Witty Blog Title Goes Here

Hokay! To start off with, I’m going to talk about Bridget Milhokovich so Hayley will stop calling me a bitch. (As with yesterday, beware spoilers.)

First of all, a thing you should know about me: I tend to like the same sorts of characters, as everyone does. For reasons that are completely beyond me, though, my favorites tend to be either spunky little sisters (Phoebe Caulfield, Ginny Weasley) or vulnerable popular girls (Cordelia Chase, Quinn Fabrey). Hayley and I share a mutual, rare but deep love of Parvati Patil, for example. So it surprised exactly no one when I said that Bridget was my favorite character in the Jessica Darling series.

But it also has nothing to do with my personal preferences and everything to do with the masterful way Megan McCafferty wrote the books. I’ve read each exactly once—I’m hardly as good an authority as Hayley or Marlena, so bear with me if you don’t agree or if I get something wrong. But you know? I don’t think I am. Wrong, I mean.

Jessica, as a person, is… well, very interested in people. She very rarely likes them, but she’s highly observant, if highly opinionated. As narrators go, she’s not always the most reliable… but somehow, McCafferty’s hand bleeds through in really surprising and wonderful ways. Jessica will often fail to imagine others complexly… but even though Jessica refuses to see it, we as readers get the sense LONG before she does that Bridget is a worthwhile individual. We start paying attention to her, Jessica’s brief mentions and off-handed remarks, and we see things Jessica doesn’t. And it works for everyone else in the story, too. Do you think it’s an accident that Hope’s name is hope? Come on, now. Hope is the epitome of idealized friendship, far more of an idea than a person. And by showing us these things by using Jessica’s voice, McCafferty establishes her books as some of the most nuanced and rewarding reads I’ve ever had.

Anyway. Today is 01/20/2010, and a hearty congratulations to Bridget and Percy.

On to other stuff! How was my German Cinema class, you ask? Well. We spent a good half hour playing a Get To Know Ya game, which was all kinds of fascinating, I can’t even tell you. … well, no. To be fair, there was one pretty awesome moment. One of the things we had to say was our favorite movie, and a girl in the far corner finished her little speech not with her favorite but by declaring “And my LEAST favorite movie is Avatar. Bring it on.”

I love this girl, and want to be her friend.

We spent the second half of class watching, Black Rider, a 1993 short film about, well, a black dude ridin’ a bus. In Berlin. Next to a racist old lady. We talked about the Nazi-era undertones (a silent crowd, no one speaking up against xenophobic comments, the prejudices of the old versus the tolerance of the young, blah blah blah). It was pretty interesting, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy the class.

Because Adam was curious, here’s the list of films we’re going to see:

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• Pandora's Box
• The Blue Angel
• Maedchen in uniform (Girls in Uniform)
• The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
• Aimee und Jaguar
• The Marriage of Maria Braun
• The Murderers Are Among Us
  

Of those, I’ve only ever seen Caligari; yay for learning new things!

*returns to computer hours later*

Hello! I just went to my first BORG meeting of the year. We played Werewolf, which is my least favorite game, and people asked me when auditions for the play will be, to which I had to reply that I don’t know, because the play isn’t cut and I don’t have audition materials or a casting list or a room. Oops! Here’s what you missed:

“Man, now every time someone says ‘doctor’ I look up. It’s a problem.”
“Oh, have you been inDoctorinated?”
- Me and Matt

“So either Shannon is the werewolf, or she’s being very sneaky and has a devious plan.”
“It’s okay. We’ll be lynching her next round anyway; possibly for fun.”
- Katie and Mac

“By the way, guys, we’re gonna have the Dune discussion on February 10th.”
“Can we call it the Dunescussion?”
- Me and Matt

“See, I like Doctor Who because it’s the only world where Mal would make a better Companion than Inara.”
- Me

(Provided we remain entertaining, I may post BORG best-ofs every week. We’ll see!)