Ginger's Blog

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program of Block Island sunsets to bring you a photo (yes, I will stick with just one) of this weekend’s momentous event–my son’s (and now my new daughter’s) wedding. Of course, this is the Best Wedding Photo Ever. Not to mention the most photogenic and lovable couple. I am not biased about this. Just saying.

Dan and I are having trouble keeping our Netflix queue full. We just don’t hear of good movies to add to the queue as quickly as we watch the movies that are already in it. Most of the methods we’ve tried to find more movies we might like haven’t succeeded very well:

• Adding movies that look good in the trailers that come with other movies. This system works well for weeding out movies we *don’t* want to see, but there are some real duds out there whose only good moments are those incorporated into the trailer. Great trailer, lousy movie. Who was to know?
• Adding movies to the queue based on recommendations from friends. You’d think this would work really well, but we were surprised. Some of our extraordinary, smart, and delightful friends recommend the most ordinary and dull movies. In particular, we’ve learned never to trust the “hot” movies that everyone is seeing and talking about right now. By the time they make it to DVD they are no longer “hot” and often of little inherent worth.
• Using the Netflix recommendations (“Movies You’ll ‘Heart’”). The results of this, as nearly as I can tell, are totally random and useless.
• Adding movies directed by the same person as other movies we like. This isn’t a bad system if the director is consistently good. For example, Ridley Scott was, for the most part, a great success for us. However, any director’s oeuvre is limited, but our Netflix queue never ends.

But finally we have hit upon a system that works.

We ask my mother.

She is unerringly on the mark.

It’s gotten kind of scary. Dan always puts my mother’s recommendations at the top of the queue. And we always really like them. I think my mother is nervous now about recommending additional movies to us. The stakes keep getting higher.

Her most recent success was Vantage Point, a movie that tells the story of an attempted terrorist coup from a number of different but unexpectedly related perspectives, each layer adding depth and complexity to the story. It’s also a nonstop action movie that would do the TV series 24—the only ongoing TV show that I like—proud.

The movie that this reminds me of the most is Crash, which portrays the multifaceted interactions in the lives of a number of complete strangers in Los Angeles, some of whom meet by automobile crash or hijacking and some of whom never meet. We actually saw Crash twice, and enjoyed it both times. Frighteningly, this was another of my mother’s recommendations. Tonight I discovered that there is a name for this type of movie, and there are members of the genre Dan and I haven’t yet seen. Food for the queue monster.

Other movies that share this quality are Memento, Run Lola Run, and Babel. We liked all of these, too. I wish there were a Web site where you could enter the names of some particular movies, and it would tell you others that are in some way similar.

But meanwhile, Mom, you’ve scored again. Please keep those recommendations coming.

And, dear reader, I’m open to *your* recommendations, too!

“When all else fails, try modern technology.”

Yeah, Mom, for better or for worse technology can definitely make things, well, different. In some ways.

This is way cool! Please check out my guest blog posted today at L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Wright’s Writing Corner. My son Adam was born with an innate and strong storytelling ability. This post is about nurturing that talent. I hope you enjoy it.

And if you’re interested in fantasy, check out Jagi’s new book, Prospero Lost.

The writer Jagi Lamplighter, author of Prospero’s Daughter, recently received some flak on her blog after reporting on a panel she participated in at Worldcon. The panel was about diversity, and some of the blog’s readers took offense at her referring to a fellow panelist as a “black girl”. Apparently, “black woman” would not have been so derogatory. Yet Jagi says that she refers to all women as “girls” and means nothing by it.

I believe her. I refer to all people of any sex as “guys”. I do it all the time. Always have.

This used to drive my father crazy. “Do you guys have any plans for the weekend?” I might ask. My father would draw himself up to his full height and dignity and respond, “Your mother is not a guy!”

I didn’t mean anything by it. Still don’t.

But this little flurry on Jagi’s blog has me thinking. First, about my father, who has been dead for over two decades now. I still miss him.

And second, about why I should call everyone “guy”. And here’s what I think: At some level, I think of myself as a guy. As in “just one of the guys”, not as in interested in women. And I do have some “guy” traits: I’m more rational than emotional (of course, we women know that men are often more emotional than rational, but you know the stereotype); prefer blue to pink; dislike frills, ribbons, high heels, dresses; prefer science fiction to romance. You get the idea.

Now, if Jagi thinks of herself as a “girl”, then of course she means nothing when she refers to other women the same way. But our mutual colleague, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, author of Yesterday’s Dreams and other books, said it better than I could.

“Hard to make everyone happy when they are pre-disposed to taking offense. Of course, as writers, these are the types of things we should take note of for future use.”

I like in particular Danielle’s complete vagueness on how we should use these things.  :-)

“Who’s watching the Watchmen?” Dan and I are… finally… that’s who. What’s odd about this is that Dan is watching. Avidly.

Dan is not a fan of speculative fiction. He’s never picked up anything that might be called a “graphic novel”. He has little tolerance for the fantastical. Science fiction leaves him cold.

But he likes good design and he likes action. And Watchmen has these in abundance. Despite its bleak mood and noir atmosphere, it is an “up” movie. It’s hard to know, sometimes, whether we are watching the plot, the effects, or the sheer beauty of the film.

Dan won’t say he likes this movie. In fact, he doesn’t have much to say about it at all. But he was on the edge of his seat. I was the one watching the watching man. He was glued to the screen for two and three quarters hours, about as long as I have ever seen him sit still.

That movie was good!

Dan and I are driving to Montreal, where I will be going to Worldcon 67 (Anticipation 2009), and Dan will be hanging out partly working and partly on vacation. We cross the Merrimac River, and Dan says, “Did you know there used to be salmon on the Merrimac River?”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” I say. “The lobster in the ocean used to be so plentiful that they washed up onto the beaches. They fed lobster to the prisoners in the jails so frequently that the prisoners sent a petition to King George begging him to make them stop.”

“Let’s face it,” says Dan. “The planet isn’t what it used to be.”

No, it isn’t. “It’s going downhill fast,” I say, letting my pessimism get the better of me. “Time to move on. Time to get that colony ship ready to voyage out to the next planet.”

“I’ll be the first to volunteer,” says my science-fiction-averse husband.

Whoa.

Wasn’t there an article recently in The Boston Globe Magazine in which the author opines that “The baby boomers are the first generation that will… actually live too long. By refusing to expire after a reasonable number of years, the boomers are threatening the social order”? In arguing that the average lifespan of generations ago was in the forties meant that people in their forties were old, the author has succumbed to a common misunderstanding. She has overlooked the fact that over a third of the population died in infancy, in childhood, and in childbirth. And in war. It was not unusual for those that survived these catastrophes to live into their seventies or eighties or longer. But the author puts forth an argument that may be only too popular among the younger generations: The old folks have been around too long. Time to find a graceful, civilized way to get rid of them.

Well, young lady, this is your chance. We can solve the problem of the Earth on her last gasp and the overpopulation of healthy boomers growing older in one single, visionary stroke: Just pack us up in a space ship and send us off.

Hey, maybe a lot of us will go.

We baby boomers get a virgin planet where lobsters wash up on the beaches, and you get to deal with this dying Earth. Do you think you might actually do something about it before the human cancer kills the whole planet? Somehow, I don’t think so. Maybe it’s already too late.

And worse: Wouldn’t it be just like us to ruin the next planet, too?

This month was my mom’s birthday–her 90th. We had a memorable party attended by all her relatives and several friends that live nearby. Dan and I were the hosts, but Mom worked hard herself to prepare several of the items on the menu, and she came over early to help set up. Before all the guests arrived, Dan and I presented her with a gift in honor of this special birthday–a trip she’s always been hoping to take. Her response was pure delight:

“That’s what I like about life: wonderful things are always happening!”

That’s what I like about you too, Mom. You are a “wonderful thing” in my life!

A thunderstorm is passing overhead. A flash of lightning, mostly obscured by the trees is closely followed by a loud crack and a persistent roll of thunder. Amber, who the moment before had been sleeping by my side, is instantly alert. His head jerks up. His eyes are wide; his pupils, dark. His ears antenna in all directions. The sound passes. Amber rests his head on his paws again.

I suddenly understand that wherever we get this fear of lightning and thunder from, it’s very deep and very ancient.

Recently, I put up a Web site about Dan’s and my trip to Turkey and Greece (http://www.songless.com/greece/). That site contains a (large) number of photographs, perhaps 150 of them, distilled down from the 650 or so that we took on the trip. By “we” in the previous sentence, what I mean is almost entirely “I”.

“There aren’t any photographs of you,” noted my friend Karen.

I too noticed the lack of pictures of me when I was editing the pictures, and believe me, I went through all 650 of them. What there was, was a lot of pictures showing the back of Dan in the forward distance just as he was about to vanish around some corner. There were also a lot of pictures showing streets and places empty of people where Dan had vanished around that corner just a moment or two before.

I spent many a happy hour in Turkey and Greece trailing behind Dan. We like the same kind of places and enjoy exploring them together (well, almost together) for hours on end. I explore with camera in hand, stopping to see if there is a picture in this place and if so to frame it and take it. I view places in two dimensions delineated by a frame. I have to stop and look. I have to stop and digest what I’m seeing and compose the shot to capture the essence of the place. I have to stand still to experience a place.

And Dan has to come back and get me when he’s gotten too far ahead of me and I get lost and don’t know where he went. Because Dan doesn’t experience places the way I do. He experiences places in glorious three dimensions by moving through them. He is restless. He wants to explore everything, map in hand, never pausing. Because for him, that’s the essence of the experience.

And here I thought we had both gone on the same vacation.