Today’s not great so far. I have to track down an AWOL seamstress and get my bridesmaid dress from her in time to fly out of PDX at 1 AM tomorrow morning, and against my better judgment I ended up trying to rent a car for our wedding-related trip to Cleveland.

It turns out that, preconceptions and Real Life to the contrary, I am legally allowed to rent a car, at least in the Buckeye State. It’s just that every rental company under the sun (that allows 21- 24-year-olds to rent, that is) charges a daily premium of more than the daily car rental for the unconscionable sin of being under 25 years of age. I understand the statistical reasons for this, but that doesn’t stop it being really horrifying that they more than double their fees for the demographic most likely to be unable to pay such fees! Maybe they could put a check-box after “Underage driver”: “I do solemnly aver that I am not a complete and utter imbecile animated only by hormones and the desire for alcohol.” If you check the box, they waive the fee. If you prove otherwise, they run you over in a Navigator and remove you from the gene pool. Sounds good to me.

Hell, maybe they should require that checkbox for people of all ages. And if Death-by-Navigator seems too extreme, maybe we could just have them pay $25 a day for endangering us by living. Rasserframmit.

All this talk about the new Terminator movie reminds me of my freshman year at college. That was the time aforementioned, before Matt and I started dating, when I had created entire “Terminator” and “Aliens” Windows themes and made a wallpaper with every picture of [http://www.faerye.net/img/articles/hicks.jpg|image|Cpl. Hicks] that I had on my computer (somewhere around a hundred, I think.) Now, this is not a musing on my fangirlness, I think we’ve already done that. But for some reason at that time in my life, the cocoon of fiction I wove around me shifted to action movies. That’s kind of intriguing. I have been, at different times, just as wacko on Star Trek:TNG & DS9, the X-Files, and possibly Star Wars. I still love all those things, but I go through really avid phases. At present it’s Buffy. Freshman year in college was the only time, I think, that it was action movies (specifically, Terminator and Aliens).

Now, ignoring for the moment, the Biehn Factor in this obsession, both of these movies have things in common. Yeah, besides the 80s (don’t say nothing good ever came out of the 80s) and Jas. Cameron. Both of them are survival action movies. It’s not “take back the building”, “stop the asteroid”, “discover your past”. It’s “get out of the movie alive”. Plain and simple. What I really think was the deeper reason for my attachment to those particular movies at that time was that if you are still breathing, you are winning. As I struggled with curved Honors Chem finals from Hell, a social dynamic based on snide cruelty, Chicago weather, emotional vampires, and loneliness, nothing was more appealing than to stop for a moment and forget all my petty defeats; breathe, and feel the burning triumph: I am still alive.

First off, in case someone somewhere managed to miss it, I love “Terminator”. I am a hopeless romantic and I love explosions. Wed the two, and I end up pretty wacky. There was a time freshman year in college, while I was still in the rejection-avoiding channeling-all-lust-towards-fictional-characters phase, when I designed several less Arnie-centric posters for the movie, bought original lobby cards of Kyle Reese, and pasted his face over Arnie’s on the side of my VHS cover. Mmmmmm. “Terminator 2” was good, but besides the Arnie-centrism, annoying kid, cutting the Kyle dream sequence out of the release version (breathe, Felicity, breathe), I was quite annoyed that they were able to weasel out of Judgment Day. If you read the script for T1, it’s clear that Cameron and Hurd were coming down on the “Time travel does not change timelines, it’s already part of them” side of the fence. Still, many explosions, ass-kicking mamas.

This won’t be a very complete review, because I hate hate hate spoilers with a burning passion. First off, the plot was good. It was action-packed but you always knew what was going on, and it made sense with the overall story. Some people seem to think that the TX terminator was a quantum leap backwards in technology from T-1000, and therefore unbelievable, but I disagree. For one thing, T-1000 was a prototype, and the machines are fighting a war—it’s believable that they might lose the facilities to produce high-end prototypes. Also, I don’t think she was that much of a leap backwards. She had the shape-changing ability of T1000, and on-board weapons, and ways of dealing with other machines and terminators (not giving away anything the trailer didn’t) that make sense in a future where (as both T2 and T3 attest) the humans are capturing and reprogramming terminators.

The plot also followed the traditions - the funny scene where Arnie gets clothes, use vehicles up and throw them away, et cetera - while still remaining fresh. I was desperately disappointed when John Connor said, “If you wanna live, c’mon,” or whatever, though. Despite it’s being tarnished by Arniedom in T2, “Come with me if you want to live” has a good tradition and doesn’t need to be thrown out. A military complex which appeared in the film was a good way of retaining the same machine-oriented world - metal, industrial - without slavishly following the “fight in a factory” paradigm established in the first two films.

Acting: this movie would have been merely ‘good’ or ‘okay’ with mediocre actors. Instead, they got Claire freakin’ Danes for the female lead, and some chappie I’d never seen before as John Connor. He reminded me of Dr. Bashir, was cute (okay, I might just be projecting Reese-cute down the generations), and acted quite well. Claire Dane’s character, Katherine Brewster, did a good job of being both a normal woman in over her head and stronger than the eek-eek 80’s Sarah of T1.

Special effects were good, DUH. Direction was good, too. I have no idea why Cameron didn’t want to make this movie, but I didn’t miss him.

Bottom line; rousing action; exciting plot that continued the series in a worthy direction; great acting; there was no way of putting Reese in it so I forgive them; and they set themselves up for a wicked sequel. I am full of happiness. Go, ye sci-fi and action fans! Spend your money! Go already!

One thing that bothered me about the production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that we saw in Ashland, which I did not mention in my previous article, was the costumes. They were fine, actually. The Athenians in elegant frock coats and empire-gowns, the faeries in fairly standard chaotically thready, wispy glitter-gear. The costume designer did perfectly respectable work. The aspect of the costuming I objected to is, I think, the domain of the director.

COLORS! You simply cannot help colors having a strong emotional impact on an audience, and if you use them starkly, they will probably see symbols, or try to. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus wore black and white. That’s fine. The lovers wore muted colors - dusty lavendar, dove grey, blush pink. That’s very appropriate. The fairies almost gave my color-symbol brain-bits an aneurysm. When first they appeared, Titania and Oberon wore matching green, while Puck’s clothes, and the groups of colored lights that served Titania, were red-orange. To the naked eye, this made Titania and Oberon look fairly chummy (as opposed to squabbling) and the fairy kingdom look rather caste-divided. (Rise up against your oppressors, Peaseblossom!) The complex costumes (green sparkly hair as well as outfits) stayed constant until we returned from intermission, when Oberon appeared in the same outfit, in scarlet! I looked at Matt, he looked at me. I mean, that sort of external change is usually linked to a major internal change, in theatre. Not practical considerations like “we had an intermission to change him in.” Then Titania appeared in red at their reconciliation. When they blessed the house they turned up in blue. The only symbolic meanings I can attach are: green - jealousy. Red - love (Note that Oberon did NOT make any reconciliatory statements when he first appeared in red). Blue - peace? Dawn? Splendid clothes for final spectacular exit?

At any rate, it got me thinking how I would dress Titania and Oberon, especially as the “stringy glittery messy” thing has gotten about as tired as ever gauze wings were of old. I thought about how they first meet—they discuss how their estrangement and argument is rending the natural forces of the earth. So I thought perhaps I’d divide the natural forces up betwixt them. I thought of seasons, but finally I settled on plants and animals. Oberon, the hotheaded, more sinister faerye, uses animals in (rough, listening estimate) 75% of his images and metaphors. Titania uses plants a great deal, and, if you add insects to the pile, almost all her images are accounted for. She is also, before bewitched, more cool and deliberate, less hasty and fiery.

So I would dress Oberon in tawny browns, perhaps increase his bulk and majesty with a ponderous greatcoat or mantle, with a certain suggestion of fur about it. I would smear black around his eyes, slanting at the sides, and the rest of his face bronze a touch with makeup. He should stalk. This also leads me to cast Puck, Oberon’s homunculus, as an animal - I thought about it, and came up with a specific animal for him, rather than the vague bestial gestures outlined above for the Fairy King. Raven is a trickster god, a sinister figure. He flies fast. I would try to come up with a raven-like costume for Puck that wouldn’t look too outlandish. Perhaps he could carry a raven on his shoulder (slightly non-feasible for most theatres) and release it when he is put to a task (“See how I go, swift as an arrow from the Tartan’s bow”) - if something one could wangle, very effective in an open-air theatre.

Titania then would be dressed in flowers. It’s easy to come up with a general design for that - one just has to look at various takes on DC Comics’ Poison Ivy. Most of her outfits are just leafy leotards, but occasionally someone gets creative and covers her in a fabric of twisted vines or adds trailing sleeves and garlands of ivy or flowers. There should be a crown of dragonflies and butterflies in her hair, which could be green or brown - not red, we don’t want them to actually think it’s Poison Ivy! I want her to be a vision. Which, incidentally, is why I am not entirely in favor of doubling Titania and Oberon as Hippolyta and Theseus. I want the audience to react with wonder to the appearance of the High Fae amongst them. The fairies should be radiant, capable of human feelings yet imbued with something more. I want you to think, “Wow,” not “Hey, isn’t that Theseus?” These are beings whose marriage squabbles make the world a barren wasteland. You should feel that.

That’s it for my thinking on the subject, as yet. Also, the best performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” I ever saw was at Tygre’s Heart in Portland. Hippolyta was wearing a Xena outfit and the entire first dialogue between her and Theseus was delivered during a (friendly) fight. I don’t think I would be able to resist the urge to rip that off, were the play given into my hands.

Matt gave me “beautifulgarbage”, the latest Garbage album, as part of my anniversary present. It’s good. They tried a panoply of new things, and I think that that is a good thing. Today I went over to amazon in a free moment, to see if they had one of those nifty editorial reviews. Those are often full of fun facts to learn and know, as well as insight from experts. No editorial review was in evidence, and I paged idly down to the user reviews.

One of the reviews (there are 552 - no, I did not read them all) was entitled something like “Not really beautiful, not really Garbage”. I read this review in some dismay. I didn’t agree with much of what was said, but the most disturbing thing about it was the “not Garbage” idea. It seems patently absurd to me. If Ringo and Paul were to start a band doing mariachi electronica, one could legitimately say - even if they were to call this band “the Beatles”, that the music was “not Beatles”. But since all of the same people who created “Garbage” and “Version 2.0” are responsible for “beautifulgarbage”, it’s slightly asinine to say it isn’t Garbage. “Classic Garbage”, “Early Garbage”, these things it may not be. “Garbage” it most certainly is. This would be true even if it were mariachi electronica.

This train of thought trundled along and dropped me off somewhere else—this guy, whatever his name is, thinks he is the arbiter of “true Garbage”. There was no “In my opinion” about it. This means that what he was doing was, in fact, displaying his lack of Internet virtue. In my very quick and probably incomplete estimation, the three top virtues on the internet are: Civility, a recognition of subjectivity, and a sense of humor. The sense of humor thing is pretty much a requirement for life. The subjectivity thing really came through to me in my time on the RPGnet forums. Your quite possibly strident opinions do not have to start a flame war. All you need to do is add a proviso and possibly a little common courtesy, and your post can be rendered flame-retardant. The Internet has vastly different people from many different countries and planes of thought. And yet, there are scads of people out there who continue to trumpet their opinions as absolute fact. Is it the anonymity of the Internet which frees them from the hated burden of social nicety? Or perhaps an utter lack of social nicety? Or do they really not understand that Dungeons & Dragons cannot objectively be determined to “suxx0r” or to “r0xx0r”? Any opinions?

The first play we saw at the Festival was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. We saw it on July 4, but I suppose Ashland has strict noise ordinances, because very few festive firework fizzles frazzled us.

I think in some ways this play is one of Shakespeare’s most forgiving. The lovers, always in a fret; devilish Puck; the bumbling Players; they all play themselves. (Especially the players—how hard is it to act badly?) I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad production of the play. That said, the one we attended at OSF was quite good.

Oddly, the faeries, who usually steal the show, were not the most compelling - the lovers were. As you may know, the script abounds with comparisons between Helena’s and Hermia’s heights. Usually, this is a matter of 2 inches or so, perhaps helped along with footwear. On the OSF stage we saw Helena, the 5’10” willowy blonde, and Hermia, the little Asian lady. I would be surprised if Hermia was 5’2”. The girls were the best I’d ever seen, and the boys were good, too. One couldn’t help but feel that the 6’6” Demetrius really ought to be courting Helena. You might know that when Helena and Hermia begin to squabble, in the play, Helena entreats the men to protect her from Hermia - “And though she be but little, she is fierce”. Usually, this is the first scene where Hermia’s pugnacity comes into play. In this production, she beat Demetrius up for information on Lysander’s whereabouts in a beautiful comic fight scene that had me gasping and weeping with laughter. Ever seen a Siamese cat run off a REALLY BIG DOG? Yeah, that’s right.

They chose to double Titania and Oberon with Hippolyta and Theseus, which is certainly a well-established and valid option. However, in this case I felt it encouraged them to play T&H fairly woodenly - for contrast with their fae selves. Also, it was the centerpiece of a monster piece of parallelism which I don’t think they quite pulled off. Titania’s bower was inside a giant locket with T&H inside and T&O on the outside. A necklace which apparently symbolized the Indian boy went back and forth betwixt T&O, and a very similar sort of necklace, some sort of engagement gift, went back and forth between T&H - perhaps clever, if the back and forth had made more sense. Philostrate in the court was Puck in the forest, which led to the subtlest and most successful parallel-twinge moment—Philostrate talks about seeing the Rude Mechanicals rehearse (which of course Puck did see), and then kind of starts and shakes his head, wondering when he saw them rehearse. They tried to do something similar with Titania/Hippolyta and Bottom, but I thought it was overdone. Frankly, I do not thank Kevin Kline for expanding the importance of Bottom. A big Bottom is unseemly, if you get my drift.

The best innovation, I thought, was Puck. He was played by an excellent older character actor, Sandy McCallum, and seemed quite creaky. He had four fairy minions, a boy, a teenager, a young man, and a woman, all dressed exactly like him. Thus when it came time to confuse the combatant lovers, there were five of them to call and confuse; five to affright the players and seize Bottom; five to disperse in all directions to get (mostly the wrong) love inducing flowers. It was quite droll to hear him say, “See how I go! Faster than the arrow from the Tartan’s bow!” and recline, holding his back, in a seat, shooing his Pucklings off into the world.

At any rate, that is my report on the play—I don’t wish to go on too much, and I find it more interesting to hit the highs and lows than give a cohesive summary like a book report. I’m not in school, I don’t have to. Neener! The production did inspire me to some musings on how I would do some things differently, so a post on that will be forthcoming.

I am reading, as I mentioned long before, Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt. Illness made me weak, and so I turned to comforting Lloyd Alexander books to feed my little brain. Then I consumed the first four Harry Potter books, in the British editions that my mom had lent me. I am only now getting back to Possession.

I like the book, I do, but it is very hard to read. The narrative moves from the main characters to the letters they unearth from the 19th century, to literary criticism and literary biography excerpts, to poems at the front of each chapter. Then you add in 19th c. journals, narrative threads about the ancillary and competitive modern-day scholars, and one’s head begins to ache. She does all this beautifully—and it is ironic that she dubs one of her imaginary poets “The Great Ventriloquist”, as she assumes more than a dozen very different voices throughout the book.

I feel that in reading the book I am building an edifice of some sort. I labor in one corner of the foundation, then buttress up that side - the author hands me the materials and tells me where to put them. I can tell as I go that the building is beautiful, lofty and yet solid - but I cannot read too far without making my mental “arms” tired. It’s not that I need to mull things over, digest the work—it’s just that I am tired. However, I have little doubt that when I’m done, I will dust my hands off and feel proud of what we built.

Going on vacation is lovely. Not only is it relaxing, fun, an excuse for spending money, and having to do with smoochies, as Willow might say, but if you’re REALLY careful you can parlay it into multiple blog entries, thus fulfilling your entertainment duties for many days with a minimum of the demon Effort. I mean look at this – telling you I’m going, that’s one; road rage haiku, that’s another…heaven knows how many blog entries I’ll get out of this trip before I’m done ranting!

So, for those of you (I like to pretend I have a wide and varied audience) who may not have been to Southern Oregon, Ashland is a small town about 15 miles from the California border. On one end of town is Southern Oregon University, a school with a good arty reputation and, unless I misremember, a good party reputation as well. It used to be “Southern Oregon Normal School”, and in the 30’s, one of its young teacher looked at the ruins of a rural-enrichment theatre and was inspired to build an Elizabethan theatre. The theatre, and the Shakespeare Festival, opened in 1935, boasting the first Elizabethan theatre in North America. The theatre has been rebuilt twice – once due to fire and once due to fire code – but the festival has grown steadily. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival now boasts not only the Wooden O, but a large indoor amphitheatre-style stage and a new, very versatile smaller indoor stage.

This has made Ashland an odd sort of town. The university is one pole, the theatres the other, and an axis of quaint shops, excellent restaurants, ice cream parlors, and organic juice bars, lies betwixt. Be-dreaded barefoot wanderers squat in front of the Chamber of Commerce with their dogs, as if daring you to question their right to be there; while high school trips of Drama or English students lick snow-cones on the corner, intellectuals trickle in and out of Bloomsbury Books, and families save seats to watch the dancers in the Green Show before the performance. It is a bewitching place – while the festival has spawned an industry, it is a sort of charming cottage industry – you get a sort of “isn’t it fun?” vibe off of the locals, rather than a tired “How-can-I-help-thee” feeling. The town is about theatre and intellectual play more than about Elizabethan kitsch. And believe me, I know Elizabethan kitsch—I’ve been to Stratford-upon-Avon.

And at the same time, Ashland is Southern Oregon. Whitewater rafting and snowboarding are other local industries, summers are hot, the green forest rises from sere yellow grass. And Ashland is small. Apparently if you rise early, you may catch a glimpse of a mountain lion padding down the street, seeming to study the wooden dragon puzzles in the window of Ashland Hardwood or chuckle over the horrible taste of the “healthful” Lithia Spring Water.

Matt and I are slow starters, I guess—I went to buy our community property copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix only yesterday. I guess the mad-rush-read-it-all-in-one-night thing (like Millie did) is less of an issue if you aren’t planning on downing it all at one sitting. Last book, Matt and I bought separate copies and read by ourselves, and we found that A) it’s hard to discuss things if you read at different speeds, and B) it’s over too fast. So this time, we plan to read it aloud to each other, taking turns. As we have a long road trip ahead of us, it seemed like about time to pick it up. We had resisted the urge to preorder the book off amazon because we wanted to support our local bookstore.

As I have previously lamented, I work in Portland, whilst my hearth is in Hillsboro. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I take the car. I drive home down Burnside, which is a big scary street with about three places along its whole length where you can cross it or turn left onto it, and a good many places where you can’t turn either way OFF of it either. It is a mess of narrow lanes, pedestrians under the influence, and traffic signs. It is a river of anguished souls, trapped and buffeted by the vicious flow of time. It is also one of the streets that borders Powell’s City of Books.

I decided to be brave and go to buy the Harry Potter book, even though it would require parking (curbside parking at a premium, Powell’s lot and structure both made for Morris Minis and the mini-men who love them). On my way up Burnside, though, it occured to me that I had no moolah, and parking meters don’t take Starbucks cards (or produce caramel floofy drinks, more’s the pity). I checked my pockets, I searched all the pockets and corners of my messenger-bag, I fumbled in the interstices of the car. This was all while driving down the river of souls, mind. I do dangerous things like this with my eyes fixed on the road and biting my tongue. That way, it’s funny, not stupid. I came up with four pennies. I leaned over and opened the glove compartment. A ziploc bag peeked from under the maps! I tugged, and discovered a ziploc bag with a tea candle. “In case there’s a power outage IN THE CAR?” I hollered, and slung it back in with the sailboat bathtoy and Corolla owner’s manual. Finally, I found a pocket of my purse with four pennies and a precious, shining (alright, sooty) nickel in it. I could park for 3 minutes legally.

So I turned off Burnside and started my frantic street-car-dodging, oh-is-this-a-4-way-stopping, one-waying, dead-ending circuit through the Pearl/Brewery district in search of parking. Finally, I found a curb spot right next to one of Powell’s main entrances. I parallel parked with much ado (parallel parking is a big deal in my family, and a rare thing in the suburbs). I hastily gathered in my discman-to-cassette converter and cord, and tucked it furtively into the armrest. I realized suddenly that I’d brought the office iBook home with me, and it was sitting in the footwell of the passenger seat glistening and whispering to all passers-by. (Since my car was burgled for makeup and aftershave, I’ve gotten kind of paranoid.) Since lugging it bagless through Powell’s seemed psycho, I covered it with my leather jacket (this is kind of like covering a chocolate chip cookie with peanut butter to keep the kids from eating it) and ran up to put my sooty nickel in the meter. The meter was broken. After doing my (very well-practiced) indecision dance (is it illegal to park at a broken meter? Will I be caught? Do I care? Will hitting the meter help?) I dashed into the store.

I felt like Colin in The Secret Garden—I expected there to be golden trumpets. But Powell’s looked just the same as usual. I was expecting at very least a life-sized Harry on a broomstick hanging from the ceiling. Chastened, I went on, trying to remember where the children’s books are, since they’ve moved them since I qualified. Board books, picture books, little table for little people to look at books. Collectible Children’s Books…Chapter Books. H.P. and the Chamber of Secrets caught my eye, and I dashed up to…the rows of empty shelves. Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Shelf of Dustmotes. I made feeble protesting whimpers at the other Harry Potter books, who did not care. I trudged over to information and said, “Excuse me. I don’t suppose you have any more Harry Potter 5s, in a double-super-secret place, or maybe in a very obvious place, so that I can look silly but have my book?” (yes, that is an exact quote. I was feeling prolix.)

The woman looked sympathetic. “But…this is POWELL’S!” I spluttered, remembering the ramparts and pinnacles of overstock H.P. 4s I had seen last time around. I remembered the comfortable decadence of knowing they had more Harry Potter books than God. “You can’t be OUT!”

“Ran out at 11:30 this morning,” she said, “Sorry…but there’s an order in.”

But….I wanted to say, I parallel parked! I foiled imaginary car thieves! I broke the broken meter law! I settled for spluttering instead. Poor woman.

I shuffled back to my car, assured myself that my electronics and lipsticks were not financing someone’s crack habit, and drove off into the dark torrent of smog and despair, calling Matt on the cel phone to whine.

So I bought H.P. 5 at the Tanasbourne Barnes & Noble – so much for supporting your local bookstore, I’d rather give money to sweet ol’ Amazon, thanks! – where they did have a great big display right inside the door (but still no golden trumpets), and as a reward for knuckling under to corporate soulless bookstores, I got it for 40% off. Of course, I still had to spend 15 minutes trying to get the best copy.