bitterfig

I’ve developed something of a passion for the manga of Ai Yazawa, mostly Nana (I’ve devoured the first eight volumes) and also Paradise Kiss (which I’ve read the first volume of). 

 

Her series Nana was recommended to me based on a bit of Princess Tutu yuri I’d written and right before I lost my second job at Biff’s office I decided to take a chance and secured copies of the first eight volumes of the series from e-bay.  A rather significant risk, I might have hated the series, but as luck would have it Nana turns out to be one of the better manga series I’ve ever read. 

 

Basically it’s about two very different 20-year-old women, both named Nana who come to Tokyo, meet and whose lives become increasingly intertwined.   No science-fiction or supernatural elements, just a pair of girls trying to build their lives and become themselves. 

 

Nana Komatsu is an exuberant but essentially aimless young woman.  Good hearted but clueless she allows herself to drift through life in the wake of whoever she happens to be in love with.  When her friends, including her boyfriend, move to Tokyo to attend art school, she follows them.  On the train to the city she meets the other Nana, Nana Osaki.

 

Nana Osaki is a punk rock singer with very definite goals.  Her previous band, Blast, was a local success in the small city she is from but that ended when their bassist Ren left to join the major label band Trapnest.  Ren was also Nana’s lover and he asked her to come with him but she declined as it would have meant being relegated to “rock star’s girlfriend.”  Their affair was put on hold and in Tokyo, Nana O is determined to become a success at least equal to Ren, with her new band.    

 

Nano O is guarded as Nana K is open, sharing little about her painful childhood or her personal life.  Yet her music has the ability to move people deeply.  Through her music, she seems to speak for them. 

 

While there’s some cutesy stuff, overall Nana is much more adult- as in grown-up, than most manga I’ve read.  Also it’s more novelistic, things seem to develop, grow and deepen with each installment. 

 

Also it has a sensibility I love. 

 

While so much manga seems to focus on students in school uniforms who aspire to the student council, Yazawa’s characters are hip bohemians, artist and musicians in Nana, an enclave of edgy fashion designers in Paradise Kiss.   They shop at thrift stores and vintage shops and garner inspiration from the Sex Pistols and Velvet Goldmine- definitely my kind of scene.  In a way Nana reminds me somewhat painfully of my college years, especially Nana K’s desire to be included in Nana O’s circle of punk musicians.  

 

Though I’m quite late to the party, I’ve started watching the BBC series Torchwood.  I polished off the first season on DVD and am two episodes into season 2 via downloads.  Overall I like it quite a bit.  Season One was fairly uneven.  There were some good episodes but some truly baffling suspensions of logic were required (I’m sorry, but any solution that involves reading the complete works of Emily Dickinson aloud is not acceptable).   Still, it’s amazing what you can forgive of a show that makes just about everybody in its entire cast more or less bisexual.    

 

And when I say everyone I mean everyone.  The leader of Torchwood (an alien hunting organization that’s sort of the UK equivalent to Men In Black) Captain Jack Harkness  openly admits to lovers of both sexes, is sexually involved with a member of his team but still manages to have a kind of “unresolved sexual tension” thing going with Gwen.  In addition to holding up her part of the UST with Jack, Gwen has a boyfriend and has an affair with the team’s medic Owen.  This doesn’t stop her from kissing a woman processed by an alien in the second episode of the show.  Computer expert Toshiko, who seems to have a crush on Owen has an affair with an alien who is female in human form.    An episode is devoted to another team member, Ianto’s efforts to resurrect his girlfriend but it’s gradually revealed in future episodes that he’s become involved with Jack.  Even Owen, a compulsive womanizer and seemingly the straightest member of Torchwood makes out with a guy in the series premiere and during an apocalyptic moment suggests that both Ianto and Toshiko have end of the world sex with him. 

 

I sort of love this kind of stuff. 

 

Season One had a lot of promise which I hope Season Two will deliver on.  It definitely seemed to be off to a good start in the first episode (appropriately titled “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” when Spike (yes, that Spike—Buffy Spike) shows up looking for Jack to be his Drusilla.  Okay, it’s not Spike.  His name is Captain John Hart.  He’s brunette and American.  And he’s not a vampire, he’s some sort of time agent thing that I’d know about if I’d actually watched Dr. Who before watching the spin-off but basically it’s Spike engaging in violent making out with a really cute (if full of himself) guy and in my book, that is pretty stunning. 

 

On the literary front I just finished reading Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith.  It’s the third novel I’ve read by Waters (I admit it, I have a thing for Victorian lesbians).  The others were Tipping the Velvet (my favorite) and Affinity.   

 

I’d seen a BBC adaptation of Fingersmith a couple of years ago so I knew the basic outlines of the plot, which is probably a good thing.  I’m less concerned with being surprised than I am with knowing what’s going on and Fingersmith is full of the sort of twists and turns and reversals that often times confuse the hell out of me.  Knowing where the story was going freed me up to focus on the characters, the wonderful period dialogue and the rich atmosphere that Water’s evokes.  This atmosphere is by turns sensual and sickening.  Water has a way of making you smell the 19^th century and what with chamberpots and close rooms on rainy nights reeking of dog and unwashed bodies it doesn’t always smell good. 

 

In Fingersmith, Waters seems to deliberately set out to write a sort of post-modern  Dickensonian novel brimming over with melodramatic contrivances such as switched babies, ghastly uncles, and dastardly plots as well as expanding Dickens social themes to include issues of gender and sexuality as well as wealth and class. 

 

Another bit of post-modern pseudo-Victoriana I’ve indulged in lately is Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, about a pair of rival illusionists.  This was my second viewing of The Prestige.  I have to admit my first left me rather baffled.  As I said, I’m not so good a following plots and The Prestige is extremely complicated, a puzzle of a movie in much the same way Nolan’s Memento was.

 

The film’s complexity is encapsulated by its framing device—much of the movie concerns a man reading another man’s diary about reading his own diary.  Follow?  Of course both diaries were intended to be read and are full of deliberate misinformation.  Appropriate for a film that’s central themes are doubles, the creation of illusion and how things are not what they seem to be.  I definitely got much more out of the Prestige by seeing it a second time and I’d like to watch it again just to clear up some details I didn’t really follow.  Also having watched it, I’d rather like to see Nolan’s contribution to the Batman mythology.  I’ve been intensely interested in Batman as a sort of masculine   archetype since I was a teenager but somehow I never got around to seeing Batman Begins. 

I managed to drag myself out this morning to get some groceries, including some gel-caps that seem to work better than the generic brand Sudafed I’d been taking. I’m not feeling dizzy or in pain anymore but my nose is still running like water. I don’t know what I’m going to day about work tomorrow. I’m scheduled for a long mid-shift, not sure if I’m going to be up to it.

Yesterday I called Fabrizio, who coordinates paid time off and insurance at the Market. He says that if I get a note from my doctor saying that my absences have to do with my medical condition he might be able to take off some of the points I’ve built up. I talked to my doctor today and she’s going to mail a letter. I feel kind of guilty about doing this, like I’m getting away with something but I really think that my chronic depression and eating disorder have really contributed to my recent health problems. Also I’m not getting anything out of it. I still won’t be paid for the time I’ve missed I just won’t be penalized for it which will be done less thing for me to worry about.

I watched Sleepy Hollow last night. Christopher Walken as the Hessian is so terrifying yet sexy… those filed teeth… though the image that struck me the most was the two white blonde little girls he comes upon in the forest one of whom grows up to become a shabby woodland witch, the other Miranda Richardson’s ornate and murderous lady of the manor. They rather reminded me of the dark haired sisters, DJ and Azkadellia in the Wizard of Oz revision Tin Man I watched last month. Two sisters who stumble upon something evil and because of it go in opposite ways. I sometimes feel as if my sister and I are something like that. She managed to fight her way out of whatever darkness possessed us but I’m still living in it.

During the winter when I can’t exercise outside I watch DVD’s of television shows and anime while I work out inside.  I find things like the fixed scene length (for the purpose of commercials) and the repetition of the theme song and closing credits very reassuring. 

So far this year since I put my bike away in November I’ve worked my way through two cancelled American network television series-- Twin Peaks (both seasons) and Birds of Prey (a 2002 WB adaptation of the DC comic book that only aired for 13 episodes)—as well as the Japanese animated series The Rose of Versailles (aka Lady Oscar) and am currently about halfway through Princess Tutu. 

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Things have worked out so that I’ve ended up with a bit of time off for Christmas after all. I got sent home several hours early on Christmas Eve and had Christmas day off because the market was closed. Yesterday I was supposed to work 1:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. but the supervisor forgot to put me on the schedule and since my tire blew out on the way to work I decided not to push the issue and ended up not working. And today I was scheduled off at the market and am working at Biff’s. I guess I could have gone to New York for Christmas after all but I think it’s better that I stayed home and rested instead of dealing with holiday travel and family. Maybe now I won’t be quite as tense and strung out when I do go back to work. 


Yesterday I wound up spending a lot of time in garages. My car was making a grinding noise when I used the brakes so I took it in yesterday morning. It was ready just on time for me to head to work where I hit a curb and popped my tire. This was probably very unwise but I drove the two blocks to the service station with the tire flat because I didn’t want to spend the extra money for a tow truck. When I was having my tire fixed I think the man at the service station was trying to come on to me. He offered me part of his chocolate bar and then later sort of put his hand on my waist and squeezed. I’m honestly not sure if he was being sleazy or friendly, I’m not good at calling these things. 


After I got all that taken care of I went home and devoted myself to pop fantasy. I’m reading New Moon, the second book in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, which is a sort of vampire romance. I have mixed feelings about the series. The first volume mostly annoyed me because every male the heroine, Bella, encountered seemed to be attracted to her despite her constant reassurances that she was plain and klutzy. However when it got to the history of the vampire I found myself drawn in. Frankly I’m much more interested in vampires than high school students. 


Overall, New Moon seems like a much better book so far but I find the romance at the heart of it, between the human Bella and vampire Edward sort of disturbing. He basically has every advantage in the relationship, indulging or ending it (to protect Bella) as the mood strikes him. I know this series is very popular and that sort of bothers me because it’s about a girl who makes the boy she loves the center of her world. Yet I’m done that, as a teenager and yes, as an adult woman and it seems to capture how that feels (it feels really fucking bad). 


Perhaps because the relationship with Edward is so uneven and all consuming I can’t help but find myself hoping Bella ends up with Jacob (her friend who’s a native American, two years younger and who I think is going to end up being a werewolf.) Jacob at least doesn’t spend all his time protecting her and doing things against her will that are for her own good. 


I’ve also been watching the Sci-fi channel mini-series Tin Man, which updates my beloved The Wizard of Oz. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of adaptations of this story I can absorb. My favorites include Wicked (both the book and musical), Geoff Ryman’s novel Was, and David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Tin Man takes a science fiction approach involving the search for an emerald that contains vast magical power. The Dorothy figure is DG (the always lovely Zooey Deschanel) but she’s also an Ozma of sorts. Not an ordinary girl from Kansas at all but the lost princess of the Outer Zones (O.Z.) hidden away in another world. The wicked witch is her mad, malevolent older sister Azkadellia. It’s pretty entertaining thus far (I’m 2/3 of the way through) though I wish I had it on DVD. I’m watching AVI’s on my computer so the picture is about three inches in size. I really like Alan Cumming as Glitch, a scarecrow figure who’s literally had part of his brain removed (of course it should be noted that I adore Alan Cumming in general and therefore like just about everything I’ve ever seen him in). I also like the storyline with the two sisters, the flashbacks to their past together and how Azkadellia became evil. 


Sometimes I think I spend entirely too much time consuming fantasies and not enough on my own life. Of course sometimes I think that fantasies are the only thing that protects me from my own life. I did make it through Christmas intact which is a positive step. I felt a little sad that I was on my own but nothing too bad. 


I often make an effort not to get involved with others but recently I’ve been taking tentative steps towards one of my co-workers to whom I’m rather attracted. Not deli-boy, who was glamorous but totally beyond my reach. This is a guy I’ve actually had conversations with who doesn’t have a girl friend and I think seems kind of interested. I worry though that I’m reading the situation completely wrong and will make a fool of myself. For starters he’s about 10 years younger than I am. I just finished watching the Twin Peaks boxset and I’m worried that I’m the equivalent of Nadine running amok at Twin Peaks High. He might think of me as this pathetic old lady, not someone he’d be interested in at all. Well, since I’m not drinking I don’t have to worry about coming on too strong. My sober persona tends to be very, very restrained. 

Still watching the Twin Peaks box set—I’m at the point where Fox Mulder shows up wearing a dress. 

 

I watched Caligula the other night.  Wee Malcolm McDowell as the mad Roman emperor—it was every bit as horrific as I’ve always heard it was but at least I now know where my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer character, Drusilla gets her name from Caligula’s sister/wife.  How is it that I just figured this out?  I re-read Robert Graves’ Claudius novels in 2002, how could I have missed it? 

In my last post I made it sound like I was pretty much at the end of my rope but overall I’m not doing so bad.  I was dreading work this week but I’ve managed to make it through several days of holiday craziness intact* and though tomorrow promises to be non-stop busy at least it’s a short shift—8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. 

 

The last time I was in to Biff’s office he lent me his brand new not even opened yet copy of the Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition (he’s so wrapped up in the business he’ll probably never have a chance to watch it himself so doesn’t mind lending it out.)  I’ve watched the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me several times, read and re-read my copy of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch and endured many terrible movies and television shows because they featured Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer) or Sherilyn Fenn (Audrey Horne) but I’ve actually only ever watched a couple episodes of the television show.  When it came out in 1990 it aired on ABC and at the time we didn’t have cable and had very sporadic television reception.  I was able the pilot and the first few episodes then we lost reception entirely.  When the second season came out I was at college where I didn’t have access to television at all.

 

Biff was wondering if Twin Peaks would appear dated now that it’s close to 20 years old but it’s really done in such a way that it seems very much out of time.  While things like the technology and the FBI forensics and Laura’s cocaine use are contemporary much of the show seems like it might be set in the 1950’s.  The costuming is very deliberately vintage as is the music (no rock, juke boxes in Twin Peaks play only jazz and swing) and much of the dialogue has an old movie feel to it.  While the lurid, sensational aspects of Twin Peaks are what I remember the best there’s also a lot of very sly humor in the series thus far, just in the interactions and the way the characters respond (or don’t respond) to each other and the strange things that delight them.  I love the scene where Ben Horne’s brother returns from France bearing brie and butter baguette sandwiches and the two brothers are eating these huge sandwiches reminiscing with their mouths full ignoring and being ignored by the rest of the family.  Watching the series also makes me realize what a huge impression it made on my budding sexuality.  I hadn’t realized it but I tend to channel a variation of Audrey Horne’s little girl coyness when I try to be sultry. 

 

*When I say craziness I mean craziness.  The day was full of disasters starting with a customer who got near hysterical because she her turkey didn’t have a barcode on it.  While a barcode was obtained (a three minute process) she stood at my register and loudly prophesized doom to anyone who would listen.  Later there was a whole diverse array of problems ranging from the register I was at not taking debit cards (which nearly sparked a racial incident—don’t ask), the computer failing to recognize a certain brand of wine as wine and therefore refusing to give the 10% discount we give if you get more than 6 bottles, and the Holiday table neglecting to put barcodes on side dishes.  For a while there it seemed like I was calling the supervisor every five minutes over something.  When I finished for the day I left them a box of organic truffles for putting up with me.