As interesting as the first four chapters were, i was beginning to believe that i was going to completely love this book. Section five began to make me doubt.
It was faily hilarious that Dave was paranoid about the babysitter molesting and possibly murdering Toph and eating all their food... for about the first five pages. Then I kind of took Logan's perspective... Point made, move on. Beyond that, (or i should say, during his ramblings about the perverted homicidal sitter) the parts about his friends was good in that it helped us understand Toph better. he grew up around older kids mostly, since his next youngest sibling is thirteen years his senior. While at the party he is not having a good time because he is still worried about Toph. So what does he do? He calls up an old friend and invites her out. When they are totally drunk and trying to have sex on the beach a group of teenagers come around and mess with them. I hope I wasn't the only one that thought Dave was awesome at first for trying to get the wallet back, and then greatly disappointed by how far he took it. He went from heroicly brave for taking on all of them to whiny and mean when he made them walk around with him while threatening them with deportation. AND he didn't even have the wallet in the first place.
A seperate point I would like to make is that he becomes a total jackass in section 6. Throughout the Real World interview he tries to sound like this tragic hero for america, like the obvious choice for the role. At first he did this well, and then he started talking about possibilities for the show, trying to write himself into it. I think that probably pissed MTV off. Who the hell is this kid to try to tell us what kind of show we are making and who we have to cast? Down to the gender and ethnic background. We all know what type of show they are making, but MTV wants to keep their sense of "we know and you don't and we are awesome for doing it." And by plugging his magazine during the interview i'm almost certain they were convinced at that point that it was the only reason he was there. Which is true. The whole first part of the chapter he is making fun of his contributor for wanting to be on the show.
I have to admit though, the stuff about the nude pictures and the captions was interesting. Now we see things like that all the time in magazines and commercials, but I am pretty sure we didn't before this. So it was interesting to see how they were pushign the envelope and changing the way people looked at bodies.
In Section 7, he decides to promote for the magazine by having the guy who IS picked for the show down to see some of his artwork. they pretend not to care about the cameras, but then when the cameras don't show up for the nude photo shoot they are admittedly disappointed. The section about him and Toph at the marina was bringing me back to the original story. They are, I have decided, what I like most about this book. Two bothers, both still children in their own way, living together through tragedy. Enough with the poetic ideals though. I also enjoyed the section about John. Except for all the swearing, i found it both fast paced and timeless. I felt like it was a moment in time that did not change. Through all the searching and swearing, nothing happened. But it was still fast and energetic and interesting. And this is what I liked best about it: "But don't they know? Didn't the dispatcher--- When I come to the part about how we don't know what he took or when...
I liked that finally, I didn't have to read about something twice. That he wasn't ranting or swearing about it all over again.
But yes, i liked the section about the friend attempting suicide, although how he got out of bed and decided to leave mid treatment had me confused since it lasted longer than the other imaginary scenes. But I think that I have convinced myself that it is an allusion to "john" deciding after the fact that he did not want to be in the book, and then he was persuaded to allow dave to use his story.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
To a Deep Regret
I wrote a poem once, "To a Deep Regret", that was about my extreme sense of guilt over the smallest and most insignificant of things. Of course, in the poem it was about me beating up my sister, making her cry, and then feeling really badly about it. My twelve-year-old self did not like feeling like a bully, so she tried to make up for it by hugging her sister (ten at the time) and saying she loved her and offering to play her stupid board game after all. Of course, this was not included in the poem. After that time though, I never bruised my sister again, and all our arguments became verbal. Honestly, I have not been in a fist fight since then.
I remember once walking to a Foster's Freeze when I was fourteen, and buying food. All my dad wanted was a chocolate banana shake. So i ordered it after my sister and I had eaten and we walked home. On the fifth stair to our apartment i dropped it, frantically grabbing at it while dread krept into my body through my hair follicles (it's preferred mode of entry) and slid menacingly down my spine, making my fumbling hands even more numb and useless. I watched the drink fall between the steps and splat! on the ground beneath me. I almost cried. This was the only thing my dad had asked for, and i ruined it. and he hadn't even given me enough to go back and buy another one without him knowing. With the heaviest of hearts I trudged into the apartment and he looked up from the couch, where he was carving a piece of wood into a small wolf. Instantly i felt like it would have been better to just throw myself off of our porch, and hope I died when I landed.
"I'm so sorry dad, i just dropped your shake right outside, i tripped on the stairs. Can I go back and get you another one?"
"No, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal."
But to me, it was a big deal. I could see his disappointment. He may have said it was fine, but i knew he was thinking "all i wanted was a shake, and she couldn't even get that. She dropped it, and I was really looking forward to drinking it."
I grounded myself for a week, and stuck to it. I didn't go anywhere but school, and I did not go to the football game Thursday or Friday night. I began practicing to be more graceful. I did not take the stairs at a jog ever again, even when it was freezing outside and i wanted to get home.
Another time in my youth, it had to be when i was eleven, my sister and I were playing in my brother's room. He was seventeen, and had already began staying at his girlfriends house most of the time. In his room was this huge poster, made by his guardian angel. You see, he was on the football team, and at our high school each starting player had a guardian angel that washed his uniform, cleaned his cleats, made posters to put around the school for people to show him support, and every morning before the game would leave a small gift basket with food, candy, and small girly things like stuffed animals with his number on them. Usually the players gave these to their girlfriends. Guardian angels were completely anonymous, so the girlfriends were never really jealous. If a player found out who his angel was, she was immediately replaced. It was a very exciting tradition.
Anyway, My sister and I were in his room, and he had a poster on his wall that said "Go, Shaun, GO!" and while we were sitting on his couch that pulled out into a bed (he said it made it more like an apartment, his own place.) she found a lighter. Being nine and eleven, we immediately decided to light a small piece of paper on fire. Another one of my stupidest moments: For some reason I decided using a hole-puncher on someone's hair would put a hole in it. The result was an angry person who had a chunk of hair close to his scalp. I digress, but that is just too entertaining to think about. After we lit the paper on fire, we decided to light other things on fire. Including, a cup, which didn't work, a CD, which only turned blackish, and a pillow. The pillow smoldered, but no flames. So paper is that would burn, and the biggest piece of paper was the poster. She lit a small corner of it... the bottom corner. The flame instantly grew to almost a foot, and her response was to blow it out. You know what that did. Big fire. So, i grabbed the still smoldering pillow and Whack! Whack! Whack! until the fire was out. the result was a brown edged poster that now said "aun, GO!" and a very large brown sooty spot on the wall where the poster used to stand. For this my idea was a paint scraper. After realizing that the really white powdery substance underneath was not what a wall was supposed to look like, we left it alone. Looking at the scene, I remember wishing i was on fire, so that my brother would not care about the poster. Because if he didn't care, then i wouldn't be to blame. And if it wasn't my fault, then I didn't have to feel bad about it.
In case it seems more like a feeling of fear of punishment, know that my parents never punished me for anything, never imposed any rules, other than the dating one, and generally were not interested in how I grew up or how I turned out. When I didn't want to go to school they said okay, but would not call in for me. When I didn't do my homework they simply said, "it's your future, I can't make you do something I didn't do." After sixth grade I went unless I was really sick, and I did as much homework as I could remember to do.
Another proof of the lack of fear is that on one occasion i did cry. I was twenty, and I had gone to my storage space to find some papers for a portfolio for class. I Had crawled around over boxes and furniture, sorted through almost everything there was, and not found them. I was about to leave when i stepped over a box and onto a table, not realizing a single glass vase was standing on the edge of it. The table shook a little, and the vase fell and shattered on the floor. As i cleaned it up I cried because it had been so beautiful, and someone had made it, and now it was gone forever. I cried at the loss of beauty, the loss of history, over something like that. A broken vase, that was one of millions just like it.
I remember once walking to a Foster's Freeze when I was fourteen, and buying food. All my dad wanted was a chocolate banana shake. So i ordered it after my sister and I had eaten and we walked home. On the fifth stair to our apartment i dropped it, frantically grabbing at it while dread krept into my body through my hair follicles (it's preferred mode of entry) and slid menacingly down my spine, making my fumbling hands even more numb and useless. I watched the drink fall between the steps and splat! on the ground beneath me. I almost cried. This was the only thing my dad had asked for, and i ruined it. and he hadn't even given me enough to go back and buy another one without him knowing. With the heaviest of hearts I trudged into the apartment and he looked up from the couch, where he was carving a piece of wood into a small wolf. Instantly i felt like it would have been better to just throw myself off of our porch, and hope I died when I landed.
"I'm so sorry dad, i just dropped your shake right outside, i tripped on the stairs. Can I go back and get you another one?"
"No, don't worry about it, it's not a big deal."
But to me, it was a big deal. I could see his disappointment. He may have said it was fine, but i knew he was thinking "all i wanted was a shake, and she couldn't even get that. She dropped it, and I was really looking forward to drinking it."
I grounded myself for a week, and stuck to it. I didn't go anywhere but school, and I did not go to the football game Thursday or Friday night. I began practicing to be more graceful. I did not take the stairs at a jog ever again, even when it was freezing outside and i wanted to get home.
Another time in my youth, it had to be when i was eleven, my sister and I were playing in my brother's room. He was seventeen, and had already began staying at his girlfriends house most of the time. In his room was this huge poster, made by his guardian angel. You see, he was on the football team, and at our high school each starting player had a guardian angel that washed his uniform, cleaned his cleats, made posters to put around the school for people to show him support, and every morning before the game would leave a small gift basket with food, candy, and small girly things like stuffed animals with his number on them. Usually the players gave these to their girlfriends. Guardian angels were completely anonymous, so the girlfriends were never really jealous. If a player found out who his angel was, she was immediately replaced. It was a very exciting tradition.
Anyway, My sister and I were in his room, and he had a poster on his wall that said "Go, Shaun, GO!" and while we were sitting on his couch that pulled out into a bed (he said it made it more like an apartment, his own place.) she found a lighter. Being nine and eleven, we immediately decided to light a small piece of paper on fire. Another one of my stupidest moments: For some reason I decided using a hole-puncher on someone's hair would put a hole in it. The result was an angry person who had a chunk of hair close to his scalp. I digress, but that is just too entertaining to think about. After we lit the paper on fire, we decided to light other things on fire. Including, a cup, which didn't work, a CD, which only turned blackish, and a pillow. The pillow smoldered, but no flames. So paper is that would burn, and the biggest piece of paper was the poster. She lit a small corner of it... the bottom corner. The flame instantly grew to almost a foot, and her response was to blow it out. You know what that did. Big fire. So, i grabbed the still smoldering pillow and Whack! Whack! Whack! until the fire was out. the result was a brown edged poster that now said "aun, GO!" and a very large brown sooty spot on the wall where the poster used to stand. For this my idea was a paint scraper. After realizing that the really white powdery substance underneath was not what a wall was supposed to look like, we left it alone. Looking at the scene, I remember wishing i was on fire, so that my brother would not care about the poster. Because if he didn't care, then i wouldn't be to blame. And if it wasn't my fault, then I didn't have to feel bad about it.
In case it seems more like a feeling of fear of punishment, know that my parents never punished me for anything, never imposed any rules, other than the dating one, and generally were not interested in how I grew up or how I turned out. When I didn't want to go to school they said okay, but would not call in for me. When I didn't do my homework they simply said, "it's your future, I can't make you do something I didn't do." After sixth grade I went unless I was really sick, and I did as much homework as I could remember to do.
Another proof of the lack of fear is that on one occasion i did cry. I was twenty, and I had gone to my storage space to find some papers for a portfolio for class. I Had crawled around over boxes and furniture, sorted through almost everything there was, and not found them. I was about to leave when i stepped over a box and onto a table, not realizing a single glass vase was standing on the edge of it. The table shook a little, and the vase fell and shattered on the floor. As i cleaned it up I cried because it had been so beautiful, and someone had made it, and now it was gone forever. I cried at the loss of beauty, the loss of history, over something like that. A broken vase, that was one of millions just like it.
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