Have you read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger? Me neither. But I did flip through it and read several passages. I was intrigued by the premise, being a sucker for both (light) science fiction and (some) romance.

I also liked the way the book was told in alternate first-person, sort of as a series of journal entries… but more like word snapshots. My son’s first-grade teacher would call them “small moment” scenes. Short but detailed. It was a great way to keep us invested in what would otherwise be a rather confusing, tangled story.

If you are the sort of person that just can’t get past the paradoxes that the whole premise of time travel deals with, then this story isn’t for you. If you can, you’ll enjoy either the book or the 2009 movie, or both.

Hey, that’s funny. I just realized that the movie’s main actor, Eric Bana, his last movie was about time travel, too — the new Star Trek.

I’ve had a hard time liking Bana since he played in the 2003 screen version of The Hulk, a movie I absolutely hated. I wanted to like it, because I liked the TV show and think the Bruce/Hulk is one of the most interesting super heroes. He’s not simply Jekyll and Hyde — good and bad. I like to think of Hulk as misunderstood. And that there are times for the use of anger and physical power, like to protect the weak and innocent, not to be a victim of a vilified military. The 2008 version looked exactly the same — Hulk vs. the military and I think that’s really boring.

(I also wanted to like the 2003 Hulk movie because of my long-time love of the movie Labyrinth in which Jennifer Connelly also starred. But I digress.)

But, in The Time Traveler’s Wife, Bana is really good, as of course is Rachel McAdams, who I liked in this performance better than in The Notebook.

Back to time travel.

It is nearly impossible to create a good story that centers around time travel, because first you have to deal with what happens when you change something in the past or future. This movie didn’t attempt to grapple with it, which makes it a little unusual. It laid out, very early and very clearly, that Henry, the time traveler, didn’t have the power to change anything significant in the past or future. Of course, the things he does throughout the movie change things as far as his relationship to his wife, but still… I could accept these boundaries and enjoy the movie within them.

This made the movie really a story about a man’s relationship with his wife.

Their relationship reminded me a bit of Lois and Clark (Superman), where she is the stability that anchors him, domesticates and humanizes him. Poor Henry, though, instead of having super-powers, has a super curse, in that he cannot control when or where he travels in time. There are some redeeming factors, though, and I enjoyed how these things made room in the story for other elements. After all, a guy that time travels at random can hardly hold down a job, so it’s very helpful that he can win the lottery so as not to be worried about money on top of his other issues.

I found it particularly interesting that the story took on infertility as a main issue. It made the otherwise rather perfect Clare more real, that she had serious issues of her own to grapple with.

So, Henry and Clare ended up being, for me, one of the more relatable couples I’ve seen onscreen. They are experiencing a great love, but not an ideal life, and I get that. Awesome love doesn’t equal perfect life. Not until we’re all behind the pearly gates, I guess.

The screenplay writer is Bruce Joel Rubin, who also wrote Ghost and several others. I liked this screenplay well enough that I’m tempted to check out his lesser-known films like My Life and even Stewart Little 2! Well, we’ll see, since he also wrote the Last Mimzy which I found rather silly.

On a more visual design note, the movie had a lovely look. You get a feel for it in the movie poster, isn’t that image beautalicious?

This movie gets four and a half nods from me!

enjoy!

What? Please. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Roald Dahl is. Collective sigh from the rest of us. Yes. No, it’s okay. We’ll clue you in. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? James and the Giant Peach? The Witches? Yes, they were actually books before they were movies. Books written by a man who Americans seem determined to call Ronald.

Well, when you get your handy-dandy boxed set of Roald Dahl’s best-known books, you may notice a slim little dandy in the bunch called Fantastic Mr. Fox. Read it. Read it to your kids (or if you are a kid, read it to a younger kid.) It’s a quick night-time read. You can even spread it out over a couple days if you’re truly lazy (like me.)

Please, do it before you see the new(ish) film, and you’ll see why each is a genius compliment to the other. You’ll see that Wes Anderson and  Noah Baumbach (film writers) totally GOT the essence of the literary goodness that is Roald Dahl and one of his most whimsical stories. Dahl wrote about crazy, wild things, yes. But that is not why people love his books. You wanna know why people love his books? They’re about real, human characters. Human emotions anyway — even if the characters are animals. Take, for instance, the nuances in this passage from Dahl’s Mr. Fox:

Suddenly Badger said, “Doesn’t this worry you just a tiny bit, Foxy?”

“Worry me?” said Mr. Fox. “What?”

“All this . . . this stealing?”

Mr. Fox stopped digging and stared at Badger as though he had gone completely dotty. “My dear old furry frump,” he said, “do you know anyone in the whole world who wouldn’t swipe a few chickens if his children were starving to death?”

There was a short silence while Badger thought deeply about this.

“You’re far too respectable,” said Mr. Fox.

“There’s nothing wrong with being respectable,” Badger said.

“Look,” said Mr. Fox, “Boggis and Bunce and Bean are out to kill us. You realize that, I hope?”

“I do, Foxy, I do indeed,” said the gentle Badger.

“But we’re not going to stoop to their level. We don’t want to kill them.”

“I should hope not, indeed,” said Badger.

Granted, Mr. Fox is not a person; he’s a fox, but boy is he a foxy one. His rhetoric is cunning! He ennobles his trickery by placing it firmly beside feeding the hungry and in stern opposition to murder! How familiar this seems. We humans are always refining our self-story to make ourselves out to be better than we are. Especially for our shadiest deeds.

But Fantastic Mr. Fox, little book that it is, ends with Mr. Fox triumphant in his shady dealings. That would have limited any movie on the subject. Fortunately, this script and its execution landed in the laps of people who understood Dahl’s style well enough to carry the story onward to a much more satisfying emotional end. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I will say that Foxy learns more than just to give lip service to a starving family. He learns about actual nobility, not just how to talk of it.

As such, this film ranks right up there (aaaalmost) with The Incredibles as a beautiful look at a family in crisis and how they pull together instead of shattering apart.

It’s out on video now, so better get reading — and then get viewing! I give the film four and a half nods.*

I feel I should mention, however, that Dahl’s whimsy paired with Anderson’s kooky may not strike everyone’s funny bone, but it did me and mine! Are you cussin’ me?

* Note that I give Roald Dahl and every word he ever wrote a vigorous five nods! Now go read his double autobiography: Boy and Going Solo. They’re sold together in one book now I believe. His life was even more enchanting than his stories!

Well, I’ve seen a few posts, floating around the blogiverse, about what is inside women’s purses, and what those contents say about them. I wonder what to think about this little trend, since I don’t carry a purse. Does this mean I have nothing inside me worth revealing? No little mysteries that make up the collage that is ME?

On the other hand, I’ve seen some very interesting (to me, anyway) pictures of writers’ writing spaces, and what they say about the author. To that idea I say: I likey! So, without further ado, I present my work desk, and some of the little mysteries that make up my writing self:

Okay! Points of interest:

1. Eyeglasses on the printer, rather than on my face, in spite of being THIS CLOSE to me. I guess I’m determined to be blind. Note that they are not tucked into their case three inches away, either. I live my life in the gaps between.
2. Left corner, two phones, both probably holding unheard messages from poor people that will not get a prompt callback, while I instead plunk those noise-canceling cordless earphones onto my ears and listen to podcasts. I prefer recorded people to live people.
3. Downstage right, sustenance, need I say more? Who quits for lunch, honestly. If you stop to eat, it’s just an excuse to avoid writing. REAL WRITERS power through. (If you know me, you’ll get the irony.)
4. General paper-messiness. This comes from having research materials, idea scraps, important notices from kids’ schools and tax documents all sharing space in my head as well as my desk. Can you believe I never (knock on nice cherry wood desk) am late with my bills? I thank Quicken. Heartily.
5. Nice cherry wood desk. Better give a shout-out to my husband for this lovely desk, which matches the one in the kitchen and is so much better than I deserve. Apparently I just need more linear feet of it. By the way, I noticed several years ago that an environment with lots of speckle in, say, wallpaper or draperies made me feel less relaxed than the lovely woody, smooth surroundings you see in this pic. Thank goodness my husband built such a house for my persnickety muse. Isn’t the clutter of papers a problem? Not so much.
6. Crumpled paper towel in front of speaker. Can you say: too lazy to get a proper box of tissues during allergy season?
7. Bright white reams of paper serving as footstool for short-legged writer. I may be pathetic in so many ways, but I am determined to send out (at least during manic phases) crisp, clean, lovely copies of my work to real live industry mavens. Heaven help me.

This is a challenge to all my lovely writer friends to write me a comment with a link to your own desk photo. I want a glimpse into the genius that is you! No straightening up first, either.

I don’t normally have a very exciting life. In fact, I think most authors live fairly quiet lives, especially compared to politicians and professional sportsmen. If you want to hear about lots of great writerly action, visit Neil Gaiman’s blog, as he dips his fingers into many pies.

But since this is Amber’s blog, I want to share my thoughts on something that happened this week:

I should have known something really bad was coming down the pike, just around the corner, because lots of little things went wrong this week — involving pests, pulleys and policemen. Separate incidents.

I had finally gotten me and mine home safely, and just about put my house back in order, when I had a Feeling.

I went outside and stood on my porch and looked carefully at my dog, Pesto (the one I blogged about recently). She was sitting in the bed of her doghouse, awake and chillin’, the way she often does. So, I retrieved something from my car and went back inside again.

I had another Feeling.

I went back out to the porch and took a closer look at Pesto. She often sits a little funny in the back because of her advanced arthritis, but her front legs were positioned a little funny, too. I pet her black fur and rubbed her long, floppy ears. I noticed she was breathing a little heavy and had been drooling on her bed. So I stood back and called for her to come to me. She didn’t move. It was at this point I noticed her eyes. They’d lost their brightness, that cute thing the eyebrow moles do. She looked at me with sadness, with pleading.

I didn’t want to overreact. She’d gotten stuck places before, mostly in small holes around the pasture. She can’t use her back legs much so sometimes we drive the back end for her and she steers in the front. But because of the Feeling, I knew that this was different.

So, I grabbed my most logical child, my eight-year-old son, and told him I was concerned. I had him come out with me and we tried to help her up. Pesto tried briefly but collapsed again. My son suggested we give her some pain meds. It was a good idea, and the first pill (wedged in some cheese) she was able to get down — barely. The second pill took her a while to eat, and if you have ever given a dog cheese, you’ll know this is strange. Cheese comes only slightly behind fresh meat, in doggy cookbooks.

My son went to tell his brother and sister — what, exactly, I don’t know — while I grabbed a towel from the bathroom to use as a sling around her middle, so we could support her legs and get her up and walking. I removed the heavy lid of the doghouse, thankful for once that my husband builds even doghouses with extremely time-intensive features that you never thought you’d need.

With the kids watching and calling to Pesto, I lifted the ends of the towel around her middle, but it was no use. She wasn’t using her front legs at all now. The best I could do was move her into a more comfortable laying position, for which she gave me a look of gratitude before laying her head down.

That was the last time she moved, really.

I went right in and called the vet. It was 5:03pm on a Friday and I feared they were closed already. We have no doggie hospitals in backwoods, USA — as far as I know. I prayed someone would answer. A woman’s voice came on. After some time on hold, the woman told me I could bring Pesto in right now for emergency care. I knew what that meant. My kids knew what that meant. I told them anyway, that this was the end for Pesto. This brought our first wave of tears, but I couldn’t give in to it — I had to try and call my husband (who, in another unlucky turn, had lost his cell phone a few days before) and I had to get Pesto loaded into our car.

Fortunately, just as we were leaving, my husband’s car pulled in, so the family drove together. Pesto was awake on the ride, but didn’t raise her head to look around at all. My kids had their hands on her, speaking words of love and comfort. My husband said, “Well, Pesto, I guess this is what you have to do to get a car ride these days.” because the vet told us a year ago that her traveling days were over.

Once we carried her into the vet, batman blanket and all, we gathered around her on the concrete floor. The vet, a young woman with a frizzy brown bob, whose name I don’t even remember, took one look and said it was time. The words brought more tears, though we all knew the truth already. We could see the old girl was in pain. She was ready to be free from a body that had been holding her back.

It was simple, really. Peaceful. We each put a hand on her once more as the needles went in and the medicine stopped her breathing and then her heart. We knew she’d had a good run. Fourteen years! A breeder told me a month ago that after age twelve, a big hound lives on borrowed time. We’ve been ever so grateful that she borrowed that time for us.

We brought her body home, wrapped in the batman blanket, in a too-flimsy white cardboard box, and dug her grave in the drizzling rain. Now, instead of looking into the doghouse when we leave, we look into the field and say “see you later, Pesto.”

We know that it’s only an envelope under the dirt and rocks, though. We’ll see her later, running free on those horsey legs, ears flapping in a heavenly wind.

We love you, Pesto. We sure miss you. God be with you till we meet again.

Ms. Agnes dePesto, Jan 1996 – April 2010

Here is as little clip of the 60’s idea of the Internet. They knew how to dream big, the early computer geeks — the narrator mentions virtual schooling, and even linking up so that the “unseen brain” can analyze the student’s thoughts directly!

LiveLeak.com – First Internet Home Terminal – 1967.

The only thing I wonder if they foresaw was the vast sinkhole such technology would also be for mind-numbing and even soul-destroying activities. Hmmmm!