More than you ever wanted to know about tea

We had our office Thanksgiving party last week. I was doing pretty good, socially--shoes on and everything--and then I got some cheesecake in me and found myself doing the thing. All nerds know what I'm talking about, when you find yourself talking for an inappropriately long time about a topic no one has any interest in except yourself.

Kate Beaton knows.

I could feel it happening--I could see it in the slightly alarmed expression of my listeners--but I couldn't stop myself. I was just--so--interested in the topic!

It was tea. I was talking about tea. I was talking about tea because I love tea and everyone else needs to love tea as much as I do, and if they don't, it's only because they don't know how delightful it is, so I have to tell them.

You see how easy it is to fall into doing the thing.

I'm especially jazzed about tea right now because I went to the Big Island a couple of weeks ago and my sister took me to a tea garden. As far as best gifts ever received, this is now tied for the number one spot with the Christmas 1994 tea sampler from me mum (with 20 different kinds of tea).

Fuckin tea!

Let me tell you all the things I learned at the tea garden! This particular tea garden is located on the grounds of Volcano Winery, the southern-most winery in the U.S. It's about a mile above sea level, near Volcano Village in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Volcano Winery has seven acres of tea plants, which as you can see from the above picture, are basically just hedges. (Honestly, if I hadn't been told that this hedge made tea, I would have been like, Hey Sparky, what's with all the hedge?)

The tea that you drink is made from the new baby tea leaves, and the different types of tea--green, black, white--depend on the maturity of the leaves at the time of harvest. The newest leaves, which are still rolled up and not open yet, make silver needle tea. Just-opened leaves make white tea, slightly more mature leaves make green tea, and the leaves at the last stage of maturity, before they're just useless hedge, make black tea. At Volcano Winery, the black tea leaves are dried with a big fan, while the finer grades of tea are air-dried over a few days.

Tea leaves themselves don't smell like much of anything, even if you crush them between your fingers. Tea flowers, on the other hand, smell exactly like brewed tea. It is the damnedest thing.

Brewed tea. Who knew?

Each different tea grade requires different temperatures of water for brewing. Black tea needs water just at the boiling point. Green tea needs water slightly below the boiling point, otherwise you scorch the tea and it becomes bitter. I already knew about the water, because when I lived in Waikiki, I used to visit this Taiwanese tea shop in the Kings Village shopping center. Kings Village is the kitchiest, tackiest place you can imagine--it looks like Santa's Village, except it's open year round so there's no end to the suffering.

Three years I lived across the street from this.

However, tucked away in a corner of this Block 'o Camp was the Cha-No-Ma Teahouse, an oasis of good taste, simple but expensive sculptures, and orchids that were always in bloom. The only other customers I ever saw in there were old Chinese ladies in Chanel suits.

This place was magical. The experience would begin with charcoal peanuts, which were like little briquettes with a peanut inside, to cleanse the palate and settle the stomach. I'd pick a tea--usually one of the cheaper ones on the menu, because this was a nice place and the tea could get pretty fancy--and the owner would bring out a tea set and a HUGE kettle of hot water. He would brew the first pot himself, filling the tiny teapot and letting it overflow into the wooden tea tray. After a few seconds, he'd dump the tea through the strainer into the other tiny teapot. Then he'd pour the tea into the first set of cups. Those were the smell-good cups. You'd pour the tea out of those cups into the drink-cups, and then smell the residue left in the smell-good cup. Then you'd drink. And then you'd fill the tiny tea pot yourself from the kettle and start it all over again. 

Clockwise from left: charcoal peanuts, tea strainer, first teapot, second tea pot, smell-good cup, drink-cup.

Each round gets you about one full mouthful of tea. It takes about an hour and a half to finish the kettle. And if you can think of a better way to spend your afternoon, you can just shut your filthy liar mouth because there is no better way to spend your afternoon than in Cha-No-Ma.

The second or third time I went back, the owner taught me that tea should be treated as a vegetable. "You don't dry asparagus, do you?" he demanded. No, I agreed, you did not. "Americans only know about Lipton," he said. It's a travesty, I agreed, tea is so much more. We were kindred spirits, he and I.

He would have looked at my pictures of the Volcano Winery tea garden without searching furtively for another party-goer to rescue them from my clutches. Where are you going? Don't you want to see me picking some of the leaves?

I haven't even gotten to the pictures I took of me drinking the tea! I have to explain what my facial expressions signify about the taste and bouquet of the brew at that moment!

Neil Gaiman at Brooklyn Academy of Music

 "Why are we here? Obviously it's to suffer and die and create art." Neil Gaiman, 2010.

Last Tuesday, Neil Gaiman's new novel "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" hit bookstores. I was fortunate enough to be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a live reading, followed by a Q&A with the author.

If I could go back in time and tell my wee thirteen-year-old Big Island Rachel self that she would live to see her favorite author Neil Gaiman speak not just once, but twice, I'd slap myself at the decadence of the suggestion.

And then engage in a fight to the death, because I'd watched enough scifi at 13 to know that future selves are almost always Terminators.

Regular readers remember that I saw Gaiman speak at the New Yorker Festival in 2010, which is where I got that great quote above. The format of this event was a little different. Since he was launching a book instead of just rambling on (awesomely) about things that interested him, the setting was more formal and structured. The house lights were turned off like it was a proper performance, the Q&A session was much shorter, and at the end, instead of just coming down off the stage directly into the swirling crowd of his fans, he was shunted off to a little room to sign book after book for a massive line of people that went out the door of BAM, down the front steps, and wrapped around the outside of the building.

I didn't end up staying in that massive line to get my book signed. R and I decided by 9:45 that getting up for work the next morning was more important than standing in the rain for another three hours to get three seconds of face time with the author, so we just got copies of the pre-signed books and went home. Sometimes being a grown-ass woman means you have to sacrifice your nerd-cred for your career.

My boss told me I can't wear my Catwoman outfit to the office anymore. Sorry, Past Self.

We were both kind of bummed that we couldn't stay to meet Gaiman. R even had a hand-made mask she was going to give him, because Gaiman accepts tributes from fans like he's Lord of the Nerd-Manor, and I was going to take a picture of him wearing the mask to put on tumblr so everyone would be jealous. Oh, such plans we had!

But I got to see my favorite author read from his new book, talk about writing his new book, and tell a story about a teacup in the town of Gaiman, Argentina. Nothing about the experience was spoiled because I didn't actually get within spitting distance of the poor guy, who had already done a week's worth of publicity in England before his appearance at BAM and was leaving at 4AM the next morning for the American book tour.

Besides, as Peter Aguero said when he introduced Gaiman that night, "He's just a dude who wrote a book about sand."

Speaking of which, I'm reviewing "The Sandman" series over at Big Island Rachel's Books. You can read along with me!

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

"The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" has 7 endings. I counted. And one of those endings has 3 sub-endings within it, so we're talking about 1 ending for every 45 minutes of the entire 14-hour extended edition trilogy. I'm not going to name all of the endings, because we've got a lot to cover today and I still have a parade and a musical to write about, but I just want everyone to be on the same page.

Ten endings. But the movie needs every one of them, because while Fellowship had just 1 linear storyline, and Two Towers had a hefty but still manageable 3, ROTK is juggling anywhere from 3 to 7 separate storylines at any given moment. At the midpoint of the movie, about two hours in, here is a rundown of the action: Gandalf leading the troops of Minas Tirith; Pippen caught up in the chaos of the burning city; mad Denethor plotting to commit suicide and take Faramir with him; Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli taking the Road of the Dead; Theoden and Eomer mustering the Rohirrim; Eowyn and Merry riding in disguise with the Rohirrim to battle; Frodo and Gollum climbing to the giant spider; Sam cast out by Frodo on the stairs of Minas Morgul. The movie seamlessly weaves all of these stories together without sacrificing good pacing, character development, or emotional resonance.

Watching Fellowship for the first time, I was enchanted. "Look at the pretty elves, look at the ugly goblins, how will our heroes get out of this jam?" Watching Two Towers, deep in the midst of my nerdy obsession with "The Lord of the Rings," I was exhilarated. "Such a faithful adaptation, so much gallantry, oh cost and the glory of battle!" (Never things I said out loud, life was difficult enough in high school without talking like a Renaissance Fair groupie.) But watching ROTK--there's a scene in that movie where the enemy is about to break down the main gate of Minas Tirith with the big wolfshead battering ram, and Gandalf says to the soldiers, "Whatever comes through that gate, you will stand your ground," only to flinch back in consternation as "whatever" turns out to be fully armed and trained cave trolls. That's what watching ROTR was like. I thought I knew what was coming through the gate. I had no clue how powerful it would actually be.

I think by the time Peter Jackson & Co. were putting together ROTK, having already released the first two movies and seen the audience response, they were a lot more certain and sure of themselves. In Two Towers especially, there's a bit of hesitancy in the switch between storylines, which was cleared up in the theatrical version but really shows in the stuttery pacing of the extended edition, like the filmmakers were unsure where and when to go from Helms Deep to Osgiliath to Fangorn Forest. But in ROTK, they not only seem more confident in their ability to handle multiple storylines, they actually embrace it.

I'm thinking of the scene where Denethor sends his son Faramir out on a suicide mission to retake Osgiliath from the 100,000 Orcs that now hold it. While Faramir and a scant 100 or so knights on horseback ride across Peleanor Fields to Osgiliath, Denethor tucks into a hearty lunch and Pippin sings a slow, haunting little song in the empty, echoing hall. Now, I respect Peter Jackson and can't say enough good things about his movies, but in many ways I think he is a very conventional filmmaker. No one is every going to call him an auteur or say his movies are "experimental." (Example: one of the reasons Lord of the Rings holds up so well, 10 years later, is he eschewed CGI whenever he could, relying on techniques as old as film itself, like forced perspective, matte paintings, and miniatures. You could almost call him old-fashioned.) But that scene in the hall is a truly masterful and original piece of film, so wholly different in tone, pacing, sound, and editing from every other battle we see in these movies. Pippin's song would be sad enough, overlaid as it is on that pitiful company of men riding in slow motion to certain doom, but coupled with the sight and sound of Denethor snorking down his lunch, it becomes a heartbreaking and biting commentary on war itself (which is pretty bold for a movie where the opposing army is the literal manifestation of evil, so you don't have to feel bad when they all die horrible, horrible deaths at the hands of our heroes). The mad lord devours red tomatoes and red wine and cracks apart turkey bones to suck at the meat, like he's eating the bodies of the men he's just sent out to die in his name. The young man sings, the horses hooves pound, the knights yell, and the Orcs draw back their bowstrings for the killing strokes, but it's all muffled, drowned out by the smacking, gulping and chewing of Denethor in his beautiful, empty throne room. The arrows fly silently. We never even hear them hit their targets. And to cap it off, a shot of Gandalf, the most powerful wizard in the realm, who defeated 10,000 Orcs at Helms Deep, now slumped with despair in an alleyway, staring hopelessly at a pile of empty wooden crates as if they were the coffins of the dead.

Damn, I love this movie.

Now let's discuss the parts that made everyone in the theater applaud. Legolas bringing down that oliphant. Yeah, that was pretty sweet. Sam rallying Frodo for one last push up Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you!" I get goosebumps just typing that. And thank you, all my fellow audience members, for clapping at that scene and not repeating last week's incident of giggling awkwardly because you can't help seeing teh queer everywhere you look (weirdos).

My favorite, the Witch-King gripping Eowyn by the throat and hissing, "You fool, no man can kill me," and Eowyn whipping of her helmet and proclaiming, "I am no man!" just before she stabs him in the face. In. The. Face! HUGE cheer for her big moment, probably the loudest of the evening. I was going to write something like I'm glad she finally stopped crying and just stabbed a dude in the face, but now that I think about it, most of the male characters in ROTK cry as much as she does, so I guess I'm pleased that Eowyn has shown us a woman can be a bit of a weepy mess and still stab dudes in the face. (Not even in the heart or across the throat, but right between the eyes! Or where the eyes would have been if he wasn't a demon-ghost. Not even Aragorn stabbed his enemies in the face, and he ended up being king. Eowyn is harsh, my friends, harsh indeed.)

Nobody clapped for the death of Gollum, though. I suspect that most people feel a bit conflicted about the character. Like Sam, we look at him and feel repelled by his ugliness and contemptuous of his creeping, servile whining. But like Frodo, we feel a bit of pity for him, too, ragged, friendless creature that he is, wanted nowhere and by no one. And the strange thing is, both reactions are correct. Sam is right not to trust Gollum, because the little fucker betrays them at every turn, driving Sam and Frodo apart, delivering Frodo to the giant spider, and biting Frodo's finger off to get the Ring (he and Eowyn should hang out). But Frodo is right to show Smeagol mercy (and isn't it significant that Sam calls him Gollum and Frodo calls him by his pre-Ring name), because it really isn't Smeagol's fault that the Ring drove him mad and twisted his body into his present form. We like Frodo well enough because he's the hero of the story, but he knows and the audience knows that the only difference between him and Gollum is time. Just like Denethor is Faramir's true enemy in the scene above, not the Orcs at Osgiliath, Gollum isn't Sam and Frodo's true enemy, though Sam often thinks he is. The enemy is the Ring, and the Ring works through Gollum, who is the Ring's longest running master except for Sauron himself. They were together for 500 years, Smeagol and his Precious. Whatever mental anguish Frodo endures as the Ringbearer, whatever connection he feels to the Ring, he knows it's a pale candleflame compared to the furnace of need and madness Smeagol must feel toward it.

You want to have some fun? Watch Two Towers or Return of the King and every time Gollum speaks in his evil-Gollum voice, as opposed to his somewhat friendlier Smeagol-voice, imagine that it's actually the Ring speaking. The Ring is an inanimate object and can't talk, and Sauron is a big eyeball of fire and can't talk, so Gollum is the closest we'll ever get to hearing the voice of pure evil. Just a little thought experiment for you, my precious.

In the end, Gollum is a necessary evil. Frodo can't bring himself to destroy the Ring in Mount Doom, but Gollum does it for him, not on purpose, but because he wants the Ring for himself. I think it's significant that the hero couldn't vanquish evil without help from evil itself. Gollum swore an oath to "serve the Master of the Precious," and he broke his oath to Frodo. Frodo warned him, "The Ring is treacherous, it will hold you to your word," and he's right. Gollum breaks his word many times over and into the fire he falls. But he takes the Ring with him, because the Ring is so powerful and evil that it can't be defeated by the forces of good, which it will always tempt, overwhelm and consume. But only the Ring CAN be defeated by the weakness that lies at the heart of all evil things. The Ring rewards Gollum's treachery with a treachery of it's own, but that final betrayal on the part of the Ring was its own undoing. Compare the fate of Isildur, who took the Ring from Sauron ("But the Ring betrayed Isildur to his death," we learn in the prologue) to the look of stunned betrayal on poor Gollum's face as he burns in the lava and silently implores the Ring to save him, or at least explain why. The Ring always betrays. Betrayal is the only way to defeat it.

God DAMN, I love this movie. The books and the movies were such a big part of my life at a time when I was turning into the functional member of society you see before you today, that even now, 10 years later, I can bond with perfect strangers in the movie theater over our mutual love of Lord of the Rings. It's actually the best part of nerd culture, that sensation of instant recognition of a kindred soul.

I've been working on this post for hours now and I'm still finding things to say on the subject, long after I'm sure most of you have lost interest and gone to look at porn. (You heathens.) I guess I just don't want to have to sign off on this post and say goodbye again. The first time around, when I saw ROTK in theaters and knew that this was it, there wouldn't be any more movies, I sort of made a fool of myself. I'm a big girl now, I can admit it. I wept so much at one screening that my friends refused to go with me to see it again "because you cried too hard and didn't want to talk about it afterward." "It's all just so SAD!" I wailed. "Frodo can never go home again! The Ring utterly destroyed him and he saved the world but it doesn't even matter because evil touched him too deeply and now he has to go across the sea to die and NO, he DOESN'T go to live with the elves, it's a METAPHOR for DEATH, didn't you read the Appendices?" (It's a miracle I still had friends to alienate.) But the weird thing is, I felt the same way after this special screening, years after I've moved on to other obsessions, years after I stopped having a copy of Lord of the Rings permanently resting on my nightstand, years after I stopped watching my copies of the movies. I still felt the ineffable sadness of seeing good friends sail off into the west, no matter how much I wanted them to stay.

Welp, I guess I'll go look online and see if they posted any new pictures from Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit"!

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Another Tuesday, another 4-hour stretch of watching "Lord of the Rings" in theaters. The first time I saw this movie, me mum took me out of school in the middle of the day so we could catch the very first screening on the day the movie opened. This was on the Big Island, so there were no midnight screenings, but she probably would have taken me to see it then if there were. "I know what's important to you," she said. I love me mum.

The second movie of the trilogy, "The Two Towers," is considered by some (I'm glad this is the Internet and I don't need to back up this claim with any real numbers) to be the best of the set because it happens in the middle of all the action and doesn't have any of the slow set up of "Fellowship" or the long denouement of "Return of the King." It's just swords, battles, and creepy goblins for three hours, at least in the theatrical version. The problem with the extended edition is that most of the added scenes are the slow, character- and world-building bits that were really interesting to me when I was deep in my LOTR obsession, but now I feel like they mess with the pacing of the movie and slow it way, way down. I was in the theater for over two hours before the big battle sequence at Helms Deep even began! That's a bit excessive when you can't stop the movie at the halfway point to have a biscuit and a cuppa, which may be why there were a lot more candy wrappers rustling in the theater this time around. Everyone learned their lesson from last week.

One big problem with "The Two Towers" extended edition is, I'm sorry to say, the extra scenes with Merry and Pippin. When TTTEE first came out, I was really excited to see more of the duo, because their adventures in Fangorn Forest with the Ents were my favorite part of the book. I liked seeing those adventures realized on screen. However, after several years of not watching the movies OR reading the books, I find their extra scenes are just too at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie. The slow pacing and the casual jocularity of the characters' relationship belongs more to "Fellowship" than to "TTT." Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are battling to the death with Saruman's forces, Sam and Frodo are adrift in enemy territory with only a schizophrenic little freak to guide them, and Merry and Pippin are--hanging out drinking magical tree-water? The theatrical version played it just right, because Merry and Pippin went straight from being prisoners of war to trying to convince the Ents to join the battle, knowing that every precious moment the Ents deliberated, innocents were dying. The extended edition adds scenes that actually squander the suspense built up in the first two story lines, and almost trivialize Merry and Pippin's role in the wider story.

Speaking of scenes that just don't fit, poor, poor Eowyn. She is EXTREMELY ill-served by the addition of extra scenes between her and Aragorn. In the theatrical version, she's a capable, stalwart woman of the court, holding strong against the war on her doorstep and the treachery within her own household even as she rages against the societal constraints that prevent her from fighting for her kingdom. She weeps when her cousin and the heir to the throne dies, but even in her grief, she resists the allure of Grima Wormtongue, a man who was able to ensnare the king with his words but cannot sway the princess. When Aragorn calls her "a shieldmaiden of Rohan," you believe that this is a true woman warrior who could conceivably be a better match for him than Arwen. The extra scenes waste all of that and turn Eowyn into a weepy, simpering little fool who throws herself at a man who seems rightly embarrassed at her increasingly desperate bids for his approval. Even worse, some of these scenes are set right next to extra flashbacks between Aragorn and Arwen, which cruelly highlight Eowyn's deficiencies as a character and make it even clearer that her romantic efforts are wasted. In their attempt to give the character some depth, the filmmakers actually flatten Eowyn out and turned her into a romantic comedy cliche. Very disappointing.

But enough fangirl bitching. Let's talk about an extra scene that not only worked, but should have been included in the theatrical version. Faramir of Gondor, the younger brother of the Fellowship's Boromir, gets a long flashback that shows the brothers and their father Denethor hanging out before Borormir leaves to visit Rivendell and eventually join the Fellowship. Boromir is a prominent character in "Fellowship," and Denethor figures heavily into the events of "Return of the King," so TTT is obviously meant to be Faramir's chance to shine. In the theatrical version, we don't know a lot about Faramir. He seems pretty capable at killing enemies and being all Robin Hood-y in the forest, and when he finds out that Frodo has the Ring, he quickly pulls a Boromir and decides to take the Ring to Gondor, which probably seems like a good idea when you're the last line of defense against Mordor and you're living inside a waterfall. But Faramir is NOT Boromir-lite, and the flashback shows an entirely different motivation for the character's actions. It's the only scene we ever get between all three family members, and considering how much influence they all have on each other and how strongly their storyline comes into play in "Return", I really feel that this should have made it to the original cut. Their whole situation is so Shakespearean: Denethor loves Boromir more than Faramir, and both brothers know this but love each other, which makes Boromir ashamed of his status as favorite and Faramir both jealous of his brother and ashamed of his jealousy. When Faramir decides to take Frodo and the Ring to Gondor, he's doing it because he wants to honor Boromir's memory, but also to please his father and show Denethor that he, Faramir, is plenty awesome and could do what Boromir could not. It's hard to fault him when we've seen what Denethor thinks of his younger son. "Do not trouble me about Faramir, I know his uses and they are few." Gee, thanks Dad.

When I first read the books, Faramir was hands-down my favorite character because he possessed such clarity and insight into the whole war for Middle Earth situation happening all around him. He's the only one to openly suggest that war has no true winners and that violence, even violence for a good cause, is a fundamentally evil thing. Everyone else, even the hobbits, are so concerned with the tasks in front of them and are trying so hard to just stay alive that they never stop to reflect like Faramir does. This is fine, because it's sword and sorcery and no one really wants to read a book or watch a movie about a bunch of hippies sitting around talking about war and peace. We want to see some burly warriors kicking ass and taking names. But what sets LOTR apart from all of the other fantasy that followed it was Tolkien's willingness to give Faramir's concerns about the true cost of war as much credence as any other character's perspective. In the movie, Faramir says bitterly, "War will make corpses of us all," which is a little simplistic rendition of his viewpoint, but a pretty audacious thing to say when you've just killed a bunch of dudes and their elephant. In the book, he explains himself at length: "But I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I only love that which they defend." (Full disclosure, this was my quote in my senior high school yearbook, because yes, I am a massive nerd.) Either way, this is a peaceful little dude at heart, clinging to his compassion and humanity in a world where such traits will only get you a quick Orcblade in the gut.

After Mum and I watched TTT, I mentioned offhand that her nickname for me, My Precious, was the same name Gollum gives the Ring. "I know," Mum replied, "where do you think I got that name for you?" Which is sweet, but also kind of creepy.

I don't have a lot to say about the extra scenes with Sam, Frodo and Gollum, mostly because I didn't notice any. I know there were some added, but it's been so long since I saw the theatrical version, and that whole storyline is so well plotted and paced, that it just slides by without notice, which is great. If the filmmakers have done their jobs right, there should be seamless integration, not clumsy plot-hindering side adventures (Merry and Pippin) or glaring omissions (happy family time with Denethor & Sons). Anyway, I've got some stuff to say about the character of Gollum, but I'll save it for "Return of the King."

Oh, and one last thing: watching these movies in the theater again is a strange experience because you get large audience reactions to stuff that you've long since regulated to the solitary entertainment part of your brain. "Fellowship" had a lot of people giggling at Legolas's lines for reasons I couldn't figure out (maybe because he tends to be Captain Obvious when he speaks). And TTT got a lot of giggles in Sam and Frodo's climactic scene, when Frodo has his sword against Sam's throat and Sam implores, "Don't you know your Sam?"

Now, I know why people were laughing: haha, Frodo and Sam are gay for each other! But here's the thing. And maybe this is just because I live in New York City and I'm interested in queer theory, but that scene is not gay. In a case like this, sexuality lies in the context of the viewer. Maybe someone could construe the relationship between Frodo and Sam as homoerotic, but only if they have never seen any entertainment with ACTUAL gay characters in it before. For those people, allow me to give you a visual aid.

This is not gay.

This is gay and the most used picture on this site.
In the interests of gender parity, this is also gay.
See the difference? Just so we're clear, deep and abiding friendship between two people of the same sex does not mean said people are gay. It is a nasty and pernicious byproduct of our patriarchal culture that men and women (but mostly men) are not permitted any physical displays of love and affection, such as hugging, or allowed to share deep emotions, such as vulnerability, with friends of the same sex lest they be damned as "gay." This only happens when being gay is considered a bad or transgressive act by society, which doesn't just hurt gay people, but straight people, too, because we find ourselves denied the basic comfort of holding a good friend's hand. Individuals may find that they have to actively battle against such negative societal messages within the space of their own mind in order to break free of such constraints and NOT ruin the most goddamn poignant scene in one of my favorite movies because you can't handle any hint of teh queer.

Watching Fellowship of the Ring in theaters--again!

Last night, the BF and I made a special nerd pilgrimage to the movie theater to see a one-night-only screening of "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" extended edition. I saw this movie six times in the theater, or maybe I'm thinking of "The Two Towers" and I only saw this one three times. I can't remember because it was ten years ago.

Ten. Years. Ago.

Fellowship came out Christmas 2001. Jeez, that makes me feel so old. I've been obsessed with these movies for an entire decade. I haven't watched the movies in a while, probably years at this point, but I found that I remembered every single line of dialogue in Fellowship. Hell, I even remembered the DVD commentary for certain scenes! Why I am using memory space for such things? At least I didn't dress up for the screening. I have my dignity.

Actually, nobody was cosplaying last night, which was a bit weird. I'd expected to see at least a few people rocking a ring necklace and bare feet, maybe a sword or two. But no, for the most part it was a mixed bag of young professionals, people old enough to have read a first edition in a haze of potsmoke and Pink Floyd, and couples. Lots and lots of couples. And you know, that gives me hope, hope that one day society will retire the stereotype of the fat, unhappy loner male nerd and embrace the nerd community as it really is: pretty damn normal, actually.

Fellowship holds up very well after 10 years: acting, special effects, sound, music, all of it top shelf movie magic. The version we watched, in addition to be the extended cut, was also digitally remastered for Bluray, so the whole thing was just freaking gorgeous! I saw details I'd completely missed before (and considering I knew every word of the movie by heart, that's really saying something).

It was a bit slower than I remember, probably because it was the extended edition, which means more gently cavorting hobbits and uneventful slogging through rough terrain. I think it takes over 2 hours to get to the action scenes in the Mines of Moria, but man, when it does, I'm just as blown away as I was ten years ago. The music and the pacing during the staircase scene, and Gandalf standing down the Balrog on the bridge--it gives me chills all over again. Lothlorian slowed the movie again and it actually sort of dragged during the giving of the gifts scene. I actually almost fell asleep, but that's probably just because it was late and the music is very soothing.

So here I am, ten years later, remembering an afternoon in 2001 when a friend said, "Let's go check out that Lord of the Rings movie, I heard it was pretty good." I'd seen a single teaser for the three movies almost a year before--just a shot of all 9 members of the Fellowship coming over a ridge and looking majestically determined. And some people in the audience were batshit excited, but a whole lot more were like, "Huh, that sounds familiar, didn't my parents read me a a little of that when I was a kid or something?" The books had a big cult following, but it was still just that, a cult classic. And Peter Jackson had one solid, Oscar-nommed movie under his belt, "Heavenly Creatures," but was himself mostly a cult hit for slasher horror flicks like "The Frighteners." New Zealand wasn't know for having ANYTHING Hollywood wanted, much less a world class special effects studio. Nothing about this project should have worked, and yet Jackson got the rights, New Line Studio ponied up the cash (and stayed out of the way because New Zealand is really, really far away from anything), and those plucky Kiwis spat out a masterpiece. As Jackson says in the special introduction he recorded just for these screenings, "It really felt like fate that we got to make Lord of the Rings." It was a labor of love on a blockbuster budget, and it was pure magic.

Ten years ago, after I got home from watching Fellowship, I got my mom's copy down from her shelf and read the entire Lord of the Rings in a single weekend. I've been hooked ever since, and I can't wait to see "The Two Towers" next Tuesday--and then "Return on the King" the Tuesday after that!

She stoops to conquer

Jeez, that is such a nerdy reference, I think I just earned another literati merit badge. (My troop meets once a month to get drunk in libraries and laugh at the plural form of words like 'apparatus.' Apparati. Priceless!) "She Stoops to Conquer" is an play by George Bernard Shaw, and I got sick and collapsed on a stoop this afternoon. A stretch, I'll admit, but I'm this close to becoming a Murasaki Scout and I really need my "Needlessly Pretentious Referencing of English Playwrights" credit.

You know, I WAS going to write a post about how embarrassing it is to disappear from one's blog for a month and have to come back with a story about nearly passing out on a Brooklyn street corner, but frankly my fake intelligensia survival troupe idea is way more interesting than my failing health. Would anybody be interested in joining the Literati Scouts? I don't know if we can bring alcohol into libraries, but we can discuss our favorite books, writers and poets and drink outside on the steps. New York libraries have very fine stoops.

We could have different levels of Literati Scouts, starting with Seuss and going up to Shakespeare. Both levels require you to speak in rhyme at meetings, so you'll probably want to advance through the ranks quickly, but also not get cocky and overreach yourself. We gotta keep the members humble. Murasaki and Wharton Scouts are responsible for upper-class angst. Bukowski Scouts handle working-class angst. Burroughs Scouts can head the discourse on queer theory, but only if they're sober (ditto for Ginsberg Scouts). Hemingway Scouts bring the drinks and organize the annual camping trip, but must defer to the more-senior Angelou Scouts in discussions of race and gender. Vonnegut Scouts head the Satire Glee Club and the annual Post-Apocalyptic Bake Sale, assisted by their Canadian counterparts, the Atwood Guides. (Scouts are called 'guides' in England and the colonies.) What level Scout would you like to be?

And we could give out merit badges: "Dated like a Jane Austen Heroine," "Maxed out your Library Account" both in library fines and book holds, "Lost Hope in Humanity," "Participation in Slam Poetry," "Pilgrimage to an Author's Home," "Used Bookstore Hygiene," "Accessed a Library's Closed Stacks," "Drunk Relatives," "Eviction from Bowery Poetry Club for Openly Mocking Performers," "Beating Off to Beat Poets," the more advanced "Beating Off Beat Poets," the more popular "Beating Beat Poets," and "Raged Against the Dying of the Light."

These are the badges I have. Feel free to list yours below.

Naked New York

Last night, I attended an event called "Naked Girls Reading Science Fiction." It's exactly what it sounds like. They were naked and they read science fiction. It was great.

Sadly, I do not have any pictures of this event. I know that everyone likes to look at boobies, but cameras weren't allowed inside, so in lieu of naked girls, you'll l just have to use your imaginations. Your filthy, filthy imaginations, based on what I know about most of you. Yeah, you know who you are.

I read a lot of geek websites, which you can peruse at your leisure via the sidebar "sites I like that you might like." The week before Valentines Day, the geeksites were crammed full of fun, sexy, coupley, lovey things: clips of Han Solo and Leia's famous "I love you" "I know" exchange from "Empire Strikes Back"; an video of scifi themed strip teases in Williamsburg, yowza on the naked Seven of Nine chick holding the "Clothing Is Irrelevant" sign; and the best and worst couples in comics, like Lois Lane and Superman, the Joker and Harley Quinn, Beauty and the Beast, and Apollo and the Midnighter.

A note about that last couple, Apollo and the Midnighter. That last picture on my previous blog post, "Fistful of Comics," was of them, but feedback from my readers leads me to believe that the picture was too small for you to see that the superheroes passionately making out high above Planet Earth are both dudes. My comment about censorship and the sucking thereof makes a lot more sense once you know that. You can go back to that post and be retroactively scandalized if you like. I'll wait.

Moving on, that same website, Topless Robot, recommended Naked Girls Reading Science Fiction. A Greenwich Village burlesque troupe, Pinchbottom Burlesque has been holding their Naked Girls Reading performances since October 2009 , when they kicked off with NGR Banned Books, very appropriate. I heard about this event after the fact and kicked myself for not going. You may recall that I love banned books. So when NGR SciFi popped up on my radar, I thought to myself, "Self, you're no square! You need in on that hot naked scifi action!" So I bought a pair of tickets and said Happy V-Day! to my BF.

I don't spend nearly as much time in Greenwich Village as I'd like, but I'm definitely going to make more of an effort after last night's excursion. The venue, Madame X, is all red lighting, red velvet furniture, and fringed lampshades. They're really committed to the old-timey bordello theme. The Naked Girls read in the upstairs bar to audiences of about 30, making it one of those warm, intimate, off-the-wall events that I'd dreamed about when I first moved to New York City. Don't get me wrong, I love the big festivals and the concerts and the bookstores, but I always had the feeling that vaguely illicit and totally awesome things were happening behind closed doors, and I hadn't yet been given the password. Last night changed all of that. I was behind the door. I was in the room with a naked turquoise-haired Englishwoman reading "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

I found the real New York.

Like I said, I'm no square. I've seen nekked people since I was a kidlet, thanks to the hippies who raised me. But I've been away from Hawaii for so long that I'd forgotten what people look like without clothes. In Waikiki, people walk around half-nude all day, so I was used to it, but the see a stranger without pants on in the middle of winter shocked me at first. (The BF was unfazed; he takes art classes with live models.)

Then they started to read and I forgot all about the boobies. Other people who have gone to NGR say the same thing, that after a while, the nudity fades into the background and all you know are the stories. They started with H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," then went through "Hitchhikers," "Brave New World," "Ender's Game" (squeal!), "Instinct," and Ray Bradbury's "All of summer in a day." I cried a little during the Bradbury story, which is about schoolchildren on Venus who live in perpetual rain, except for a two-hour burst of sunshine every seven years. I remembered that I used to live in the sun! Damn you, winter! DAMN YOU!

The funniest story was "Tomatoes From Mars," a children's book about gigantic tomatoes--from Mars! The Naked Librarian read it for us and showed us the pictures, and since she actually IS a children's librarian in her non-naked day life, it was wonderfully naughty on a lot of levels.

I even took away of bit of wisdom from the head of Pinchbottom Burlesque, Nasty Canasta. "Nerds are smart, dorks are awkward, and geeks are obsessed." So if you ever speculate on the difference between the three, there's your cheat sheet.

Thanks, Naked Girls! Is there any problem your boobies can't solve?

Geek Chic

"He dresses like Buddy Holly." "I guess that's cool." "Yeah, but I think he does it unintentionally." The Venture Bros.

My favorite geeky-girly website Heartless Doll has a list of 10 "Geeky" things that aren't geeky, so quit acting like they're geeky. The list includes glasses, thrift stores, computers, NPR, and ninjas. From the article:

"Can we pinpoint the moment at which dorkiness became the new coolness? Nowadays, it seems like anyone with a pair of glasses and a couple of vinyl records can call themselves geeky--often, in fact almost always, with pride. And those of us who have been actively and persistently mocked throughout our youth and beyond for being genuinely deemed uncool by the Cool Kids, well, we don't take kindly to this whole "dork is the new black" or whateverthefuck."

I remember reading something to this effect in the book "American Nerd: The story of my people," by Benjamin Nugent, and also on the website Stuff White People Like. All I have to do to see the phenomenon of geek chic in action is look around me on the subway: the sweater vests, the knitting, the horn rimmed glasses and skinny jeans. New York runneth over with hipsters proclaiming their nerdome. It's currently hip to be square, and frankly, I don't like it anymore than my lady friends over at Heartless Doll.

See, I was never cool. Well, maybe for about an hour in the early nineties, when I dressed up as Catwoman to go to the grocery store--that was pretty badass. Other than that, not so much. I had to wait until I hit college before the things that made me an outcast in grade school became socially acceptable, and even that shift required some major changes in my wardrobe and behavior. Drinking helped. So did makeup and a pushup bra. But in many ways, I'll always be faking it, because no matter how interested I seem when I'm talking to you about politics, music, or the history of the Lower East Side, some part of me is always thinking about the Enterprise. (That and rhyming couplets.)

At first, I was happy when nerds went mainstream, because that meant more of what I like. More spaceships, 'splosions, vampires, ninjas, and Japanese stuff. "District 9" and "Avatar" are both up for Best Picture Oscars this year. The new "Star Trek" rocked pretty hard, and "Venture Bros." is on its fourth season. But it's a mixed blessing, because while nerd culture is considered cool, being an actual nerd isn't. Ever hear of cyberbullying? The cool kids took computers and turned them against us. Our sweet, precious computers, in the hands of the enemy. *sniff* The hierarchy didn't change, but the nerd identity was appropriated by the ruling class, leaving us with less than we started with. I call bullshit on that!

All things considered, this is a minor irritation in my life. Fashions change, geek chic will be replaced by the next big thing, and hopefully we true nerds can be left in peace with our robots. However, since February is Black History Month, I'm going to lay some heavy on you and give you something to think about. How many white kids do you know who dress and talk like MTV rappers? My people back in Hawaii, how many Jawaiian and contemporary hiphop radio stations are there? Mainstream culture appropriated the black identity and sold it to us as cool, but ask any actual African American and they will tell you that it is still not cool to be black in America. Or look at it this way: does anyone think that the success of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" made it any safer or more acceptable for two gay men to walk down the street holding hands?

I'm sure fellow nerd and all-around awesome dude RiskingHemlock will have something much more profound to say on this subject, so I'll kick it over to him. RH, what do you have to say about geek chic? Do you feel cool yet?

Twenty Nerd Commandments

"I bring you fifteen--" *crash* "--oy. Ten! Ten Commandments!" From Mel Brooks History of the World Part I. One of my favorite movies.

Gosh, I do love the Internet. Before, us nerds were lost as babes in the wilderness, alone in our obsessions. And after, we were a force--insert Star Wars reference here--no longer lone freaks, but communities of freaks, entertaining the world with Lolcats and badly-dubbed anime. Now, our society has reached nerd saturation point.

We rule. Literally.

Since we rule, we need rules. Commandments, if you will. Topless Robot just published this list, gleaned from their comments section, of the Twenty Nerd Commandments. It's all kinds of awesome. Here's a taste.

1) Thou must experience as many nerdy properties as possible throughout your youth (nerdy parents must assist with this). By the age of 20, you must have chosen at least two sides of the following: Star Wars or Star Trek, Kirk or Picard, Marvel or DC, Mac or PC, Trukk or Munkey, Baker or Tennant, and Joel or Mike. If these topics come up, you must argue your choice past all reasonableness.

10) If two nerds ever find themselves holding cylindrical objects of at least 9 inches in length they must immediately make lightsaber ignition noises and face each other down in mortal combat.

14) Thy first crush must be upon an cartoon character.

17) Thou shalt be required to attend at least one nerd convention (videogames, anime, comics, etc.) during thy lifetime.

The rest are just as good, but I put these up because upon reading them, I blushed and giggled because I follow all of them. I know my sides in the Great Debates (Star Wars, Picard, Marvel, PC), my first crush was on Donatello from TMNT, and you can see my pictures from the New York Anime Festival here. Fun family memories: me and Daddio watching Star Trek: Next Generation and X-Files together. My big sister saw "Return of the Jedi" in theaters. She was only a baby, but Daddio brought her anyway because it was Star Wars, dammit!

But all this leads me to wonder, just academically, considering how many of these commandments have to do with pop culture phenomena of the last twenty or thirty years, how long can the community endure? I'm already falling behind with the kids these days, because I haven't seen the new Battlestar Gallactica, I don't watch Lost or Fringe, and what the hell is up with Prince of Tennis? Nerd camaraderie is build on our shared cultural experiences. Can we all still be nerds together when that changes? Some of these kids have always lived in a world with six Star Wars movies. They've never played D&D. Neither have I, but I would never play World of Warcraft, either. Where does that leave me, them, and us?

Your thoughts?