200910.25 letter to Mike Argento, York Daily Record
Argento is a brilliant, hysterically funny columnist with a wit sharper than a Na'Vi arrowhead. He can write serious stuff too, but mostly he sends up the Morons of our culture (no shortage of those in York County). This was my (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) plee to him to save our tweens from the vampires.
The rise of the New Moon sparked a deep, insistent urge to lurk at my computer, biting deep into the bloody depths of the Thesaurus, and Spell Check. Then I considered that you only write articles of Deep Social Meaning, sending up the Idiots of Society.
Wait; this has Deep Social Meaning. We must save our young girls from the ravages of...
...a meaningless life obsessing over boys with bad hair and weird eyes.
I noted your excellent send-up of 2021, or 2012... or 2010, no wait, that was Real Science Fiction, written by a Real Science Fiction writer; Arthur C. Clarke.
We need, in this benighted age, Mikey the Vampire Slayer. Or, perhaps, Van-argento.
J.K. Rowling gave us a complex, unique world of Wizards and Good and Evil. She addressed the Deep Questions of The Meaning of Life. She gave us three Heroes on a Hero Journey that made sense and resonated with our own lives (note that one of them is an intelligent girl, with a career, and a Life, and a Purpose, and cool guy friends, and... a cool guy). Rowling gave us Quidditch, and Time Turners and an owl delivery service and a large drooly dog, and a larger droolier gamekeeper, and the wonderful vision of turning a horrible relative into a hot air balloon.
J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis gave us entire planets to run around on. Middle Earth and Narnia with their Elves and Orcs and Centaurs and Talking Animals had plenty of room for each of us to pick up our longbows and broadswords and learn to slay the evils in our mundane lives. To ride into the sunset, to wax poetic over the song of gulls in the dark, to talk to trees, to ride without saddle or rein, to have seven meals a day, to sail with the Corsairs of Umbar, to ...
Oh, yes, I digress...
George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry eschewed the use of initials and went with their full names, which may be why they gave us the whole universe to play in. Go ahead, snicker at the kid whomping womp rats on his game boy, or the girl with the pointy ears at the sci-fi convention doing the Vulcan salute, but when your computer breaks down, or your rover is stranded on Neptune; who 'ya' gonna' call?
In the wake of these greats, yea, in the Twilight of their existence, comes a saga of a girl and a vampire. And some other vampires who are not as nice. Although the main one isn't very nice either, at first. I tried very hard to finish the first book, but after two hundred pages of a very boring teenager obsessing over a badaxx boy I had to donate the book to the Library for the Literary Impaired, and go find a copy of Treasure Island, which, despite its political incorrectness, is a romping good yarn, and contains a young hero who acts impulsively but with good heart and wins out in the end. I also plowed through several thousand pages of the Inkheart Trilogy, which contains a heroine who has better things to do with her life than obsess over boys with bad hair and weird teeth.
I think you should do an interview with the vampire's girlfriend: it would go something like this...
“So, Bella, how was school today?”
Her eyes glaze over. Hoarsely she whispers. “Edward.”
“Ah. What are you studying?”
Her eyes have now developed a strange shape, like those anime or manga characters: little hearts. They seem to be twitching in a weird rhythm. “Eeeeedwaaard.”
“Um, went by the animal rescue earlier this week, I think you should have a dog. What kind would you like?”
“Edward.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Edddddddward.” The eyeball hearts are definitely thumping like manic bunnies. Bunnies, bunnies, ohgawd, what do bunnies do best?
“You realize this is kind of gross, I mean, he's dead and everything...”
She's stopped talking, only the weird little thumpy hearts are visible. You knock her upside the head, duct tape her to a chair and make her watch all three...extended DVD... Lord of the Rings films. At least Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson aren't dead. Then you drag her kicking and screaming to the library.
Save us Argento-wan, you're our only hope.
The rest of us will sling our longbows over our backs, our swords, lightsabers and phasers at our hips, mount our steeds of Rohan (or centaurs, or landspeeders, if you're horse-impaired) and sally forth to rescue True Fantasy and Science Fiction from the clutches of the Pseudo-vampiric hordes. Some of us will probably settle down with a good Anne Rice book, or a Sookie Stackhouse novel. We might, (gasp) even turn on the TV and catch a drop or two of True Blood, or a rerun of Buffy.
Live Long and Prosper...
Argento is a brilliant, hysterically funny columnist with a wit sharper than a Na'Vi arrowhead. He can write serious stuff too, but mostly he sends up the Morons of our culture (no shortage of those in York County). This was my (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) plee to him to save our tweens from the vampires.
The rise of the New Moon sparked a deep, insistent urge to lurk at my computer, biting deep into the bloody depths of the Thesaurus, and Spell Check. Then I considered that you only write articles of Deep Social Meaning, sending up the Idiots of Society.
Wait; this has Deep Social Meaning. We must save our young girls from the ravages of...
...a meaningless life obsessing over boys with bad hair and weird eyes.
I noted your excellent send-up of 2021, or 2012... or 2010, no wait, that was Real Science Fiction, written by a Real Science Fiction writer; Arthur C. Clarke.
We need, in this benighted age, Mikey the Vampire Slayer. Or, perhaps, Van-argento.
J.K. Rowling gave us a complex, unique world of Wizards and Good and Evil. She addressed the Deep Questions of The Meaning of Life. She gave us three Heroes on a Hero Journey that made sense and resonated with our own lives (note that one of them is an intelligent girl, with a career, and a Life, and a Purpose, and cool guy friends, and... a cool guy). Rowling gave us Quidditch, and Time Turners and an owl delivery service and a large drooly dog, and a larger droolier gamekeeper, and the wonderful vision of turning a horrible relative into a hot air balloon.
J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis gave us entire planets to run around on. Middle Earth and Narnia with their Elves and Orcs and Centaurs and Talking Animals had plenty of room for each of us to pick up our longbows and broadswords and learn to slay the evils in our mundane lives. To ride into the sunset, to wax poetic over the song of gulls in the dark, to talk to trees, to ride without saddle or rein, to have seven meals a day, to sail with the Corsairs of Umbar, to ...
Oh, yes, I digress...
George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry eschewed the use of initials and went with their full names, which may be why they gave us the whole universe to play in. Go ahead, snicker at the kid whomping womp rats on his game boy, or the girl with the pointy ears at the sci-fi convention doing the Vulcan salute, but when your computer breaks down, or your rover is stranded on Neptune; who 'ya' gonna' call?
In the wake of these greats, yea, in the Twilight of their existence, comes a saga of a girl and a vampire. And some other vampires who are not as nice. Although the main one isn't very nice either, at first. I tried very hard to finish the first book, but after two hundred pages of a very boring teenager obsessing over a badaxx boy I had to donate the book to the Library for the Literary Impaired, and go find a copy of Treasure Island, which, despite its political incorrectness, is a romping good yarn, and contains a young hero who acts impulsively but with good heart and wins out in the end. I also plowed through several thousand pages of the Inkheart Trilogy, which contains a heroine who has better things to do with her life than obsess over boys with bad hair and weird teeth.
I think you should do an interview with the vampire's girlfriend: it would go something like this...
“So, Bella, how was school today?”
Her eyes glaze over. Hoarsely she whispers. “Edward.”
“Ah. What are you studying?”
Her eyes have now developed a strange shape, like those anime or manga characters: little hearts. They seem to be twitching in a weird rhythm. “Eeeeedwaaard.”
“Um, went by the animal rescue earlier this week, I think you should have a dog. What kind would you like?”
“Edward.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Edddddddward.” The eyeball hearts are definitely thumping like manic bunnies. Bunnies, bunnies, ohgawd, what do bunnies do best?
“You realize this is kind of gross, I mean, he's dead and everything...”
She's stopped talking, only the weird little thumpy hearts are visible. You knock her upside the head, duct tape her to a chair and make her watch all three...extended DVD... Lord of the Rings films. At least Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson aren't dead. Then you drag her kicking and screaming to the library.
Save us Argento-wan, you're our only hope.
The rest of us will sling our longbows over our backs, our swords, lightsabers and phasers at our hips, mount our steeds of Rohan (or centaurs, or landspeeders, if you're horse-impaired) and sally forth to rescue True Fantasy and Science Fiction from the clutches of the Pseudo-vampiric hordes. Some of us will probably settle down with a good Anne Rice book, or a Sookie Stackhouse novel. We might, (gasp) even turn on the TV and catch a drop or two of True Blood, or a rerun of Buffy.
Live Long and Prosper...
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