it presents as passive/aggressive shenanigans, and occasionally as humor. To that end, I have a lot of fun with my book dedications and author's notes. I was told many times that most readers never bother with the author's notes, unless they gave birth to the author. That's fine, no problem, as far as I'm concerned they don't even have to read the book if they paid for the thing. (Libraries are exempt, of course, but who goes to a libe, checks out a library book, then brings it home to not read? And if you do? You're an asshat. You really, really are. No court of appeals on that one, asshat.) 

But then I started getting fan mail, and quite a few of them began "I normally skip the author's notes but I love yours" and "your author's notes are funnier than most people's books!" and "this is the third time I've sent you this, will you please e-mail your mom and tell her if you're free this Sunday?" and "is something wrong with you? I'm not trying to be mean. You might need meds. Oh, and your author's notes are pretty funny, unless you really are crazy, in which case they're indicative of a serious problem". (Armchair psychiatrists, swear to God…) 

So with UNDEAD AND UNWARY hitting shelves tomorrow, I thought I'd get you guys started. Not just to be an unrelenting tease (which I am, soooo unrelenting! I am the Teasinator) but to give you hints of what you can expect from the book itself: snark, vampires, weird babies, Hell, Sink Lair, passionate married sex, shoes, and snark. 

Never say you weren't warned! (Well, you can. But no one will believe you.)

* * *


Author’s Note:

     The St. Paul Winter Carnival is a thing.  They’ve been doing it for over a century, it pulls almost half a million people a year, and the city makes millions.  There really is a Snow Slide, a Queen of the Snows, an Annual Snow Stomp, a Moon Glow Pedestrian Parade, a blood drive, a castle, an outdoor baseball game, and beer.My feelings on this phenomenon are mixed.  On the one hand, I’m proud my fellow Minnesotans not only endure winter, they embrace it.  Minnesotans own winter, okay?  They have made winter their bitch.  It is a glorious thing to see.But, and not to be a traitor to my state, I don’t go near the festivities.  I went once, and once was enough.  It was cold.  There was ice and snow all over the place, and the fact that it had been molded and/or sculpted into interesting things made it no less unbearably cold.  Lines for hot beverages were torture (“I can see, I can see the steam rolling off the hot chocolate so close and yet so far and ahhhhh, can’t this line move any faster?  I can’t feel my face!  I have not felt my face in half an hour!  Oh, face, come baaaaaaack!”), most of the activities seem to be designed to make a person even colder, and I just...no.  I admire the effort, and want nothing to do with it.  St. Paul Winter Carnival, I apologize.  I just don’t get you.Stoli Elite Himalayan Edition is also a thing.  It really does come in a beautiful brown and gold bottle in a keepsake dark wooden box, and it really costs $3,000.00.  And on a list of most expensive vodkas in the world?  Stoli didn’t even come close.  Man, if I have a few grand to burn, I’d never blow it on a bottle of vodka.  I’d blow it on Coke and Funyuns.Scribbling on babies with Sharpies is not cool.  Seriously, just don’t.  Even if they’re scented.  Perhaps especially if they’re scented.  The Sharpies, not the babies.The state of Minnesota is shockingly cavalier about enforcing a timeline for its citizens to name newborn citizens.The dreadful jigsaw puzzle Marc worked on can be found on Amazon and it’s actually called the World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle.  There are two kinds of people in the world, those who like jigsaw puzzles and those who hate and fear them.  The World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle is the thing of my nightmares.  Proceed with caution.Referring to Laura Goodman as the Anti-Anti-Christ isn’t mine; TV Tropes (www.tvtropes.org) did it first.  And it was wonderful.  I am filled with grinding envy that I didn’t think of it first.  Grinding envy, however, provides the lubrication for my ambition.  And ugh, I just talked about lubricating myself.  I am determined to make zangst a thing.The Game is a thing!  One I lose all the time and, if you’re reading this, you have, too.  Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game... baggie of diamonds Betsy stumbles across are red diamonds, the rarest in the world.  Also, am I the only one who thinks jewelers should just stop rhapsodizing about “Chocolate Diamonds”?  Guys:  they are brown.  You’re selling rocks the color of mud.  You are selling fancy gravel.  Which is fine, but just...just own that, okay?  Okay.Silver Lamborghinis absolutely look like giant electric shavers.  I’ve got nothing against the good people at Lamborghini (who are actually the good people at Volkswagen), but Betsy is quite right to mock Sinclair’s purchase.I have nothing against Giada DeLaurentiis.  I think she is a lovely woman and a wonderful cook.  I regret my characters do not agree.Finally, no matter how tempting it may be, faking your death is not cool, not least because of the inevitable paperwork nightmare.

My Husband Undermines Me With Illness

The demon Stomach Flu is upon us, and like all demons, it shows up uninvited and takes its sweet time leaving. They are the drunken uncles of the paranormal world. 

(There's going to be some barf talk in this post, but I'll try to lessen the psychological damage by using different words for puke so you don't have to read too many of any one vomit euphemism.) 

I work out of our home, which is perfect because our home contains our kitchen and television. I had just left one to sit in front of the other, sucking down a healthy breakfast (an amuse-bouche of trail mix, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, a V-8 chaser) while pondering my enormous to-do list, when I heard a faint call: "Sweetie?"

Eh? God, how many times do I have to tell the mailman that I don't want to sign for anything, that whatever he can't cram into our mailbox he can just set on fire? And what's with 'sweetie'? He knows I'll only answer to Bodacious Bim. Sweetie is inappropriate, only my hus--

Oh. Right. Tony took the day off. You'd think I would have noticed his motionless unconscious form in bed when I rose like a tardy Frankenstein, newly animated but running late. Alas. 

"In here!"

"Sweetie? Mutter mumble mumble sweetie mutter."

"Can't hear you!"

"MUTTER MUMBLE MUMBLE SWEETIE MUTTER."

Ugh. Huge pet peeve: when I tell whoever's yelling that I can't hear them, they don't come closer, they yell louder. Luckily I lead by firm yet compassionate example.

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU COME CLOSER OR GO FURTHER AND DON'T THINK I WON'T STRANGLE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP YOU'RE NOT THE FIRST TONY ALONGI YOU'RE A SOULLESS CLONE!"

Ha! That fixed him. Ah, here he came now with a sweet apology on his lips like a song.  "I'm sick!"

"What?" That was a terrible way to start any song.

"Sick, I'm sick and I called and called for you and you never came and I'm sick I think I'm going to throw up and you hate me."

"That's not true," I replied, chagrined. "I don't hate you all the time. You were fine when I ignored you as I left our bed because of our stupid alarm clock with a stupid snooze button I can't not hit again and again."

"I'm sick."

Then he looks at me like I'm a cure, or a doctor, or have Harry Potter's wand under my shirt. Flu-us begonus! No, that's terrible…

"What do you want me to do?"  

"I'm sick!" He's only one foot stomp away from a full-on waaah. Nope, he's not going to take it quite that far, he's turned, he's walking away and I have to scamper--okay, plod--after him. 

"Okay, well. You're already home, it's not like you have to call work. Just go back to bed."

I got a muttered murmur for that one as he climbed onto the couch in the library, gangly pale arms and legs flailing in slow motion (slailing?). "Okay?" I asked. "You're okay? You seem okay." A glare, more mutters. "Be right back." I left, assembled a PukeBox™(more on that later), brought it back along with a fizzy water, got a damp washcloth, fetched blankets, covered him up, took the high road by not smothering him, asked again if he needed anything, got a mutter through clenched teeth for my pains.

My laptop is calling my name, as is a second bowl of Cocoa Puffs. "Okay, well. I'm in the living room if you need anything." Please don't need anything. "Okay? Okay."

I darted back to my computer and was pondering #7 on my to-do list (#7: check w/accountant; are Cocoa Puffs tax deductible because I eat them while I work?) when I heard something that made my sugar-infused blood run cold: "Bllluurrrgggghhhh!"

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no!

No.

I'm not a monster, but I am selfish, willful, immature, vain, and lazy. Those are enough handicaps without throwing a sick husband into the mix. And the sick husband knows this well. If anything, he was going to be more horrified than I at the morning we were doomed to have. I jogged back to the library in time to see him making use of the PukeBox™, so that was something. But his aim is never the problem, his volume is (barf-wise as well as noise-wise). When my husband throws up, it's terrifying. It's so loud. It sounds like he's throwing up from his diaphragm, like an opera singer would if they barfed onstage. Really deep and long and loud: "Bleeeaaarrrrgggggnnnnngggggggaaaaaaaggggg!" Gasp, groan. "Toldja bleeeaaarrrrgggggnnnnnngggggaaaaaggggg I was sick bleeeaaarrrrggggnnnnggggggaaaaaggggggg."

(Cut to our dogs, cowering in the living room. I didn't have to be a dog whisperer to know what they were thinking: "I don't know what the hell is in there, but it's eating the alpha male! And the alpha female is just standing there! We have to kill her and get away! Squirrel!")

"I believed you when you said you were sick," I whined. Tendrils of guilt were starting to sink into my soul like spiders spinning webs of guilt, then catching flies of guilt in their webs of guilt and wrapping them up in more spider silk of guilt. "I did!" (He hadn't contradicted me, but I wanted to establish my alibi as early as I could.) 

"Toldja," he managed between bleeaaarrrrggggnnnngggaaggs. He managed to look vindicated and nauseated at the same time; no doubt figuring it was fortuitous timing. Spite vomit is the worst vomit. (Okay, spite vomit and blood-flecked vomit.) And that's what this whole thing was, an exercise in spite flu or spite food poisoning. His puking was going to be very stressful for me, not that he gave that a single thought while spite-retching. 

First, it's inappropriate for him to be sick at all. There's only room for one whiner in this family, and it's not him and it's not my son and it's not my daughter. (Nor the dogs.) He is blatantly poaching with puke on my territory! It's like he didn't even consider that as he barfed! 

Big number two, I'm busy. The only week busier for a writer than the week before a new book comes out is the week the book comes out. Not to mention my usual dizzying array of work and household responsibilities: chauffeur service, cooking for eight (there are only four of us, but we're hungry all the time), sending registered mail to myself and then refusing to sign for it, stocking up on Halloween candy that will be devoured weeks before we buy a pumpkin, buying pumpkins, buying a carving kit, forgetting I bought pumpkins and buying more pumpkins…it's exhausting. All that stuff, it's on me. No one else will step up and buy unnecessary pumpkins we'll forget to carve until 4:00 p.m. on the 31st. It's like he didn't even consider that when he was shoutin' at the floor! 

Third, every drop of bile is a harbinger of my fate. He'll have thrown this off by dinnertime; I'll catch it and be flat on my back for a week at the worst possible time. And will I get waited on hand and pedicured foot? Will he fetch me cold drinks and offer washcloths and take on my domestic workload?  Yes! But it's still annoying to be sick. I hate not being able to enjoy Bon Appetit and Fine Cooking without getting nauseated; I'll be stuck with Crappie Magazine and Garden and Gun and Popular Ceramics for the duration.*

"Okay, done?" Not for the first time, PukeBox™saves the day. A weak groan was my answer. "Okay, I've got to switch this out. Can you do without it for a minute?" Another hollow groan. I am fluent in groan, so I knew I had a minute but not much longer. I picked up the PukeBox™and fled in the direction of the kitchen.

I do not run an organized household, particularly when our system of anarchy breaks down into a system of chaos. It's never a question of, "Quick, snatch up that relatively clean office garbage can and regurgitate into it!" It's more like, "What the hell did we throw away in this garbage can? It smells like mothballs on fire," or "Just because I bought the bucket doesn't mean I ever know where it is." So when anyone is sick, it can be a scramble to find a vessel crappy enough to glurt! into in time to prevent a horrible bile-tainted accident. "Not the silverware drawer, not the silverware drawer! No! Not the china hutch, either! How do you go from barfing into a drawer to barfing on our hutch? I will kill you to put myself out of my misery!"


Enter PukeBox™, a device invented out of pure self-defense, like Kevlar or fat-free ice cream. You take a small cardboard box (we always have tons of them because Amazon) and line it with a Target bag (a Walmart bag in a pinch). You make sure the box flaps are held down by the bag. Then you present PukeBox™ to the person who would like to throw up in it. When they have finished and are shooing you away through chattering teeth, you flee to the kitchen, grab the bag o'barf (ignoring the sloshing sounds), dump it into the garbage, make a mental note to take out the garbage, grab another Target/Walmart bag (Tarmart? Walget?) and line the (untouched by vomit!) box again, rinse, repeat, remember too late you never got around to taking out the garbage, recoil at the stink under the sink.

It's not sophisticated, but then, we aren't, either. Necessity is the mother of things to barf into. 

Tony was feeling much better by mid-afternoon, and by bedtime was confident enough to leave PukeBox™downstairs. This morning he was much improved, a relief for many reasons, since I woke up feeling more nauseated than I usually do when I have to face the day. I see lots of clear fluids in my future (and not the good ones like vodka). I see PukeBox™ looming large. I see myself leaving a full PukeBox™ for the mailman (that guy just seems to have it in for me, I've no idea why). I see recovery. I can get through all of it so long as I have PukeBox™ to sustain me. 

Oh, PukeBox™. Your service to this family will always be remembered.



* These magazines exist!

UNDEAD AND UNWARY IS COMING; THERE IS NO WAY TO AVOID YOUR FATE

As I threatened--promised, as I promised--here's another sneak preview from UNDEAD AND UNWARY, released on an unsuspecting world October 7. The Anti-Christ is still trying to get Betsy to step up and help her run Hell, but Jessica's been acting weird. Weirder. Sinclair is revealed to be deathly afraid of Jessica's super soft bed, and some of my annoyance from previous day jobs creeps into the text. Also, this chapter is positively stuffed with Sinclair and post-coital snuggling.
* * *


CHAPTER SIX

     “So, about Jessica.”     Sinclair groaned.  “Please.  I never beg, unless it is for you, or to you, and I am begging now.  Allow me to enjoy more than thirty seconds of post-coital bliss.”     “We’ve got to talk about how you talk.  Ruffians and post-coital bliss...I dunno.  Sometimes I despair.”     “As do I,” he muttered, seizing my wrist before I could tickle him in the ribs.  “Knowing you as I do, I have resigned myself to twenty-eight seconds of afterglow and...”  He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.  “End afterglow.  Proceed.”     “How do you do that?  You don’t have a watch.”     “Decades of needing to know precisely when the sun rises and sets has left me with an excellent sense of time.”  He brought my wrist to his mouth and kissed the underside, teasing the veins with his tongue for a second.  “This is a skill it would be useful for you to learn.”     “Don’t start something you can’t finish, tongue boy.”  I yawned.  “And can’t I master making lumpless gravy first?”     “Come now, you have escaped death, and Hell, and Jessica’s wrath any number of times.  You survived The Incident.  You can do this,” he encouraged.  “What time is it?  Look at the sunshine on the bed, look at the shadows, and tell me the time.”     “How would I know?” I complained.  “This place is like Vegas, there aren’t any clocks.”  There really weren’t.  There was a creaky ancient grandfather’s clock on the main floor which hadn’t worked for, hmm, when did we declare independence from England?  Yeah.  It had been awhile.  Everyone had laptops and cell phones.  I assumed millennials didn’t actually know what a wall clock was.     Sinclair sighed.  “Darling, you’re a creature of the night—““Except when I’m a creature of the day.”“—and should at least pretend to be interested in things like sunrise, sunset, and—hmm, I had a third, and it escapes me—ah!  Helping the Anti-Christ run Hell.”     “That’s it.  I’m out.”  I sat bolt upright like Frankenstein’s monster coming alive on the table, and started to swing my legs over the side.  “I don’t have time to have this unnff!”     Sinclair, the sneaky bastard, had snaked an arm around my waist and yanked me back before I could flee.  “Stop wriggling.  Are you frightened because you feel you must do this alone?”     No, I’m frightened because it’s absurd I’m faced with this AT ALL, have any of you MET ME?  This whole thing was ridiculous from inception.  I glared at the wall, since he had now spooned behind me and my glare of hate couldn’t reach him.  Too bad my glares of hate didn’t ricochet.  “I’m not frightened.  Not exactly.  Jeez.  It’s not like that.”     “Because you know I stand ready to assist you in this, as in all things.”     I’ll bet.  I loved my husband, all right?  I had killed and died for him.  But he was not the king of the vampires by accident.  He had grown up poor and loved, and started over after he asked Tina to kill him.  He never wasted an opportunity and he never backed off; he was like a pit bull, he never dropped a bite.  Sinclair did want to help me, I knew that.  But he also wanted to get his fingers into the smoking hot Hell pie.  (Oh, God.  Terrible metaphor.)  And there was a good chance he would give in to his dark side, his Fred Flintstone side, and try and take over the place.  All the while determining it was for my own good, and that he was doing it for love.And he would have been.  But.  This was a man who forbade me to work.  Before we were married.  When I still loathed the sight of him.  And then was mystified when I laughed my ass off.  He was as modern a monarch as he knew how to be, but that didn’t mean we both didn’t still have some growing to do.  And something else—when did I turn into the mature, far-seeing one?  I didn’t approve of any of this.     “I know you want to help,” I said carefully, “but this is for Laura and me to figure out.”     “Ah.”  He stayed relaxed behind me and pressed a kiss to the back of my neck.  At least he wasn’t hocking loogies into my hair.  “And will you?”     “What?”     “Figure it out.”     “The minute I find out what’s wrong with Jessica and also plan Tina’s surprise party.”     He laughed.  Sinclair didn’t do the ha-ha laugh thing.  It was more like a deep chuckle that rumbled through his chest.  You felt it more than you heard it.  “Oh, a surprise party, now?  Yes, that will certainly eat up still more of your time.”     I elbowed his arm off me and flopped over on my back, and let his last comment go.  “Something’s wrong, and I couldn’t get Jessica to tell me.  And then she left again on another fake errand.”“Jessica has many errands, none of them fake so far as I know.  She keeps a close eye on her business,” he said approvingly.  “I would have offered her some investment advice, except I have the niggling sensation that she may have more money than I.  But if you were concerned, why didn’t you stop her?”“Her bed ate me.  And then you did.”He shuddered.  “I cannot imagine the crippling back pain they must awaken with.”“Knock it off, farmer boy.  We didn’t all grow up sleeping on two by fours.”“Nor did I, but back support is a must.”“It really isn’t, and come on!  You’re could sleep on a bed of nails and wake up refreshed and ready to bang, and can we get back to my thing now?”“You can only avoid this for so long.”“That’s not the thing I wanted to get back to.  And yeah.  I know,” I replied glumly.“At the risk of boring you with observations I have repeatedly shared with you—““Oh, boy.  Really hate when you start sentences with that.”“—the longer you avoid your responsibilities, the more difficult it will be to perform them.”“I know.”  I did.  But it was so hard to wrap my brain around.  Five years ago I’d been an administrative assistant, avoiding my father and stepmother as needed and trying not to strangle colleagues who thought the sign on the copy machine(IF JAMMED DO NOT FIX YOURSELF!  IF JAMMED FIND ME!  I WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DO NOT OBEY!  YOU WILL NOT BE MOURNED!  THE COPY MACHINE PEOPLE HAVE QUIT SENDING PEOPLE TO FIX IT!)didn’t apply to them, oh, hell no.  Now I was dead and a reigning monarch, happily married (a huge improvement over resentfully married) with a houseful of friends and family, fending off death threats and resigned to living through the next several centuries with highlights and lowlights.  Oh, and I was supposed to help run a dimension that was an afterlife of never-ending torment for billions.  In over my head didn’t begin to cover it.  In over my head wasn’t even on the same planet as my new responsibilities.  The same universe.  The same galaxy!  Wait, which one was bigger, galaxy or univ—never mind.  My point:  the whole thing was ludicrous.“I can’t tell if I need your help yet,” I finally said, breaking the long silence.  “But if I figure out that I do, I promise to come get you.”He shifted, and I knew he hadn’t gotten what he’d wanted.  But I also knew that he was content to wait for me to ask.  In this, we were well matched, since I normally had the patience of a toddler hopped up on Oreos, while Sinclair had the patience of a trapdoor spider:  come on over, take your time.  You know I’ll get you eventually.That shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.

Feminists Are Wrong About Frank Miller and Sin City

Saw SIN CITY 2: A Dame to Kill For and was reminded, again, of all the shrill bitching about what a rabid foaming misogynist jackass Frank Miller is. The guy gets an awful lot of flak for someone who looks like an accountant. (He does. Google him. Accountant face.) Not that we should assign flak (or the lack of flak) to someone based on their looks. It's weird, though, all the flak when he looks like he wants to sit down and go over your deductions line by line. Maybe it's only weird to me.

Also my title about feminists being wrong is wrong. All feminists aren't wrong about Frank Miller. But some of them are. (It's okay! As a feminist, I'm allowed to decide when all of us, or some of us, are wrong-o. It's in the handbook.) Because they get so wrapped up in how Miller writes dames (sorry, how Miller writes womenfolk) they completely overlook how Miller writes dudes (sorry, menfolk). And the dudes have waaay more to complain about. Miller's brutal to them. But let's discuss the bitching, point by bitchy point.

1) Frank Miller's heroines are all whores! Dirty, dirty whores! And you can see their boobs! Their dirty, dirty boobs!

Yep. You got me. They are, and you can. Well, a lot of them are. The ones who aren't are assassins.  And waitresses. And there's a nun-in-training. And a really fierce, skilled lawyer. And the fierce, skilled parole officer. And her girlfriend, the fierce, skilled psychiatrist. Ugh, stereotypes, I'm so sick of reading about empowered women in grown-up jobs who don't need men to be validated. Where are the whores, dammit? The dirty, dirty whores? I don't feel comfortable reading graphic novels unless I can judge the shit out of the writer/artist, someone I've never met and likely never will! Oh! There they are. Whew.

Gail, twins Wendy and Goldie, Dallas, Becky...whores, whores everywhere. Gorgeous whores with terrific boobs and long legs. I can't tell if some feminists are angry because of the dearth of whores, or because they're so exaggeratedly beautiful. Real women don't look like that! (You're reading a comic book. Men can't fly, don't have the proportional strength of a spider, aren't the last son of a dead planet. Women don't have lassos that make people tell the truth, aren't Superman's cousin, don't dress like a cat to stymie a vigilante dressed like a bat. Comic book.) Real prostitutes don't dress like that! (Comic book.) Real prostitutes aren't that well organized! (Comic book.) Real prostitutes run the gamut of age and race--oh, wait, that one Miller got right. Bastard. Let's go back to how well-organized they are! And how unrealistic that is!

That's my favorite thing about Miller's hookers, they're fantastically well-organized. As a former office manager, I can only admire their resourcefulness. They've cut out their territory in Sin City, called Old Town, and they rule it. Literally rule, as in they're in charge and they make the rules. Led by a fierce, uncompromising warrior woman in Gail (a movie reviewer referred to her as Old Town's "hooker warlord" which I love and wish I'd thought of), nobody messes with them. Cops don't. The mob doesn't. The non-mob villains don't. Pimps? Get the hell out, pimps aren't allowed in Old Town. (In real life, pimps are all over the place, Frank Miller, you unrealistic son of a bitch.) They're organized, focused, talented, and they get. Shit. Done. Even better: nobody messes with them and when someone does? Like, say, a crooked, heavy-handed cop and his thug pals? The hookers trap them like rats and end them. This is not what comes to mind when I think about repressed women. (In fairness all sorts of things went off the rails after they killed the bad cop and his bad buds, and it was very tense until the end when the hookers won. Again. Also not realistic, hookers winning and getting to stay in charge of their own lives. Frank, you suck.)

Miller's pretty up front about this. He tells the readers (through Dwight, a typical Miller anti-hero), "The ladies are the law, here. It's suicide to cross them." It is. And he's not subtle about it. Subtle is not a word I would ever use to describe his work. (Or mine.) 

2) Frank Miller's whorish beautiful heroines need to be rescued all the time! It's insulting how they need men to save them because of the trouble they get into with their whorish ways!

Again, this is true. Does Miller like the Damsel in Distress trope? Um, little bit, yeah. That puts him in the company of misogynist thugs like Agatha Christie, Lucy Maud, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James M. Barrie, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, and the good people who brought us Scooby-Doo and Shrek. 

Stephen King said something about writer niches; when fans asked him why he chose to write horror, he came back with, "Why do you assume I have a choice?" Agatha Christie liked writing whodunits, Edgar Rice Burroughs couldn't keep his characters out of jungles, Miller likes damsel in distress tales (something he has in common with entire sub-genres of romance writers, most of them women). That's what he digs on. And it's fine. It doesn't mean he hates women or thinks, in real life, all women need to be saved all the time by all men. Because: fiction.

3) His art is like something out of a noir-ish pulp novel from the 50s!

Yeah, it is. The thing is, that's what he's going for. If you don't like noir-ish pulp novels from the 50s, why the hell are you reading a Miller graphic novel? About two pages in you would have known what he was going for. Again: the man is not subtle. This particular complaint irritates me more than the others because there's a difference between ignorance (Miller only writes whores!) and willful ignorance (Miller writes like it's 1952!). Complaining about his style is like me watching a football game and complaining it's a football game. (Hint: I am not a fan of football games and would only watch one if you stood over me with a baseball bat. And also if you gave me candy bars.) 

Speaking of silly, that brings me back to my first point: that as bad as readers perceive Miller is to the ladies in his work, he's so much worse to the men. Dammit, someone needs to stand up for the beleaguered white guys! We discussed hooker overlords, efficiency, and murderous beauties above. Now let's take a look at Miller's terrible dudes.

1) We'll start with the best of them, who's also the worst: Marv.

Calling Marv an anti-hero is like saying Hitler went a little overboard…it barely begins to cover the awful. Marv is so awful he's barely a hero as an anti-hero. Much more an anti than a hero. And he's the best Miller gives us! (None of this should indicate I don't love Marv easily as much as I'm terrified of him.) He's a thug in the purest sense of the word: brutal and criminally violent. He's almost super-human, too; he shrugs off punches, kicks, knives, bullets, cars. They have to electrocute him twice for it to take. He's got no trouble with assault, battery, torture, or murder. And he's crazy. Officially on  medication for his condition crazy. So crazy a (female) psychiatrist freaked out trying to analyze his crazy. Marv's biggest fear is being outed as a "psycho killer" and locked away forever. This fear is completely justified. What saves him from total sociopathic douchehood is that he loves his mom and he "don't hit girls". The only time he hit a woman in Sin City was to knock her out so she wouldn't see him torture the cannibalistic serial killer who murdered her sister. He didn't want her to have nightmares. And felt terrible about knocking her out. Marv for president!

But remember: this man is the best Miller has for us: a man who routinely shops for razor wire when not killing someone for their coat. 

Dwight (see below) has Marv pegged: "Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield swinging an axe into somebody's face. Or in a Roman arena, taking his sword to other gladiators like him." Yep. That pretty much nails it. You can admire a warrior or gladiator and not want to hang out with them in real life. And except for the barely-there Hartigan (see below), he's the best Miller gives us. 

2) Dwight. Dwight's not much better than Marv. He's a little smarter, is all. In his youth, he thought (and fought) with his dick. In his later years, he tries to abstain from activities that lead to him fighting with his dick: drinking, doping, sex, growing his hair long, driving over the speed limit. The problem with that plan is when Dwight blows--and it's obvious from page one he's going to--it's sky high and results in an impressive/terrifying body count. And like Marv, he's a guy who will burn down the building to flush the bad guys, and worry about the cost some other time. He puts the heel in nihilistic (shut up, I know that was awful). His motivation, when avoiding things that trigger his murderous impulses, isn't atonement. It's to keep out of prison. And he might be insane; he tends to hallucinate dead people are talking to him. He's perfectly aware of this, and has no interest in seeking help.

3) Hartigan. Former cop, tried hard to stay clean in Sin City, the system swallowed him. He made the huge mistake of shooting a Roark (see below) and eventually paid with his life. He's off-screen quite a lot (prison time, see above, shooting a Roark) and when he emerges, it's not for long. He's a good guy, but he's so focused on The Case He Couldn't Solve that he sees nothing else. No other crimes, no other victims. He's like a wind-up toy; once he solves The Case He Couldn't Solve, he shuts down and we never see him again. 

4) Everyone named Roark. 

The Roarks are bad. And Miller's not content making them ordinary evil; they're evil evil. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles, crooked politicians, a cardinal. The evil is non-stop with this clan. None of them is redeemable and Miller doesn't bother trying (I'm assuming that's the point). In a world with black and white characters (nuns, pedophiles) the Roarks could give Satan a run for his money. Oh, money: they have gobs of it. And they never share. They made their fortune by making women earn on their backs, and they've been awful for generations. They're disgusting. A random hooker from Old Town is worth every Roark put together multiplied by ten. 

4) Various background characters: crooked cops (in Miller's world, there are almost no other kind), sleazy private investigators (in Miller's world, there are almost no other kind), background drunks, murderous college students (in Miller's world, there are no other kind). They're all awful. Even the priest hearing Marv's confession is a jerkass (played by Miller himself in the movie). Unlike Miller's hookers, none of these guys ever get redeemed. Several of them meet gruesome deaths. They are terrible. 

And, in contrast, make the hookers seem like shining angels. Almost any random hooker in Old Town is at least as smart as Dwight. Unlike Dwight, they're organized and focused. Unlike Marv, they don't constantly seek their own self-destruction. Unlike the Roarks, they're not pointlessly evil. These are hookers I can get behind! (I'll rephrase when I edit.)

My issue isn't with readers who don't like Frank Miller's work; he's not for everyone. It's the knee-jerk feminism I don't care for, seizing on a false perception and then ignoring everything that challenges that perception. Not liking noir-ish hooker-in-distress stories is fine. It's not fine to assume misogyny when the ladies in question consistently win, consistently defeat evil, consistently protect their own. If anything, the men need to be saved (from each other/themselves/random Roarks/inclement weather), not the ladies who rule Old Town.

MJ's Awesome Fudge/Fludge Recipe

Fudge (if it doesn't turn out: Fludge)

Last week several of you asked for my mom's fudge recipe, and because I am a slave to my reader's demands, here it is. If you don't cook it long enough, the fudge won't set, and you get really heavy, thick ice cream sauce. My kids dubbed the failure Fludge, and my son actually prefers it to fudge, because he's weird. "Noooo, make fludge. Fludge!" "Shut up, boy, and eat your fudge or no dessert for you."

MJ's Mom's Awesome Fudge/Fludge if you screw it up

2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
15 large marshmallows
2/3 cup condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla
8 oz chocolate chips
8 x 8 pan, greased (butter or Pam)

Put everything in a saucepan except the chips and vanilla and cook, stirring, at medium high heat. As everything starts to melt and blend it will smell insanely good and you'll be tempted to sample. You should give in to this powerful temptation, it's delicious. And you haven't even put in the chocolate chips yet! Once the mixture is at a low boil, it will smell even better and you'll want to sample more. Don't! It's so hot at this stage, it'll burn your mouth. You'll spend the next 2 days with shredded skin on the roof of your mouth, which will make you grumpy.  

Anyway, cook the whole bubbling mess at a low boil for 5 minutes. Five! Not four, not three. Five! At least five. If you don't, you get Fludge, which is delicious, but not fudge. I sometimes cook it for 6 or 7 minutes to be safe. Anyhoo, once it's boiled long enough (you've got to stir constantly, too, did I mention that earlier? yeah, stir like someone's got a gun in your ear, or it'll burn and you'll ruin your pan and your kitchen will stink worse than usual. I may be projecting). 

Take the bubbling delicious mess off the heat and dump in the chips and the vanilla, and stir until melted. Now it'll smell REALLY good, but don't sample. Again: the pain, argh, my mouth, everything tastes like rubber and dead skin! Pour it into a greased (Pam or butter) 8 x 8 pan (did I mention you need a greased pan? you do, you really do or you'll have to pour it down the sink or something). Put it in the fridge to chill/harden. You'll know in an hour if you've got fudge or fludge. If it hasn't solidified after an hour, IT NEVER WILL and you'll have to face up to failure. Spend the hour scraping the pot and mourning the integrity of your mouth. After it's firm, cut it up and enjoy with a big glass of cold milk. You're welcome.

I Describe The Trainwreck That is ScarJo's LUCY

God, this movie blows. I plan to save everyone I can from it, so this blog be spoiler-laden and, at times, a little swear-ey. If you liked the movie, great, but maybe head somewhere else because I'm not going to say many (any?) nice things about it. I've been waiting for it for ages and was annoyed to find it sucked used bathtub water. I will share my annoyance. I will not be at all stingy with the annoyance. I will jam my annoyance down your throat, much like LUCY shoved the number 100 down my throat.

I need a gif of Bilbo fainting to fully explain the level of "I can't even!" with this movie. Bad writing, bad science, bad pacing, bad editing, bad ending, racist, patronizing, egregious use of the number 100. For those of you who don't know, Lucy is the story of "the first woman to use 100% of her mind". Her name's Lucy because the first mostly-complete human skeleton ever found was named Lucy (presumably by scientists in the twentieth century, not her mom and/or dad a million years ago) and isn't that so subtle and neat? The two Lucys? Like, worlds collide subtle and neat? The only thing that could be more neat is if somehow billion year-old Lucy could reach out and touch Scarlett Johansson's Lucy oh wait! That totally happens, and it's not guffaw-inducing at all.

Anyhoo, Lucy is played with vacuous charm as a dim bulb slumming in Taipei, bitching that she can't deliver anything for her boyfriend of one week because like she's tired and like needs a shower and is totally tired and like can't deliver anything because she feels like so gross and wants to shower and nap. The movie tells us Lucy is using 10% of her brain at this time. We know this because the screen goes black and then giant white letters flash: 10%. Then it goes back to Lucy whining about having to do something something blah-blah-blah. The boyfriend tricks her into making the mysterious delivery by…clack! Yep, slipping a handcuff on her wrist (the other part of the handcuff is attached to the mysterious silver briefcase, a trope that has never been used once in any movie ever).

ScarJo/Lucy is super pissed: dammit, she's got to wash her hair or something! Into the hotel she goes, where she's scoped out by many sinister Asian men. The movie tells us Lucy is in danger. It does so by cutting from the hotel in Taipei to a scene where an antelope is being stalked by a cheetah. No, I am not kidding. Back to the hotel: Lucy feels like evil Asian men are closing in on her. We know this because the movie cuts from the hotel and brings us back to the  savanna where the sinister Asian cheetah is almost right on top of the Lucy antelope and no, I am not kidding. Then: they spring their trap! Both in Taipei and in Africa! Lucy gets snatched by half a dozen Asian goons and the antelope gets eaten alive by half a dozen cheetah goons. So now we DOUBLE KNOW Lucy's in trouble. Whew! Thanks, movie! Because I wasn't sure what was going on, but now I DOUBLE KNOW.

What with one thing and another, Lucy is knocked out and while unconscious and dreaming about, I dunno, the savanna or being out of shampoo or whatever, she's cut open and baggies of grape Pop Rocks are stuffed inside her. (The baggies are some weird new synthetic drug, but they look like grape Pop Rocks, which are also synthetic, so it works.) Then she and several other reluctant Pop Rocks mules are taken away, their families are threatened, and they're all going to different airports because there are, I dunno, Pop Rock conventions in Paris and Rome and Berlin and stuff. On her way to the airport, Lucy declines an offer of rape and is beaten and kicked in the stomach ("Ow! My Pop Rocks!") and then left alone to bitch about really needing to wash her hair already, and also the Pop Rocks are changing her as they surge into her bloodstream and douse her cells with Pop Rocky goodness.

Then Lucy gets smarter. A lot smarter. The end. No, I'm not kidding.

Part of this movie's suckiness is on me: I went in with certain expectations. I expected something more superhero-ey and revenge-ey. There's very little revenge. And every time it starts to get super hero-ey, the action cuts and plunks the audience in a lecture hall. No, I am not kidding. We end up in a lecture hall with a kindly elderly wise African American played by Morgan Freeman, who is explaining how the brain works and how much we suck at not using more than 10% of it. Now, normally I love it when Morgan Freeman explains things to me. But not like this. Because if I wanted a two hour lecture on neuroscience, I'd check out the University of Minnesota's Neuroscience Department and sign up for a class, and after two hours or so I'd get the hell out of there because I don't give a shit about neuroscience. But the movie assumes we're going to be super duper into neuroscience and will want frequent cutaways from the action/plot/character development/theme/soundtrack to hear a non-threatening old black guy explain that at 20% your brain's even smarter than at 10%, and at 40% it's smarter still! It's like it gets smarter when the numbers go up! How will we know the numbers are going up? The movie stops, AGAIN, and flashes the numbers. And frankly, Lucy at 20% still isn't that bright, because Lucy at 10% was a nightmare. ScarJo, who is 29, played Lucy as a hot, dim 16 year old living in Taipei because, like, school n'stuff.

To be fair, Scarlett is the least terrible thing in LUCY and Morgan Freeman is the second least, but the least terrible things are still pretty terrible. And I haven't even gotten to the racism yet. No, I am not kidding. When gorgeous white girl Lucy is menaced by gobs of sinister Asian men, ScarJo seems genuinely terrified. Like crying scared, the way I am when I'm afraid I've undercooked the chicken everyone is eating. She's very believable, and as the numbers go up (what numbers? the percentage of her brain she's using. how do we know they're going up? the movie stops every two minutes and shows us. how lame and jarring. yes.) her humanity goes down; toward the end she's more like a robot than a person. I thought ScarJo showed the contrast very well. And Morgan Freeman's kindly elderly African American man is suitably soothing and non-threatening and we need an elderly wise African American to tell us stuff because movie cliches. Can you believe they're doing this? It's so effective! I feel smart and I have the movie to thank for it. Why haven't a ton of other movies employed this trope OH WAIT.

All of that I could forgive. Okay, some of that I could forgive. But the writers assume everyone watching the movie is as dumb as they are, and has as huge a hard-on for tropes as they do. Also did you know that if we could use 100% of our brains we'd be, like, super smart and stuff? Not 50%. Not 75%. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BITCHES. If we could only reach that magical number! What would happen? Well, a lot of cutaways to cheetah meals and white numbers on a big black screen, that's what. But what if someone could go from 10% to 100%? Because 100 is more than 10, you guys! Wouldn't that be cool? Huh? Wouldn't it? The movie sure thinks so. And the movie reminds us of that over and over. In case we don't remember, every once in a while all the action again comes to a screeching halt, the screen goes black, and a giant number in white appears because ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BITCHES. That's the goal here. The goal isn't 10, or 40, or 70, or 95. But the movie tells us all the times we don't hit 100. Because movie audiences are stupid, and the writers have to spell it all out for us. More than once, too, because our attention span only runs in four minute intervals. What percentage are we going for? If only I could remember! If only the movie would find a way to show me the oh, there it is. We're still not at a hundred.

And there is no suspense, none. At no time was I worried for post-Pop Rocks Lucy. Because no one on earth is like her, you guys, because she's using more than 10% of her brain! So she's not just Lucy, she's Super Duper Lucy. How can she escape the evil Asian henchman at 20%? Oh, with effortless hand to hand combat she learned eight seconds ago. But how can she escape six evil Asian henchmen in the hospital? Oh, now she can move objects with her mind, so she disarmed them all and left them spinning in mid-air like disgruntled pinatas in a windstorm. Still, there are more bad guys! When an evil Asian bad guy tells his boss, super evil Asian bad guy, that they lost five men at the hospital, he reassures him by adding "don't sweat it, I've still got twenty-five more". Because there's a bad guy dollar store at the end of the block or something, I dunno. Twenty-five more? But there's only one Lucy! Against twenty-five of them! Sure, Lucy effortlessly defeats hordes of bad guys at 40% but jeepers, can she defeat them at ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BITCHES? Yes. Yes she can. Of course she can. Ugh.

At the end, there's a firefight at Morgan Freeman's lab. Super Duper Lucy is slowly turning herself into black goo while 20 Paris cops (yeah, we're in Paris now) exchange shots with 25 bad guys, because the big boss bad guy thought engaging lawful authority on foreign soil was the best way to get his drugs back and kill Super Duper Lucy while he was at it. That's another thing: the villain's an over-the-top moron. They should just given him a moustache and a top hat and make him keep curling the ends of his 'stache while contemplating tying Super Duper Lucy to railroad tracks. That would have been less lame. No, I am not kidding.

During the firefight, Super Duper Lucy is becoming more Super Duper by the nanosecond. Somehow she's able to travel to the past, where we're treated to inaccurately costumed Native Americans, among other things. And eventually, she makes it all the way back to the first human: Lucy! They gape at each other. Then Super Duper Lucy stretches out her finger, and Not At All Super Lucy stretches out her hairy appendage, and they touch fingers, like E.T. phoning Lucy. Lucies? Cue my vomit reflex. You could almost hear the writers chortling as they wrote this Incredibly Subtle Scene Tying Everything Together. I've never wanted to harm another writer like I did then and yeah, that includes George R.R. Martin for a certain nuptial event that shall never be spoken of on this blog.

Anyway, back to the ending (oh, God, finally), there's one bad guy left and one cop left, and meanwhile Lucy has turned into black goo and has eaten all the computers and walls and floor and garbage cans in the lab while Dr. Morgan Freeman cowers in a corner with his scientist lackeys and no, I am not kidding. Bad guy gets into the room and doesn't care that it's a bunch of white space and a gaggle of terrified scientists and Black Goo Lucy (Goocy?). Nope, just steps right up behind her and aims his (still loaded, despite huge firefight) gun at her head. The movie helpfully informs us she's at 95%. 96% 97%. Bad guy's finger tightens on trigger. Will she hit ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BITCHES in time? Yeah. Duh. Goocy disappears, leaving her empty dress and black pumps. Pre-Goocy Lucy was not a fan of underwear, apparently. Anyway, she's gone, bad guy's disarmed somehow, and Dr. Morgan Freeman looks around, all bewildered: "Where is she?"

Dr. Morgan Freemans' phone dings: a text! He flips it open to read his text, because nothing at all weird or terrifying has just happened so he can focus on things like texts. Maybe his wife, Mrs. Dr. Morgan Freeman, wants him to pick up some milk on the way home, he should definitely read the text right this second and determine her dairy requirement. Nope, the text is from Lucy, and reads…

I AM EVERYWHERE.

No, I am not kidding.

This movie blows a lot. Not 50%. Not 75%. This movie blows ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BITCHES. Save your money. Save your soul. Avoid it.

I foist UNDEAD AND UNWARY on the unwary

I've been going through the page proofs/galleys for UNDEAD AND UNWARY, and thought I'd inflict--share, I meant share--thought I'd share Chapter Two. Minor spoilers if you haven't read UNDEAD AND UNSURE. 





CHAPTER TWO

“Hey, Jess!  Wait up!”  Before I could track down wherever she wandered to (wandering was also new behavior; Jess did not wander, she favored a “help me or move” stride), I nearly fell over Tina exiting the kitchen.  I checked my watch—three o’clock in the afternoon.  Sunset was still two hours away (winter, blech), so she was stuck in the mansion for a bit unless she stowed away in Marc’s trunk.  But that was a whole other thing, and they only put Operation VampTrunk into action when it was important.  Of course, important—like everything around here—was relative.  Important could mean Tina had a 5:00 p.m. craving for sorbet flavored vodka.  (Don’t get me started on the vodka.  She had her own freezer for the vodka.  She doesn’t care to share the vodka.  I didn’t even like vodka but knowing I couldn’t have it made me crave it like a diabetic craves insulin.)  And Marc loved the whole trunk set-up; said it made him feel like he was in an action movie.  I managed not to point out that as a zombie, he was definitely in a movie, just not the genre he thought.  So when he got twitchy or cabin fever-ey, he’d occasionally pretend an errand was more urgent than it was (“We’re down to half pint of raspberries, Tina; get in my trunk stat!” from a guy who wouldn’t stay stat if everyone around him was going into cardiac arrest) so she could grab her phone, climb into the blanket nest he always had ready, then chat or text while tooling around town doing whatever it was they did and why was I only now realizing that I kind of wanted them to do a buddy movie?“Majesty,” was how Tina greeted me, which was typical.  We’d lived together for years and had saved each other’s lives more than once, and she loved me not for my (symbolic...if the queen gig had come with an actual crown I might have been more amenable) crown but for what I had done for Sinclair, the other person she loved more than life (death?  undeath?) itself.  I know my husband would have been lost without her, not just on a weekly basis but decades before I’d been born, and I was starting to suspect I’d be lost, too.  I’d gone from not knowing what a major domo was (I’d assumed it had something to do with the military) to wondering how I’d ever gotten along without one.All that love and devotion and it was still “Majesty” and “My queen” and “O dread majesty” and “Dearest sovereign, if I catch you in my vodka stash just once more, I shall set you on fire however much it will hurt me to hurt you”.  Very much a stickler for propriety, that was Tina.  She was a recovering southern belle—she’d been turned during the Civil War, or born during the Civil War; I forget which—and maybe that was why.  Tact and politeness were as much her style as her habit of dressing up like a dirty old man’s dream.  Short plaid miniskirts, crisp white blouses, the occasional demure headband holding back waves of blonde hair (which only emphasized her darkdark eyes), the occasional pair of kitten heels.  She usually went for “mouthwatering” and tended to hit the nail without hardly trying.  It was my curse in death to be surrounded by women much prettier than I was.  If my husband didn’t (almost literally) drool at the sight of me, it could have been awful for my ego.  And my ego is the strongest bone in my body.  Wait, that wasn’t right...“Did Jess come through here?”She shook her head and, as it was a headband-free day, her pale pointed face was momentarily obscured by hair.  She tossed it back like the Sexiest Cheerleader Ever and replied, “No, but I’m aware she returned just now.  Does she require an infant?”  I loved how she said that, an infant, like any random one would do.  Like we had a room full of random babies just in case someone needed one.  Oh, God, what was I saying?  That day was probably coming.  “You’d think, because she apparently took the babies to visit my mom but forgot the babies, but no.  I don’t know what she requires but I’m going to find out.  I swear on my filthy polluted soul that nothing will get in the way of me solving this mystery.”  All I needed to do was add a superfluous “Jinkies!” and I’d be Velma in better shoes.  “I also heard Laura Goodman arrive and then depart.”  Tina’s expression was carefully neutral in the way only an old vampire could pull off.  Here’s a hint:  never ever play Statue with an old vamp.  “You were, ah, unable to assist her?”  The ‘again’ went unspoken, for which I was grateful.Because the thing about Tina and also my husband was, their attitude is, “Why wouldn’t you be exploring the Hell out of Hell every chance you got?  Why wouldn’t you be honing brand new previously undiscovered power #6?  Why would you go out of your way to do anything but that, you silly bim?”  That attitude was also, fortunately for them, largely unspoken.“Laura’s fine, Hell’s fine,” I replied with an impatient gesture.  “Place has been there for a billion years but suddenly things are out of control and just crying out for my steadying hand?”  I couldn’t even say that without grinning; the whole idea was beyond dumb.  “But something’s up.  And where’s Sinclair?”     Tina smiled at me.  “Outside.”Her one word answer told me everything:  outside, he’s outside because he can brave the sun now because of you, he’s outside and he’s the happiest he has ever been because of you, he’s outside and I am so so grateful because of you and would follow you into death and would you like tea?  A smoothie?  Not my vodka, but anything else you desire?  “That,” I replied, “was a dumb question.”  And bless her sideways, Tina didn’t agree out loud or even nod.  Because of course I should have guessed.  Outside could be anything and everything, because my husband was almost a century old and most of that time he’d had to hide from the sun the way Republicans had to hide from talking about rape.  Long story short:  the devil granted me a wish, and I wished for that before I killed her.  And Sinclair was wallowing in it and took every chance to get out of the house.  Bringing one of his five cars in for a tune-up?  “Of course.”  Swinging by the farmer’s market to grab fresh fruit for one of our designated smoothie blenders?  “Of course.”  (Even though it was winter, and precious little was in season.)  Shovel the driveway?  “Do we have a shovel and if so, where do we keep it?”He volunteered to go to the DMV for Jessica, who gently pointed out that the State of Minnesota frowned upon citizens sending proxies to renew their driver’s license.  “Are you quite certain?” had been the disappointed reply.  “Perhaps they have changed the rule?  I had better check, just in case, don’t you think?  You need your rest; I will find this out for you.”“If you really want to help, you could change the babies’—““Nothing will prevent me from aiding you in this,” he’d declared, snatching his keys.  “I swear it.”“Please don’t try to bribe anyone in the DMV,” Jess had replied, not even trying to hide the horror.  “It doesn’t work.  It makes everything all the more awful.  I know.”  Not that Jess was speaking from personal experience; her dad was a shit of the highest order and did all sorts of unsavory things.  He was in Hell now, which was excellent.  That wasn’t a guess on my part, by the way.  I saw him there.  His stupid wife, too.Eric Sinclair, vampire king and devoted pet owner, former creature of the night and current creature of the day and night, was also a huge fan of al fresco sex.  Me, not so much.  Sex, yep, my husband was (almost literally) a demon in the sack.  Bedroom sex, counter sex, basement sex, attic sex, bathroom sex, hallway sex, even stair sex (argh, my back! this carpet needs to be thicker).  But outdoors?  In January?  Why?We lived in a mansion people would pay to bang in.  (I think it used to be a B&B, even, so people literally have paid to bang in it.)  It was like living in Honolulu and then going to Honolulu for vacation:  maybe a little pointless.  Also:  cold.  Very very cold this time of year in St. Paul.  Goosebumps on top of goose bumps wasn’t remotely erotic.So my husband could be scampering in the snow almost anywhere (car wash, DMV, bake sale, winter carnival) doing anything (washing cars, braving state employees, buying brownies, watching a guy chainsaw a likeness of a Dairy Princess from a block of ice), which meant that I was on my own when it came to solving the mystery of Jessica’s weirdness.  Well, on my own besides the cop, the zombie, and the other vampire I lived with.“I imagine she’ll have gone for a nap,” Tina said with a vague expression.  Oh, right.  We were having a conversation.  Luckily my tuned out expression was the same as my tuned in one.  “And it’s just as well the king was absent for your sister’s visit.”     “Ah...yeah.  Good point.”Things were still tense between my husband and my sister.  It had only been a few weeks since she’d kidnapped me, then dumped me in Hell and abandoned me with a ‘sink or swim’ mentality.  I swam, but she hadn’t known I would have.  My husband was many things; incapable of holding a grudge wasn’t one of them.  Sometimes it was like he invented grudge-holding, except I know for a fact that my stepmother did.       Still, it made for tense get-togethers, which I loathed.  “Guess Sinclair hasn’t forgiven Laura for leaving me in Hell,” I commented, because for some reason I felt like saying the obvious out loud.     Tina did That Thing where she glanced at me and then glanced away, so quickly it was like she hadn’t moved.  “Mmmm,” was her typically low-key reply.  And a couple of years ago it would have fooled me and I would have dropped the subject.       It wasn’t a couple of years ago.  “Mmmm, what?  ‘Mmmm, something smells delicious; oh, ham steaks, my fave!’?  ‘Mmmm, damn skippy he hasn’t forgiven her and he’s secretly plotting to eat her’?  ‘Mmmm, how can I prevent Betsy from knowing I wasn’t paying attention and have no idea what we’re talking about’?”     Tina thought it over for a few seconds before coming up with, “I never call you Betsy.”This was as close as I’d ever get to outsmarting her, so I was gonna take that as a win.  “Yeah, okay.  Good point.”“If you do not require my assistance at this time...?”“No, I’m good.”“Yes indeed,” she said with a small smile.“You silver tongued devil.”“That, too.”“Tina, d’you like it here?”Her big eyes got bigger and I had a whoa, where’d THAT come from? moment.  One of those things I had no idea I’d was going to say until it was out of my mouth. “I—yes.”“Oh.  Good.”“May I ask, Majesty...?”“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “It’s just everybody’s lives have changed in next to no time.  Five years ago I didn’t know you.  Five years ago I was still alive and you were off doing whatever it was you did before we crossed paths, and I didn’t know Sinclair.  Didn’t know I had a half-sister, sure as shit didn’t know she was the Anti-Christ.  Didn’t know I was destined to—““Take the throne.”“—kill the devil.”  What did it say about me that I thought of that first?  Other than still being in denial about the whole queen of the undead gig.There was a long pause while I tried to read her face, which was just as much a waste of time as it ever was.  Tina could out-bluff Daniel Negreanu (Sinclair was a World Series of Poker addict).  Her fair face, never terribly expressive, now seemed so still it was like she was playing Statues.  Which she could also do really well.  “I don’t,” she said at last.“What?”“You asked if I like it here.”Oh.  Right.  I remember now.  And shit.  I knew she’d tell me the truth, but I’d hoped it was good news.“Like is woefully inadequate,” she continued.  “I love my new life.  And not merely for my own sake.  I love his new life, too.  Five years ago things were dangerous and we trusted no one and we depended only on each other and my dear friend the king, the boy I loved from birth, pursued empty relationships and cared not if he lived or burned.  And now...he does care.  About many things.  I love that.  I love you.  I love this house.  I love your friends.  I love our new lives, and I love the new lives your friends have brought into our home.  It strikes me...”  Her gaze went vague as she looked through me.  “It strikes me that I can live a very long time and still be pleasantly, continually surprised.  I love that, too.”“Oh.”  Hmm.  She’d just told me this incredible generous thing and I’d better come up with something a little better than ‘oh’.  “That’s great.  I’m...that’s really great.”“Do you have any other questions?”“Nope.”She nodded and started to turn away from me.  “Then I’ll take my leave?  Yes?”“Sounds like a plan.”Well!  That was unexpected.  And nice.  It was almost enough to make me forget why I’d started the conversation in the first place.  Which was...uh...Jessica!  Right.  Tina was feeling fluffy and Jessica was up to something.  Busy, busy, lots of mysteries to unravel and Hell would wait.
It’s not like it was going anywhere, right?

I Prove Cersei Lanister Is Just The Worst

The Game of Thrones season four finale was a couple of days ago, and while reading reviews I came across an interesting essay on the character I most love to hate:  A Matter of Perspective: A Defense of Cersei Lannister.

Defense?

Of Cersei freakin' Lannister? Oh, it is on, well-read articulate stranger who wrote a thoughtful essay whom I've never met but have now declared as my mortal enemy! It is so on! 

(For readers who aren't interested in the show or the books, this post will be about a show you're not interested in based on books you aren't interested in, so save yourself while you can. For those who are interested in either the show or the books, or both, proceed. Book spoilers ahoy!)

Part of the reason I didn't agree with Mr. Brosnan's take is because I dislike how the HBO show has softened Cersei. I love that horrible bitch. Her POV chapters are the reason that out of the eighty billion pages that is the Song of Ice and Fire saga, I've re-read A Feast for Crows as often as I have. Softening the character is dumb for any number of reasons: it talks down to the reader (I live with teenagers, so I don't need more condescension in my life), it alienates the book fans while risking annoying show fans with a watered-down character, and also, I don't like it. And it leads to essays like this one.

Below is my rebuttal. And yes. I do feel better now!

* * * 


Nope, nope, nope! I liked your article a lot, though I disagree completely. And I think it's great that you tackled a controversial stance for a controversial character, but Cersei neither needs nor deserves our sympathy. (Book spoilers ahead!)
(spoilers)
She killed her best friend when they were just children. She sexually and physically abused Tyrion when he was a baby and she was eight (Oberyn tells Tyrion that he saw Cersei "twist your cock until you screamed" when he was a newborn). At those points in her life, she wasn't enduring Robert (I agree that as a husband, at best he could only be endured). She grew up rich, never missed a meal, went to bed every night warm and safe right up to her wedding night. Granted, Robert was a drunken asshat, but Cersei was a monster long before she married one. 
A not-nearly-complete list of her awfulness: she raised a monster by turning a blind eye to ALL his character flaws. We can't blame Robert for Joffrey; he had next to nothing to do with the little psycho. That's all on Cersei.
Speaking of Joffrey: cheating on the king is punishable by death. It's treason. Not only did she pass off incest babies as the king's, she took every care (opinion is divided if she had an abortion or killed the baby right after birth) to eliminate Robert's children by her, threatened to have one of his bastard daughters killed if she was brought to King's Landing, and turned a blind eye to Joffrey's bastard-slaughtering campaign. Yes, we can't choose whom we love, but most of the time we can absolutely choose who we have sex with. Cersei chose Jamie again and again and again. 
Power games: she can't resist them. ("Seize him. Cut his throat. Wait! I've changed my mind. Let him go...power is power.") Kidnapping and having Tyrion's whore beaten...and screwing it up because she had the wrong whore beaten. (I could write an entire rebuttal on how stupid she is, but I'm too busy with the rebuttal on how awful she is.) Remember: this is a girl who physically and sexually abused a newborn when she was 8, and killed her best friend when she was 10. She was always playing power games, long before Robert came along, long before any of the reasons you cited as proof she's just a misunderstood l'il cutie. 
Her refusal to honor debts to the Iron Bank lead to a country-wide economic crisis. With one act, she dooms Westeros to what could be a decades-long economic depression. Worse, far worse for someone who is supposed to rule, she's got no knowledge of history, leading to the disastrous decision of reinstalling the Faith Militant, a huge factor in her downfall.
Her great love for Jamie? It only lasted as long as she saw him as an extension of herself. The minute he wasn't perfect (minus a hand), her love died. Before that, though, she was cheating on him, on the great love of her life (who, by the way, has never been with anyone but Cersei). I'm not talking about Robert; she had no choice but to have sex with the king her husband. She didn't have to have sex with Lancel, with the Kettleblack, with anyone who she could get to do her dirty work. But she did. Because awww, poor Cersei's so misunderstood.
When she's not playing power games, she's lying. When she's not lying, she's arranging the beating and torture of the innocent: Alayaya is just one example from the above paragraph. Far worse, she handed her maid and Falyse Stokeworth over to Qyburn to be tortured to death for the crime of no crime. NO crime.
She then framed Margaery for adultery (punishable by death, Cersei of all people should know the penalties for cheating on the king!) and, as of the end of A Dance with Dragons, Margaery was going to be tried for same. Cersei's downfall (at the end of Feast for Crows, as well as Dance w/Dragons) is deeply satisfying, but more than that, she's 100% in a mess of her own making. Not a victim. Never a victim. 
She isn't a terrible ruler because she was born into a bad family and bad things happened to her. She's a terrible ruler because she's an awful, awful person and, frankly, not especially bright. 
Poor Cersei? Nope: poor Westeros!

I Recognize No One At A Family Wedding

Ah, family weddings! Part reunion, part ritual, part "the last time I saw you, you were the size of a bag of dog chow" mind-fuck. Also a perfect opportunity to make an ass of yourself. Repeatedly. Those of you who have followed my preventable shenanigans will not be disappointed.

First, and I'm addressing this to the state of Michigan, what happened to you? I've never seen a state with such low self-esteem. Anyone who made it through the fifth grade knows Michigan had/has tons of iron that is constantly being dug out of it and used to build stuff. But in case everyone who sets foot in Michigan skipped elementary school, the word iron is used way too much:  Iron Mountain, Iron River, Iron River Township, Irons, Ironton, Ironwood, Ironwood Charter Township, Iron County, Iron Ore (newspaper), Ironwood Golf Course, Iron Castle, Iron River Care Center, Ironkeep Technologies, Ironport Security, Irons Area Web Design and on and on and on. Everywhere you looked, something had the word iron in it, which was jarring when we went to Iron Ice Cream for a snack followed by the Iron Hotel for a nap on an surprisingly stiff mattress.

In addition to worrying that no one knows about the iron, Michigan worries no one knows they're in Michigan. Exhibits A through Infinity: Lake Michigan, My Michigan (song about Michigan), Michigan My Michigan (another song about Michigan), Michigan Luther High School, Michigan Basin, Michigan Sugar Company, Michigan City, Michigan Center, Michigan Alcohol Screening Test, Michigan, MI...I know all states do this, but Michigan is really shrill about it. It's kind of jarring.

And there's no reason for it! Driving from St. Paul to Marquette was like driving through a Nat Geo special; the place is gorgeous! Michigan, stop being the girl in the bar who gets tipsy and giggly and asks strangers to tell her she's pretty. You're pretty, you're pretty! You don't have to do any of this stuff. Put the cosmo down, dammit, this isn't 2004 and you're not starring in Sex and the City.

Now where…right.  Family wedding. Okay, years ago, my brother-in-law, Thomas, settled down with a lovely young woman, Betsy*, and they popped out three kids: Anthony, Gabriela, and Joseph. The kids grew as we aged. Now some of these socially responsible, charming, polite, intelligent twenty-somethings have the nerve to marry. And invite us to see it! Gross.

And it's silly, but it's how my brain works:  when I don't see family members for years and years, in my cobweb-stuffed mind they're always the age they were when I saw them last. And since half a continent separates Thomas' family from mine, in-person get-togethers were rare. My most vivid memory of Anthony was when he wasn't far out of the toddler years, exhausted after a cross-country flight and obsessed with the only thing he liked to eat back then, McDonald's ("Don-dons!"). He also loved the Star Trek movies and memorized all the Klingons' lines. Of course as a grown man he worries about more than how many Chicken McNuggets he can cram into his mouth at once, but in my mind, he's still that little curly-haired kid up past his bedtime but with a sweet smile for everyone anyway.

His sister, Gabi, I saw a few years later, in her middle-school years, as awkward a phase as she was ever going to have (my awkward phase lasted two decades); when she was excited she was like a hurricane of knees and elbows. And her brother, Joseph, I last saw sitting on my couch when he was 14, being told by his father that PG-13 movies weren't appropriate for a boy of his tender years.

Me: "Come on, Thomas, seriously with this?"
Thomas: "Parental responsibilities! I have them!"
Me: "It's Edward Scissorhands, for crying out loud."
Thomas: "What, you want him to grow up to be a careless salon owner? OSHA should be all over that place."
Me: "I want you out of my house. The kid can stay. You can sell School of Rock and Pirates of the Caribbean to pay for your hotel room."
Thomas: "Shut up."
Me: "You shut up."
Joseph: "Guys? It's fine. I like The Princess Bride."

Fast forward several years, as we assembled in the local granola haven for lunch I intellectually understood I was meeting my brother-in-law and his sons. But in my head Joe was a repressed 14 year-old who had no idea Bruce Willis was dead in The Sixth Sense, and Anthony would be fuming because Heavenly Granola n'Stuff, or whatever the place was called, did not sell Fillet O'Fish sandwiches.

But it was worse! The hostess told us Thomas was upstairs…with two men. When he's supposed to be there with his little boys. Of all the irresponsible…his children need him! His baby is getting married. And he's hobnobbing amid bean sprouts and gluten-free raspberries with a couple of random guys while his family is shunted off to one side and ignored and oh there he is, the rat bastard, and yep, he's  with two annoyingly handsome men, and they were all gonna get a piece of my mind because the utter selfish ignorance represented here is something only I'm allowed to get away with and oh my God that's Joe and Anthony. Those are my nephews. The muscular tall one on the right is the one getting married! The muscular tall one on the left is checking out the gluten-free raspberries! What the hell just happened? Or, more appropriately, what the hell just happened over the course of a decade and more?

All right, it was weird, but I was getting through it, and it helped that my tuna melt was delicious (I forced them to make it for me as unhealthy as they could, complete with white bread, the Anti-Christ of breads). I knew the rehearsal dinner was that night, but was pretty sure I'd had the biggest shock I was going to have. Plus, I was so invested in ordering an unhealthy lunch that the little boys--men, the little men--no, the big men--had no idea I had confused them with a couple of random asshats who were loitering around being all confidently handsome.

So that night, I knew I was going to meet the baby's bride. Joe. Joe's bride. I warned myself that she would appear incredibly young to me, though she had graduated college. I reminded myself that she deserved all respect and kindness from me as Joe's terrible Aunt MaryJanice. I told myself I could fake not being terrible for one evening. One hour. Half an hour. Shit, where is she?

Ah-ha! That's her, it's got to be her:  she stood as soon as she saw me. She saw me stretch up, up, up on tip-toes to return Joe's hug. (Our family is full of aggressive huggers, and since they're men in their prime, it's a little like being caught in a rowing machine that smells like good aftershave.) She was fresh-faced and gorgeous, her hair a subdued pile of glossy dark waves and eyes the color of Godiva chocolate (the kind they use for milk chocolate mousse, not white chocolate ganache), and came over to me at once.

I was ready for her:  "And this must be Joe's bride!" I bellowed this while hugging her and assumed, from the way she stiffened, that I still had tuna melt in my teeth. I pulled back, ready to apologize ("I had to make them make it for me"), then realized:  dark hair like Thomas and Betsy. Dark eyes like almost everyone on my husband's side of the family. Tall and charismatic. Recognized me. Stood right away. I had just confused my niece with the bride. Luckily I was cool and in control, following my faux pas with a warm and friendly, "Son of a bitch."

A long, loooong few minutes later, I slid into the seat beside my husband and whispered, "Well, I can't screw anything else up, right?" Tony responded with, "You're being too hard on yourself." Just when I was starting to cheer up, he added, "You're capable of much worse." Asshat.

The next day was the wedding in St. Peter Cathedral, which looked like it had been stolen from Italy. Tall ceilings and marble pillars all over the place. Stunning. You definitely feel like God's watching and he's super-pissed. (I might be projecting.)

We walked in and I spotted my sister-in-law right away, wearing a navy print and looking pretty and pale. The former I was expecting (I've been trying to prove for years that her side of the family bathes in the blood of virgins, what with their whole not aging thing), but the latter was a surprise as she dwells in a godless desert (Arizona) and should have a farmer's tan that would put a farmer to shame. She greeted me with a hug, then clamped her hands over mine and asked over my surprised yelp, "Are you all right? Are you going to be okay?"  

"I'm

(ow!)

fine. Are you all right?" I'd never known her to be anything but competently calm, but then, her baby was getting married. If I had to fight my way free, I'd be as gentle as I could. It wouldn't be the first time I was forced to carefully stomp a family member. But she released me

("Freeeeeeeedom!")

and we were able to go inside and sit down.

Cue the start of the processional, and I was impressed to see that the bride, Katharine (who looked nothing like my niece, making my mistake the night before even more vividly hideous), kept The Promise that most brides break. If you've been a bridesmaid, you know about The Promise That Is Always Broken; I can sum it up for you in five words: "You can wear it again!"

This is a lie. Brides always think their bridesmaids can wear the velvet/taffeta/polyester/rubber gown with a knee length/floor length/calf length/hip length skirt in a tasteful (bile green/barf brown/traffic cone orange/migraine yellow color for the rest of their lives: to work, to dates, to the births of their children, to their retirement party. Nope. Google "awful bridesmaid dresses" and be prepared to scream and scream.

But these were lovely! Periwinkle blue to the floor (a color flattering both blondes and brunettes), with straps thin enough to look delicate but not so thin they slip down, a square-ish neckline, and cinched at the waist enough to flatter the figure but not so much the bridesmaids need mouth-to-mouth so they don't keel over at the altar. And yep, totally wearable again. I was amazed.

Then readings, and here came what I was sure to be a hitch (see what I did there? hitch? wedding? shut up, I'm hilarious). The groom's older brother, Anthony, was to do the reading. I felt bad; this was too much responsibility for a kid who loves McDonald's so much it's all he obsesses over. That, and Klingon (sooo many geeks in our family). He strode to the podium in a sleek dark suit, opened his mouth, and I started working on my post-wedding platitudes ("That would have sounded good in Klingon, too!"). Then something weird happened:  instead of a shrill demand for "Don-don's!" or "So'wl ylchu'Ha'!**, a sonorous, pleasingly deep voice rolled out of his chest. Had he been possessed? The bride and groom would not be pleased; that would definitely wreak havoc on the reception and maybe even the honeymoon. Then I remembered:  my nephew was nearing 30. (Or had been possessed; I wasn't quite ready to let that one go.) I could have listened to him all day; the dude could do radio. It makes me wonder if the McDonald's corporation deserves some of the credit.

More readings, some vows about, I dunno, love and stuff, and then the sign of peace. I love the sign of peace. I get to shake hands and sometimes even hug strangers who have no idea I'm a disaster of a human being. I feel like accepting their peace and then being all, "Ha, I'm awful! You just wasted your peace on a jerk! Suck on that." I almost always restrain myself.

Then, we're set free! Released into the wild, in this case Presque Isle Park, with only one mishap on the way. We were unfamiliar with the area and stopped at what turned out to be the wrong wedding reception. Like I'm not enough of a trial to my family on the best of days, now I was going to traumatize another wedding party. Luckily we noticed in the time that the bride had changed her dress, and also her body, so we fled, and eventually ended up ruining the right reception.

It was lovely, of course, and I would have thought so even without the yummy food (grilling! corn on the cob! booze in wedding cake frosting!). And yeah, every time a member of the wedding party took a sip of their beer I had to fight the urge to slap the bottle out of their hand and deliver a stern lecture on underage drinking, followed by a threat to bring the tough love by calling the cops ("But they're legal adults." "I know! It's disgusting. So, are you gonna arrest all of them or just the ringleaders?"). I let it go; they'd suffered enough.

At one point I asked the bride and groom if they would mind if I shared details about their very personal, very private day with tens of thousands of strangers. "We'd be honored," Joe said, proving that his parents taught him to lie both sincerely and respectfully.

"I have to warn you," I warned him, "it won't be so much about your wedding as it will be about my weekend. Because I feel the need to turn a weekend not about me into a weekend entirely about me."

"We'd be honored," he repeated firmly.

I was, too.






* It's a coincidence. I swear! Betsy the Vampire Queen is named after a Seinfeld character.

** Deactivate the cloaking device!