eat pray love

by Elizabeth Gilbert

I’ve never been a big fan of the memoir style of writing. I mean really, we all know that important people have everyday life experiences. I guess I’m generally too wrapped up in my own life to worry about theirs (I have been called insufferably self-absorbed…I prefer to think of myself as focused on consciously evolving myself). For this reason I was reluctant to read ‘eat pray love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert. Here is a normal person writing a memoir. I mean really. But while sitting in Borders one day, innocently enjoying an iced coffee (my new crack), it kept staring at me. Have you ever had a book stare at you? like the way that sometimes the cat litter box stares at you. You know you should go look. You know it needs your attention. It is relentless. So, in the spirit of adventure (which as it turns out was very appropriate to the experience) I picked it up. And almost didn’t put it back down until I was finished.

The book is billed as ‘One woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia’. The search for everything? OK, I’m in. I like a girl with ambition. The book recounts the author’s experience with divorce, and her corresponding catastrophic clinical depression. She writes ‘I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was’. She relates the turning point in her recovery as akin to sitting down in the middle of the road, in the middle of her life, and not walking one step further until she received some help. Through a series of important baby steps on her part and a bit of good fortune (I honestly believe this is necessary to any good turning point), she winds up traveling across the globe, writing this very memoir as her job - Lemonade! This is a brilliant woman. She turned the fight of her life into a fabulous career opportunity. Even if the book sucked, it would have been worth reading for this reason alone.

As is often my wont when starting a new book, I scooted over to Amazon.com to see what other readers had to say about the book. Although it scored almost 4 out of 5 stars with over 1600 reviews, the top three featured reviews were unanimously abysmal. These three reviewers ripped the book apart, calling the author ‘narcissistic, needy, and shallow’ among other things. Welllll folks, it is a book about her experience with her divorce and her depression…one would think the focus would be rather inward-searching. Two of the reviwers were men, and it’s possible they simply were not interested in what can be, admittedly, a rather girly book (during her time in Rome, the author spends a vast sum of money on pretty underwear…and then doesn’t have sex until two countries and several months later. Surely this is enough to frustrate the most patient male readers). The third reviewer was a woman who had five children, and who admitted she couldn’t understand nor relate to a woman who left a marriage ’simply’ because she didn’t want to have children. The point of the book, my dear friend, is that the decision was not simple at all.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes about her experiences with divorce, depression, travel, and spirituality with such personal style that it began to feel like she was my friend. OK, it’s possible I make friends too easily, but she was so present in the book, and so relentless in her journey toward self-awareness that it was impossible not to be drawn in. She has a beautiful yet conspiratorial writing style and a way with analogy and metaphor that bring her most intimate experiences to life. During one section of the book, she personifies Depression and Loneliness as a couple of Pinkerton Detectives who come to shake her down and interrogate her while wielding billy clubs and stinky cigars. It is truly brilliant writing, and certainly the most accurate evocation of those two miserable emotions as I’ve ever read. Now for those of you who have never suffered a bone-crushing depression and who are wondering why you would even want to read about one, I will say (spoiler alert!) that the book has a satisfyingly happy ending and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Besides which, everyone knows someone who has been depressed. If you’ve ever wondered why the heck a loved one just can’t be happy…this book may be for you. Besides which, now I want to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. I’ll be sure to put them on the list of things to review.

© Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t have any idea what the title of this review means. I didn’t either, until now. I’ve gone into the world of Disney’s High School Musical franchise, and emerged to tell the tale.

Friday, on my way home from the gym, I swung by my local movie theater to see what new movies would be opening that night. I was greeted – mid-afternoon, on a rainy day – with a horde of pre-pubescent girls (I hear we’re calling them ‘tweens’ these days). Perplexed, I parked the car and got out to investigate. As it turns out, Friday was opening day for High School Musical 3, and the entire world (except, apparently for me) is a-twitter. The theater had signs posted everywhere, announcing that they were sold out of all shows, all weekend long for HSM3.

OK, so you have almost had to be living under a rock to not have heard of High School Musical somewhere along the line. But since when did my local movie theater need security measures reminiscent of a boy band concert in the middle of a Friday afternoon? So I rolled over to Blockbuster to do some reconnaissance. That evening, I decided to make the best of it and was prepared with good food, a bottle of wine, my flannel pajamas, and a basket of nail polish nearby. I settled in for girl night with a positive attitude.

The first High School Musical opens with Troy (played by Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) meeting at the New Year’s Eve event at the resort where their families are vacationing. They are both unduly pressured into singing karaoke, and thus begins the franchise’s love affair. This, I thought grimly to myself, requires more of a suspension of disbelief than Godzilla meets Jaws and they attack New York with nuclear submarines.

Flash to the first day back to high school after Christmas break. There’s a new kid in town, and guess what? It’s Gabriella, who finds herself with her new friend Troy, and the rest of the sophomore cast, uh,  I mean class at school. Realization dawned: This is Grease, for the new millennium. For a brief moment, I got excited. I loved Grease – as did all of my friends – back in 8th grade. We were just this side of obsessed. We even tried to like Grease 2 (even then, The Critic Who Counts had good taste). Sadly, aside from the initial plot line, these two movies couldn’t be more different.

Through a series of hijinks and accidents, Troy and Gabriella win parts as the leads in the school musical. They are thwarted in this ambition by the devious drama-school queen Sharpay (yes, pronounced like the dog) and her rather flamboyant brother Ryan, the two of whom have had the lead roles in every school production since kindergarten. The cast is rounded out primarily by Troy’s best friend Chad, played by Corbin Bleu. You may have seen Corbin’s face (mostly hidden underneath a mass of perpetual-motion afro curls) on music video channels – I first came across him at the gym on the music channel and wondered who the heck he was. Obviously a Disney kid, I remember thinking. He’s got the funniest hair… and with a name like Corbin Bleu (really? Who does that to a kid? Sounds like he should be on a menu) it’s a good thing he’s gorgeous and talented.

I will grant that Grease had a relatively low production value, was corny as hell, and that no grown man should admit to loving it. But with Frenchie inches away from being a beauty school drop out (before which she had to be a high school drop out!), Rizzo having an unwanted pregnancy (before which she had to be having unprotected teenage sex), and the climax of the movie revolving around a dangerous and illegal car race, Grease had some street credibility. High School Musical is so cotton-candy sweet that it made me feel like I needed to brush my teeth. Even Sharpay isn’t irredeemable, and she comes around to the good side at the end of both the first and second installments.

Furthermore, the kids in HSM all have cooler cell phones than I do, and the boys have better highlights than me. This was so not my high school experience. I remember high school as filled with labels and groups – and who you were didn’t matter nearly as much as who you hung out with. And if you were a kid who insisted that ‘who you are’ was the most important thing, there was a group for that too…. the punk rock kids, and we hung out in the back parking lot. Disney’s got some moral value stuff going on here, be all you can be, get along with everybody, accept people’s differences. They’re also obviously promoting a fairly liberal view of personal choices – if Ryan (Sharpay’s brother) isn’t gay, I’m not a really cool girl.

I only wish that in a movie with ’school’ in the name, Disney could have placed some value on intellect. The movie is obviously written for children, but most of the kids I know are smart enough that some of this dialogue would be painful for them as well. For instance, when the captain of the Scholastic Decathlon team tells Gabriella ‘We were worse than jerks. We were mean jerks… The Decathlon is ‘whatever’, but how you feel about Troy, that’s what matters.’ This is effectively the smartest kid in the high school speaking. I am so worried about our future.

I wish I could say that I was interested to see HSM3, but I believe I’ll pass. I had to think really hard of a justification to continue watching the second movie, once I ascertained that it was simply more of the first. Here’s what I came up with: I’m hotter at 33 than I was at 23. These days there’s a whole phenomenon and subculture of older women (referred to as cougars) who date much younger men. By the time I’m 50, these boys will be my prey. I’m going to bank the four hours I spent on this project for future research.

Ten Years, My Pretty...

One final note here: On the DVD versions, there were sing-a-long options. If you select this, the lyrics to all of the songs will play across the bottom of the screen so that viewers can sing the movie like karaoke. I want to know who sings along with this, and why. Seriously – no judgement implied or given. I just want to understand. So leave me a comment, please…

High School Musical Soundtrack:

High School Musical Movie:

High School Musical 2 Soundtrack:

High School Musical 2 Movie:

High School Musical 3 Soundtrack:

Fandango

© Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.