this woman’s work

Today is my birthday

Jan 11, 2004 The Story of My Life

Does my blog look older? I started blogging in January 2001, I think. Yup, I just checked and that’s right. I was writing a lot about my impending conversion to Judaism and I had then been trying to have a baby for a little more than a year.

Brett and I went to see Return of the King last night and were a little let down by it. I think the second one was better; I caught myself really wishing this one would hurry up and end since the conclusion was becoming more and more inevitable. I haven’t read the books although I read The Hobbit twice (gave it a second chance after the first movie came out) and really disliked it. I know the trilogy is supposed to be oodles better but I don’t really like the way that Tolkein writes. I think we would have enjoyed it more if we had watched The Two Towers right before because we weren’t really sunk into the fantasy of it. Plus there were two 12-year old boys behind us chattering away — I had to shush them twice — and that kept us from falling back into the story.

My mind kept wandering during the movie. This was my thought process as I watched them battle (again) with orcs (again):

Boy it’s too bad Orlando Bloom broke out because I don’t see him as Legolas anymore, he’s just Orlando in a wig. Weird, flashback for Orlando, those dead guys look just like the Pirates of the Carribean. What’s this Gollum’s muttering about? “Her sticky tunnel?” What’s the female version of a phallic symbol anyway? Man, there just aren’t enough women in this. Well, it’s the limits of the source and it would be wrong to just toss some girls in there, I guess, but it’s just making me want to go re-read Mists of Avalon. Hmmm, if I was going to write an adventure based on archetypes of women, how would I go about it? you’ve got your kitchen witch, healing with herbs; you’ve got your mother-goddess; you’ve got your inevitable warrior princess ironically taking on a male role. Gosh, where are the infertile women in all of this? How can we rewrite an infertility archetypal script to make it something other than pitiful or hopeless? I should look more deeply into the anthropology around infertility. I wonder if there’s anything inspirational there. Wow, look at Legolas, Orlando swoop down that elephant. Does anyone else notice that the drivers are more than faintly Arabic? An accident? I think not. Wonder if that’s how they’re described in the book. Probably, considering the cultural context of the novels. I keep thinking that Saruman and Sauron are awfully reminiscent of Saladin but I’m probably reading into things too much. Wonder how much longer this thing is?

Then when we came to my mom’s to pick Noah up, I started blathering about all of this to her and she said that I was overanalyzing. And I said, “No kidding, but that’s how little I was caught up in this one.”

I really want to see Big Fish next. Also, there was one really great preview for Sky Captain. It was just gorgeous. If you’ve got Quicktime, go check out the trailer.

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