Finally!

So I had about a million ideas about what to write about today. They ranged from super serious, to somewhat less serious, and then this afternoon as I was mindlessly entering data and catching up on tv at work (I listen to tv shows while I’m doing stuff I don’t really need to think about because I no longer have cable, which is endlessly painful) I happened innocently upon my subject.

My old roommate works at Fox Television and about three or four months ago she told me about a pilot she thought I’d like. It sounded fun and funny, but I promptly forgot about it until I saw and ad plastered onto the side of some scaffolding on Hollywood Boulevard. So I decided to listen/kind of watch as I logged upcoming events onto a press release (fun, I know) and before I knew it, I was completely engrossed in Glee.

Perhaps it’s the musical theater lover in me, but it’s about damn time that the drama dorks, choir kids, and band geeks got a show. I mean, we’ve had our fair share of newspaper editors (Andrea Zuckerman on 90210, Rory Gilmore on Gilmore Girls), a film nerd (Dawson Leery on Dawson’s Creek), even a comic book geek (Seth Cohen on The O.C.), except for the girl who does an unspeakable thing with her flute in American Pie (which, by the way, came out 10 years ago), and the amazingness of Drumline (both of these are movies) there haven’t been many drama, choir, band kids on T.V. Not in any kind of heroic setting. I mean, we’re the butt of the joke, we’re driven and discuss people like Charles Mingus and Ella Fitzgerald, we enjoy the oddness of people bursting out into song and choreographed dance at a moments notice, and yes, the band kids have to wear appallingly ugly (and uncomfortable) uniforms, but we have enough drama to warrant our own television show.

And finally we have it. I’ve talked previously about my utter detestation of High School Musical, but seriously, I don’t have a problem with the premise of a musical set in high school (in fact, I’m totally on board with that part), it’s the underlying vein of Bush-era abstinence-only preaching that I have the problem with. Excuse me, but I was in band and we weren’t chaste bastions of un-reality. Nor were the choir kids, or the drama kids. We were normal teenagers; some waited, some didn’t, some did everything but, some did everything. And personally, in a post-Bush world, High School Musical does a disservice to young people in these certain aspects.

Glee, however, takes the best of High School Musical (like I said, I love the idea of musicals in high school, especially good ones) and mixes it with just the right amount of camp, and just the right amount of real drama, plus they throw a little nod to Bring It On (best cheerleading movie ever). Not only did Glee hire real Broadway actors (most notably Lea Michele from Spring Awakening, the best answer to High School Musical ever), who are absolutely astonishing singers, but they throw in songs by Amy Winehouse, Katy Perry, and Journey (uh, yeah, that’s right, Journey).

Glee has smash hit written all over it. And the awesome vocal rendition of Don’t Stop Believin’ happens to be #1 on iTunes. Crazy!

Thank you Fox, for finally overcoming your crazy right wing politics and making the show I’ve been waiting for since I watched the first episode of 90210 at age seven.

Peace, Love, and Glee,
Julia

That Day

When I was a child I remember feeling this deep sense of jealousy over the Kennedy assassination. A feeling of exclusion from this club that remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard that the President had been shot. We had a big earthquake, but that seemed different somehow. That was just something natural that happened, not necessarily a unifying experience. Until high school there was never a unifying moment like that in my generation. I was too young to remember the Challenger blowing up. Too young even to really have had a reaction to the Oklahoma City Bombing. This may seem like a sick thing to have felt jealousy about, but I was a kid. I didn’t get then that the true bonding experience came from this kind of universal mourning that happens in the wake of a national or international tragedy.

On April 20th, 1999 I was sick. Like really really sick. So sick I probably shouldn’t have been at school, but my mom wouldn’t let me out that easily. I had to be hospitalized to be allowed to miss a day of school. It was also, as the date suggests 4/20, which, in Santa Cruz, is a kind of town holiday . Everyone smokes pot all day and it’s pretty much overlooked by academic administrations, police officers, parents, teachers, the whole town becomes complacent in this 24 hour long Cheech and Chong movie.

On that particular 4/20 my fellow classmates thought I was the most stoned out of all of them. My bloodshot, glazed over eyes, my out of it demeanor could only mean one thing. Of course, I’ve never been a huge fan of pot (I’m being serious) and as I said before, I was really sick, hence the glazed eyes and inability to focus. Little did we know that day would be the first day a tragedy unified us. The first time we could all finally say we remember where we were when we watched those lines of kids covered in blood, running across a field at gun point, hands over heads, to triage areas and swat vans. We finally had an experience that we would remember always, that would leave an indelible mark on our collective consciousness.

In all honesty, I don’t remember much of that day. In my Dayquill induced stupor I remember coming home to watch the Rosie O’Donnell Show and instead seeing blood spattered children crying on T.V. before I passed out for the better part of the afternoon. I remember my parents coming home and talking about what had happened in Colorado. My mother asked me if she ever thought something like that could happen at my school, to which I responded in the normal teenage way: an exaggerated roll of the eyes and brush off. What did it matter anyway? Everyone liked me, or maybe everyone had no clue who the hell I was, but I wasn’t a complete tool like those water polo players. If anyone should be worried it was them.

What I really remember is the aftermath. The school assemblies. The mourning in class. The trappings of tragedy that seemed so far removed from what was important to me at the time. Still, I remember our first ‘Lockdown’ drill, where we were told what to do if an armed intruder were to come onto our campus. I remember teachers and students alike thinking what a fucking waste of time it was. I remember thinking that the problem at Soquel High tended to revolve around the fact that many of my fellow students were already battling meth problems, heroin problems and the vast majority could be classified as alcoholics, not just getting wasted at a party, but actual alcoholics.

So when I saw that there was a new book entitled simply, Columbine, coming out, I grabbed the free copy from work and stared at it for a month. Did I really want to go back there? Where was I going back to exactly? Well, last week I found out, and it was nowhere near what I expected. I realized something as I read that book (which is amazing and everyone should read it); I have never dealt with what I felt about that tragedy.

I came to realize that I reacted to that event as any fifteen year old would. I shrugged it off and thought about the mountain of homework I had piling up. Thought about the fact that the boy I liked had a girlfriend and my friends seemed hell-bent on self-destruction. I didn’t have time for anyone but me, and my tragedy of being in high school in a town I couldn’t stand with people I thought were obnoxious.

But really, somewhere along the way I had buried the fact that we all watched on television as horrors were exacted on an unsuspecting and innocent population of people my age. And as this book has come out and started to make waves, being touted as a new In Cold Blood, people in my office (who are all around my age) have all come out with their stories of where they were and what they were doing when they first heard that a high school in Colorado was under attack. Now, as a twenty-five year old woman, I’m not so keen on this idea of generational unification through tragedy. Not so jealous now that I understand why the Kennedy generation has those strong memories. Unfortunately, the only way to learn this lesson seems to be though experience. An experience I don’t wish on anyone.

Peace and Love,
Julia

Festivals

The last weekend in April, every year, UCLA hosts the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Now, I’ve made my fair share of snide comments about how no one reads in Los Angeles, which, I will tell you, is completely unsustained by facts. In fact, L.A. reads more per capita than any other city in the U.S. (sorry San Francisco and New York, get off those high horses), except for whatever hole that Iowa Writing Program is based in.

Every year, the Festival reinforces this in my mind. As tens of thousands of people descend on UCLA and I run around like a crazy woman trying to organize four separate booths, I draw a year’s worth of inspiration from the fact that people are excited about reading. That they get upset if we sell out of a particular title. That they get excited about their favorite author talking to them about something completely inane, or totally inspirational. Some bring their well worn, well loved copies of books for an author that has touched them to inscribe something meaningful on the page. Some simply come to find a new story, a new love, a new escape. Some come for Giada, some come for Bradbury, some come for the experience, but they all come for books. And how thrilling that is for someone in an industry that has faced so much struggle in the past fifteen years.

My absolute favorite thing this year was this canvas wall that the L.A. Times booth had. It read simply ‘What Are You Reading?’ across the middle and throughout the weekend people wrote thousands of titles all over the wall. Books from Twilight (which had the biggest showing on the wall) to the Qur’an, The Giver to Columbine, all scrawled across the wall. Parents lifted their kids on their shoulders to get room at the top, people wrote over each other’s books, and by the end of the weekend it was a black wall of hope for readers. Hope for people who love a great phrase, a great story, a great sentence.

Awe inspiring, that’s what it was. And this morning/afternoon as I trudge off to work after a week of working no less than twelve hour days to go reconcile the accounting (my least favorite part by far), I am inspired for the next year to continue selling books and writing books and dedicating my life to the pursuit of a higher truth through books.

Peace, Love, and Graffiti Walls,
Julia

Don’t Dream It’s Over

I watched Adventureland last night. And aside from it being one of the best and surprising movies I’ve seen in a very long time, it was also one of the only recent movies set in the 80s that is not completely ridiculous. Now I understand that the 80s were a completely ridiculous decade – the amount of neon alone worn by everyone, myself included, was absolutely astonishing, not to mention the presidents (Reagan and Bush, seriously?), the dancing, the cars, and, of course, the music. Still, most movies about the 80s just ham it up a little too much. Movie’s like the Wedding Singer are pretty perfect, but even one of my favorite movies, 200 Cigarettes, gets a little heavy handed with the weird Flock of Seagulls haircut comedy. The best of this new oeuvre comes when the 80s are a backdrop for a great story, where the story isn’t the 80s, but merely an extra layer to paint a full picture.

The thing I realized as I was sitting in Adventureland was that 80s music is the only kind of music that really can’t be used as a background to any other time period. If I’m watching a modern romantic comedy and a Crowded House song comes on, all I’m thinking about is how funny it is that they’re using this song. I feel the 80s, more than any other decade claims this trophy of its music being so totally of the time. A romantic scene in a movie can use a Cat Stevens song or a Joni Mitchell song and you, the viewer, aren’t automatically transported to another decade. However, the same scene, with Duran Duran or Pat Benatar over it is automatically just going to pull you back to the 80s.

This is not to say that particular bands from each particular decade don’t have this same effect: Jefferson Airplane will always be 70s and can really only work within a 70s context. The Smashing Pumpkins will always be 90s, more so than Nirvana or Pearl Jam, and will always pull an audience into the 90s when used in film. But no decade even comes close to being as recognizable as the 80s. Perhaps it’s the overuse of synthesizer or keytar, perhaps it’s the fact that video and music were married in the 80s on MTV and we’ll always match those songs with their videos (I mean, can anyone listen to Take on Me by Aha without picturing the crazy half-animated video?).

But when a movie is set in the 80s, when it uses music right, there’s a kind of magic that happens. Maybe it’s only magic for me, for whom those songs are completely intertwined with major childhood and young adult experiences, but I think this may not be the case. Perhaps, the magic comes from the fact that we don’t hear those songs under every love scene, that for once we’re not hearing Norah Jones while the two main characters are getting together, and the relative newness of hearing an old song after so long of not hearing it brings us back to a more innocent place. In any case, my love of 80s music has been rediscovered thanks to Adventureland, and in all honesty, it’s pretty damn sweet. Well, with the exception of Rock Me Amadeus.

Peace, Love, and Big Hair,
Julia

I Don’t Want to Be a Traitor to My Generation or Anything, But…

It’s always a little disheartening when two hours into a sixteen hour work day, you overhear someone (no one you know, but still, some lady) saying that your generation has no work ethic. It’s always a little hard not to get up and tell this lady that I probably work harder than she does, and for about a quarter of the money, but whatever, bygones.

A few weeks ago, I saw a book that’s coming out soon that was all about how managers can speak to their twenty-something employees and get them motivated. What really stuck out was the cover, which featured a man’s arm clothed in a business suit shaking hands with a full-sleeve tattooed arm. It’s not as though this is a new concept. I mean, managers in the sixties and seventies had to deal with their twenty-something employees that looked entirely different than the work force had ever looked before. And now, it seems to be the same.

Now, this complaint that young people aren’t motivated to work isn’t a new one…it seems like every generation is at first painted out to be lazy and unwilling to work. I can’t speak for what came before me, but I must say, that from my perspective the problem isn’t with my generation. We’re willing and eager to work and work hard. The problem is motivation. In every job I have had since college, including being a Production Assistant on movie sets, I am met with shock and awe at how fast things get done. For the most part, I’ve worked for people around my age who are better, more devoted workers than I am and yet still, we’re all shocked at how much we accomplish each day.

We accomplish because we are motivated, because we can see or are told the effect we have when we work hard. On the other hand, I’ve also had employers that give me one task and have nothing else when I finish that task. I think this is where the notion that we have no work ethic comes in. Now, it’s easy to look like you’re working. I get a task, I finish it, I ask for another one. If there’s not another one then yeah, I’m going to go online because it’s better than just sitting at my desk looking bored. I’m not lucky enough to have the boredom problem anymore, but when I did, it was more excruciating than having way too much to do. And it wears at your motivation.

If you know that your work is going to take three hours, and you have to be at work for eight hours, why would you feel pressed to get it done quickly? Why work hard when there’s nothing waiting for you on the other side?

Peace, Love, and Rash Generalizations,
Julia

Pet Peeve

With the release of Watchmen one of my biggest all time pet peeves has been hit upon again and again.

I absolutely cannot stand it when people see a movie and say, “Oh, the book was better.”

Hello, of course the book was better, it’s a book. Books are a more complete story telling medium than movies because if you were going to put the entire twelve chapters of Watchmen into a movie it would be like six hours long and then no one would see it. Seriously, how annoyingly pompous is it to just say, oh, the book was better? I mean I guess people say this because they have not a single original thought in their head because really that line negates all duty to actually discuss anything on an intellectual level. I just find it endlessly annoying.

On a tangential line, I also have a theory that if you are able, you should not read a book before you see a movie. If you see a movie first, you will be able to appreciate both the movie and the book, but if you read the book first, you will almost never be able to appreciate the movie. This ruined One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for me…I read the book first and hate the movie (which I know is a good movie).

Just a little issue I had to get off my chest.

Peace, Love, and Bullshit,
Julia

P.S. Loved Watchmen…those fanboys that hated it are crazy.

He Made Me a Mix Tape

So it seems like ’90s nostalgia is coming to fruition. Flannel is back in stores (and not just army surplus stores), I’m singlehandedly trying to spark a Dickies jacket revival, Doc Martens are coming back in style, Nirvana seems to be on the radio more and more, and with the advent of TV on DVD a new generation of people is able to catch up on their My So-Called Life, Dawson’s Creek and Original 90210 (let’s talk about how 90s shows are being remade left and right…look for Melrose Place the remake coming soon to a TV near you).

There’s one serious void in this 90s comeback (not counting Winona Ryder and Arsenio Hall) and that would be the mix tape. That great piece of cultural nostalgia that I fear is lost forever. Sure, we can make mix CDs and you all know I’ve made my fair share for various reasons, but I miss the mix tape. As an avid maker and receiver of mix tapes, I miss them dearly. The really great ones take time and thought and precision. You can’t just throw any old song on there, just like on a mix CD you can’t hit shuffle on your iTunes and burn the CD from that. One must think about flow, about meaning when going from one song to another. There’s always a hidden message in Mixes. It could be declaring love, it could be saying, ‘Wow you have awful taste in music. Please take this and run with it.’ It could be saying I’m sorry you broke up with your boy/girlfriend, I’m sorry you’re fighting with your mom/dad, I’m sorry we fought.

And the way a mix tape says all these important things: song choice and flow. You can’t very well through two slow depressing songs together and top it with a slow depressing song. You can’t begin with the song that makes your whole point, you must end with it, leave them with a little something to remember you by.

Sure, you might be saying, ‘But Julia, you can do all this on a CD mix.’ Well, my dear friends, you would be right. You can do all this on a CD mix, but what mix tapes had that CDs never had was time, love. I can create a playlist (however painstaking) and put in a CD, hit burn and walk away. But when you used to have to record from CD to tape (or, as I’ve been told by one older and wiser, from Vinyl to tape, which is not what the majority of my mix tapes came from because I’m just barely too young) there was an element of time. You had to listen to the whole song be recorded onto the tape. You had to stop the tape recording and the cd playing at exactly the right time. It wasn’t just a set it and forget it kind of deal, there was real mental work involved. You really had to know your songs, to know when they ended, which songs were just going to blend into the next, and if you fucked it up, you’d have to re-record the whole thing.

Plus, there’s no better feeling in the world (seriously better than sex, drugs, and love) than someone giving you the perfect mix tape because really what is the perfect mix tape but a combination of the best sex, the best drugs and the best love. Someone sat on the floor of a room and listened to that shit. Thought about what you’d like and what you might be into if they just opened your mind to it. Someone took that time and made you a mix tape to give you a clue.

Peace, Love, and Mix Tapes,
Julia

Bravo!

You know it, you love it, it’s my post-Oscar wrap up email. So Sunday night was Hollywood’s big night (and the first time since moving to L.A. that I haven’t had to sit in a sea of limos on my way home to watch the Oscars), and I have to say, it might have been the best Oscar ceremony in a very very long time. It was quick (for the Oscars), no one got played off the stage for having a too long speech, there weren’t any huge political displays (though there were a few smaller ones that I fucking loved), and the host was entertaining.

So here goes…Hugh Jackman: good, solid Oscar host. The numbers were entertaining (except for the one with Beyonce, but that’s not Hugh’s fault, I just can’t stand Beyonce), he made some awesome jokes. I especially liked when he mentioned Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and then said he didn’t have a joke for them, he just was contractually obligated to mention them.

I have to brag just a little bit that I called pretty much every single category. Of course the writing categories went to some deserving folks, Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog and Dustin Lance Black for Milk (who made the best damn speech of the night, and one that brought more than just one tear to my eye). I loved Dustin saying that as a little gay boy growing up in the Bay Area (read Salinas…he told me when I met him a few weeks ago), that Harvey Milk was his idol, and the obvious relations to prop 8 were brought out. Loved it.

Kate Winslet’s Oscar was much deserved and about damn time. Heath Ledger’s Oscar was touching, if not predictable. The one shock for me was Penelope Cruz, but then I had no ideas on that category so I guess she was as predictable as any other.

Sean Penn was the only category that I was really really thrilled with. I mean, I loved Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler (and I’m apparently the only woman on earth, besides my mother, who finds him ridiculously sexy), but it wasn’t an Oscar winning performance. Plus, with all the political prop 8 stuff, Sean Penn needed to win, and he did, and he made a fantastic speech that was not only political, but also self-deprecating. Sean Penn admitted that he’s kind of a nightmare to work with (which is well known within Hollywood) and I sort of love him for admitting it.

Now, Slumdog took picture and director which is great. Fox Searchlight finally won a Best Picture Oscar which they really needed to add to their roster of awesomeness.

All in all, it was a banner year for Oscar ceremonies, even if the Oscar movies were a little bit of a slim-picking situation.

Peace, Love and Little Gold Statues,
Julia

Adios

I’ve been thinking about goodbyes a lot lately. I’m not really sure why, it’s not like I have any looming goodbyes coming up or anything, but I’ve just been thinking about them. How some goodbyes seem epic, but aren’t while some are the last goodbye and seem like nothing.

I guess the interesting thing about goodbyes is that no one is good at them. People can be good at things like poker or golf, we can be excel at public relations or computer programming, but no one, I repeat, no one is good at saying goodbye. It’s something to do with the gravity of the situation that makes us all bad at them. I mean, when do you hug? When do you just wave? When do you cry? And why do some seemingly meaningless goodbyes tear you up inside, when other, pretty big ones leave you with an eerie sense of calm, like you’re ready to move on to the next phase.

And what is it about goodbyes that gets people so riled up? I mean, think of when you first started having to say goodbye, you cried when your mom left you at Kindergarten (or maybe not?), the end of high school felt like the end of the world, literally. Like you would never see anyone ever again and everything would be so different. And then you saw those people at Thanksgiving and nothing had really changed, but somehow by the time you were done with college, everything had changed.

Maybe that’s the scary/exhilarating thing about goodbyes, especially big goodbyes, they mean that something is changing. So maybe our perception of goodbyes rests on our perceptions of change. And here’s where I come out and say it. I love goodbyes. I do. I love the drama, the raw emotion, the not knowing. As much as it does hurt sometimes, I love saying goodbye to people. And the people I’m closest to are my most/least favorite people to say goodbye to. One friend in particular, who happens to live in Europe at the moment, is my most favorite and least favorite person to say goodbye to. I always miss him terribly, but at the same time, we both change and mold while we’re away from each other and it’s exciting to see how he’s changed when we come back together.

I was thinking about this earlier today…many people see the goodbye as an ending, I see it as a beginning. And that has made all the difference.

Peace, Love and Peace Out,
Julia

One Night Only

My favorite movie of 2008 was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. If you haven’t seen it, it’s just a great movie, but it’s one of those movies about being young that happens all in one epic night. So it got me thinking, what is it about youth that provides us with those nights that just go on forever and stay firmly cemented in our memories?

A good friend of mine, one I’ve spent many epic nights with, and I were watching Nick and Norah last night and got to talking last night. She knew we’d had plenty of them, especially in high school and college (they still happen now, but they are fewer and farther between seeing as we now have jobs and some responsibility), but couldn’t remember what had happened when. When I reminded her of what nights were epic (Halloween made a big showing, nights before people moved out of town) we both sort of reminisced, shocked at how much had happened on each one of those nights. Someone (points to self) tried to lift up a bouncer who was loath to let four extremely intoxicated ladies into a bar, someone peed on her purse, someone slapped an ex-boyfriend’s asshole friend, someone started crying, someone got a piercing, everyone had to evade law enforcement and all of it was crammed into one crazy never-ending night.

I remember watching movies like Dazed and Confused or Sixteen Candles or Can’t Hardly Wait or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and thinking, oh, it would be so cool to have a night like that, where you just go from place to place and just have one amazing experience after another, but when I thought about it, these are some of the few movies that don’t glorify something as being better or worse than how those nights actually play out. Most of us don’t live romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle, most of us don’t engage in boat chases like James Bond, even some of my favorite movies like American Beauty do tend to focus more relentlessly on the depression of suburbia. But the all-in-one-night movie tend to run the gamut of emotion, consternation, outright joy, stress, a quest of some sort, that seem to emerge in the wee hours of the morning on an active night.

The all-in-one-night movie also gives way to the mundane conversations that we all have. It’s odd, as a writer, I’m almost more interested in the monotony of people’s lives than a big overarching plot-driven story. Think about it, our favorite lines from movies or books or songs are about the tedious little feelings of life. Tarantino’s best speeches are two people talking about nothing, hell, Seinfeld made a whole show about the stupid small realities of life. Of course, in a movie, unlike in life, there has to be an overarching story, but by slowing it down and getting a movie as close to real time as possible, we are able to view the dumb conversations we all engage in.

I guess what I’m trying to get at, what I love most about this, is that these are the moments we never notice in the moment. They are small little bits of nothingness that stick with us, and fold into each other to become a kind of life. The memory of the dumb conversations and the epic nights stay, but in the moment, on the night, they are just that, a moment and a night. And I hope, as I grow up, and take on more, I can always have an up-till-dawn night that never ends and morphs into the iconography of my little life.

Peace, Love, and Never-Ending-Nights,
Julia