Monday, and a Meme!
Mar. 5th, 2012 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nightdog_barksMore beautiful weather -- 75 degrees (23.9 degrees Celsius) and not a cloud in the sky. Doing housely stuff today with the back door and windows open. Finished Sheri Holman's Witches on the Road Tonight and liked it a lot. Here's an excerpt:
It was at one of those seminars, led by a rabbi -- and, yes, I am a sucker for a long, white beard -- that I heard the most cogent argument for a Creator. This delightful old rabbi told us God commanded His angels, "Make me a creature with the ability to say thank you."
... snip ...
It takes many attempts and many more failures before we mortals can offer up those two simple words. Thank you. Some of us die never being able to do so. Some give lip service to our thanks, but most of us don't even know what we're grateful for. We throw our happiness away with both hands.
:-) While I'm not sure I agree with Eddie, it's a lovely piece of writing, and I give the book a strong thumbs up. Magical realism isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, so I'll caution for that.
The meme is from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yarroway, who said,
1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the name of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies or TV shows.
... and I made an Executive Decision that the first or last name could start with K. :-D
1) Keith Talent, from Martin Amis' (brilliant) novel London Fields. Oh my god, what can I say about Keith? He's a dim moke, a violent, dart-playing monster with murderous intent, and I adore him, just as I adore Teddy Bass in the film Sexy Beast (although Keith is nowhere near as urbanely smooth as Teddy). Martin Amis is another one of those writers who showed me how written dialogue could flow just as engagingly as the spoken word (Tom Wolfe is another notable example with Bonfire of the Vanities), and Keith Talent, with his irrepressible optimism and dreams of dart-championship glory, is one of his best examples.
2) Charles Foster Kane, from Citizen Kane. Yes, I'm one of those tiresome people who think this film is a masterpiece, brilliant in every frame and shot, a crowning achievement of American cinema, blah blah blahdy-blah. Kane, to me, is the quintessential Lost Boy, someone who never really found what he was looking for and was never able to return home. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's some Charles Kane/Jed Leland fic out there. I'm just sayin' ...
3) Chin Ho Kelly, from Hawaii Five-0. Those eyes. Those cheekbones. Those arms. Those ... well, everything. He's smart, he's funny, he's badass, he's ... did I mention those cheekbones?
4) Clark Kent, Superman. The secret hero. Good-deed doer, fraught with vulnerability. Bundle of archetypes. Another Lost Boy. Where is he when we need him?
5) K, from Men in Black. One of my favorite movies, one of my favorite actors, K roams the streets and rural environs of New York looking for the one thing he doesn't want to find. He doesn't like his job anymore, but he'll do it until he can't, reveling in the occasional enjoyment of his Ford POS rocket car and his beloved Elvis music. Yet another hero who can't find his way back home.
Honorable mention: Kalvin, from the House episode, "Hunting." Kono Kalakaua, from Hawaii Five-0. Kevin Arnold, from The Wonder Years. "Kid" Curry, from Alias Smith and Jones. And Joe Kavalier, from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
It was at one of those seminars, led by a rabbi -- and, yes, I am a sucker for a long, white beard -- that I heard the most cogent argument for a Creator. This delightful old rabbi told us God commanded His angels, "Make me a creature with the ability to say thank you."
... snip ...
It takes many attempts and many more failures before we mortals can offer up those two simple words. Thank you. Some of us die never being able to do so. Some give lip service to our thanks, but most of us don't even know what we're grateful for. We throw our happiness away with both hands.
:-) While I'm not sure I agree with Eddie, it's a lovely piece of writing, and I give the book a strong thumbs up. Magical realism isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, so I'll caution for that.
The meme is from
yarroway, who said,1. Leave a comment to this post - specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the name of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies or TV shows.
... and I made an Executive Decision that the first or last name could start with K. :-D
1) Keith Talent, from Martin Amis' (brilliant) novel London Fields. Oh my god, what can I say about Keith? He's a dim moke, a violent, dart-playing monster with murderous intent, and I adore him, just as I adore Teddy Bass in the film Sexy Beast (although Keith is nowhere near as urbanely smooth as Teddy). Martin Amis is another one of those writers who showed me how written dialogue could flow just as engagingly as the spoken word (Tom Wolfe is another notable example with Bonfire of the Vanities), and Keith Talent, with his irrepressible optimism and dreams of dart-championship glory, is one of his best examples.
2) Charles Foster Kane, from Citizen Kane. Yes, I'm one of those tiresome people who think this film is a masterpiece, brilliant in every frame and shot, a crowning achievement of American cinema, blah blah blahdy-blah. Kane, to me, is the quintessential Lost Boy, someone who never really found what he was looking for and was never able to return home. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's some Charles Kane/Jed Leland fic out there. I'm just sayin' ...
3) Chin Ho Kelly, from Hawaii Five-0. Those eyes. Those cheekbones. Those arms. Those ... well, everything. He's smart, he's funny, he's badass, he's ... did I mention those cheekbones?
4) Clark Kent, Superman. The secret hero. Good-deed doer, fraught with vulnerability. Bundle of archetypes. Another Lost Boy. Where is he when we need him?
5) K, from Men in Black. One of my favorite movies, one of my favorite actors, K roams the streets and rural environs of New York looking for the one thing he doesn't want to find. He doesn't like his job anymore, but he'll do it until he can't, reveling in the occasional enjoyment of his Ford POS rocket car and his beloved Elvis music. Yet another hero who can't find his way back home.
Honorable mention: Kalvin, from the House episode, "Hunting." Kono Kalakaua, from Hawaii Five-0. Kevin Arnold, from The Wonder Years. "Kid" Curry, from Alias Smith and Jones. And Joe Kavalier, from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 09:36 pm (UTC)I particularly like the parallel between Clark Kent and Charles Kane as 'lost boys', both very successful adults and yet missing an important chunk of their childhood.
I kept reading this and trying to pinpoint what bothered me about it, until I realized you chose five male character (there's a woman among the h.m., though) and also the only (one or two) writers mentioned are male.
Once I noticed I wasn't bothered anymore, but now feel an urge to go again through all the entries about this meme in my f-list and produce pie charts.
[This comment has been deleted and resubmitted since I couldn't figure out how to edit.]
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 11:32 am (UTC)Also, you probably don't know Katharine Hilbery, who teaches herself mathematics and astronomy in the night and hides from her parents that she doesn't 'get' poetry. Night and Day is supposed to be one of V Woolf's worst books but I love it to pieces.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 11:10 pm (UTC)Okay, babe, lay a letter on me. This looks like fun. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 11:36 pm (UTC)And I bestow upon you ... a "G"! :-D
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 04:36 am (UTC)It is one of my all-time favorite movies, and K is by far the best thing about it, though I adore Will Smith as J, too.
Also, it is the movie that gave me one of my all-time favorite quotable lines: "That's about a nine-point-oh on my Weird-Shit-o-meter."
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 12:19 am (UTC)Also, I approve of your character choices! :D:D:D
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 12:42 am (UTC);-D
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 05:45 am (UTC)I just wanted to share that.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 05:28 pm (UTC)I can tell you that the other day I was browsing through the State of Kentucky's Department of Confederate Pensions (yes, I do strange things for fun) and ran across the name Pink G. Curd. PINK CURD. AND HE WAS A JUDGE. :-D
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 06:02 pm (UTC)That is an amazing name. If you wrote it into a story, nobody'd believe you.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 06:21 pm (UTC)It was printed as "Pink," and he'd signed the court decision (to grant someone their application for a pension) as Pink, so I really don't know. I just stared at the name for a good half a minute, trying to wrap my mind around it. *g*
Edited to add that it did sound very Southern to my ear, the kind of name elderly relatives who were old when you were a kid would invoke, as in "Well, that was the time Uncle Pink traveled over to Memphis ... "
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 12:45 am (UTC):-D