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V. New Moon Opening Night Extravaganza
So this is it. New Moon's official opening night, which as predicted is provoking strong reactions. The Twilighters are going gaga even though most of them probably went to the midnight showings, and the anti-Twilighters want to set them on fire. Me, I find myself not caring really, as can be evidenced by the fact that I've been at this for a while now and am only at chapter five. There's a good way to sum this up though, I think.
"For you, the day New Moon graced your theaters was the most important day of your life. But for me ... it was Friday."
I never intended to have this finished by the day the movie came out. I'm too much of a procrastinator by nature and there are many, many things I would rather do than read some book I don't get into very much. So I get easily distracted by video games, friends, better books and movies, watching milk curdle, that sort of thing. However, I do intend to see this through, if only because I said I would and I figure there'll be a nice feeling of accomplishment from it even if I don't get any more comments other than the few I've already gotten.
So in a special edition, not only will you be getting my review of Chapter Five, I'll link you to some thoughts on the New Moon movie, since the only way I'm ever going to see it myself anytime soon is if I'm going with friends, and at least one of them is a female who will be making out with me throughout the boring parts. Maybe later in the book will convince me otherwise, but so far it's not good enough to permit emasculation.
In any case, now for someone who's way too good to be an opening act for my amateur ass. Here's Bob Chipman of The Escapist with his thoughts on New Moon.
CHAPTER FIVE: CHEATER (My Title: Two Wrongs Make A Right, And There's Enough Wrongs For A Left Here)
We're gonna try something just a bit different this time. Please observe the following image.
In my left hand (on your right) is an unopened 2-liter bottle of Sunny Select Real Dr. soda. For the uninitiated, this is a store brand knockoff of Dr. Pepper, one of my all time favorite sodas. I got it for eighty-three cents. In my right hand (your left) is a shot glass I won at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk last year but haven't had much opportunity to use since I don't drink much. Yes, I decided to spice things up, I'd play a little drinking game. Nothing as sophisticated as the various Twilight-related drinking games I've already seen out there, and obviously not involving any alcohol. If something happens in this chapter that I approve of, I'll take a shot. We'll see how much of the soda is consumed with this approach. I also figure that maybe it'll help the book dig itself out of its current hole, because I'll be looking for things to like so I can drink.
So anyhow, last time, my cat was scartching the couch and would have had this five-hundred-plus page monstrosity chucked at it if I hadn't decided to give up on the last few pages of last chapter. We've fast-forwarded I don't know how far to Newton's, so I'm guessing this is Saturday, which is tomorrow. It's the afternoon, and Mike Newton is suggesting that Bella go home. It was a slow afternoon, and the only two customers are busy trying to one-up each other with stories from the trail. I'm guessing Newton's is a outdoor supplies store, or something like that, which makes me wonder why the girl who went emo and got lost in the woods two chapters ago is working there. Then again, as klutzy as she is, waiting tables probably isn't her speed either.
Bella notes that everything seems oddly close and loud today, as if she were having a hangover. Obviously she's coming down off of whatever crazy high she had last night that made her hallucinate about James and hear Edward's voice, and whatever nightmares were associated by it. Thankfully we're saved from more whining about this because she can't tune out the hikers. One of them has dark brown hair but an orange beard and looked like he just came fresh from the mountains, and the other is described as having a face that was "tanned and wind-whipped into an impressive leathery crust."
...
Okay, I'll drink to that, I guess. Good to know that there are people who aren't impossibly good-looking in this piece.
Orangebeard is busy telling Leatherface about some gynormous black bear he saw by the trail, and Leatherface isn't buying it because black bears don't get that big. Orangebeard insists that the bear was taller on all fours than Leatherface and as thick as a house, so Leatherface takes the mick out of him. Orangebeard turns to Mike and asks him if there had been any warning about bears in the vicinity. Mike takes the opportunity to try and sell "bear-safe canisters", and Bella takes the opportunity to leave. I'll drink now too, cause I figure the next couple of pages will suck too much to promote it.
Bella, predictably, falls back into being trapped inside her own head, and since she doesn't want to go back to an empty house (I figure Charlie's at work, since I imagine the chief works Saturdays), she just drives around aimlessly. More accurately, she's driving around cluelessly, because eventually she's barely keeping the rules of the road in mind. She gushes about her nightmares and how much pain they cause her for a couple of pages in the process. I'll give her props (though not enough to drink to) over having a pretty realistic nightmare. She's not afraid of ghosts or zombies or anything that typically induces fear, but she's afraid of nothingness, of searching and searching for so long that she forgets what she's searching for and wonders if there really is absolutely nothing for her. On the other hand, I find it a little hard to swallow because Bella never seemed to be this deep before, and even if it was it all ties back to Edward anyhow.
Edward's last words, specifically "It will be as if I'd never existed," are still hitting Bella hard enough to sideline her even four months later. There is a brief moment where it seems like she'll redeem herself, thinking that maybe in several years time when she gets over it, she can look back fondly on her months with Edward as the best time of her life, and be thankful that he could give her that much. Naturally, she ruins it by wondering what will happen if she never gets over the pain, which makes me want to smack her one and tell her that she isn't going to get better unless she tries. She'll respond that she's trying, and I'll just smack her again and tell her to really try, and try hard, and not just be some empty shell that Charlie or whomever has to prop up. I'd say she oughta keep happy and productive and healthy for when Edward sees the light and comes back, but mentioning Edward's name will probably case Bella to flatline again.
However, what really makes me smile is that Bella apparently agrees with me in thinking that Edward's promise is stupid and impossible, and that just taking away gifts and pictures won't cause Edward to cease to exist, because he lives on in the one place that truly matters: Bella's heart. Sure, Bella doesn't really say it like that and instead mentions that her looks have changed to the point where she feels that if she were beautiful and seen from a distance, she might be mistaken for a vampire. So even though Bella's agreeing with me in a whiny and semi-petulant kind of way, I'll take the small victory and the drink.
Now things get dangerously stupid, because Bella now starts to rationalize that Edward can't keep his promise, she sees no reason to keep hers any longer. She's gone from "Edward made an impossible promise, woe is me," to "Edward broke his promise, so I'm gonna break mine now, woe is me."
"There's no reason to avoid recklessness, no reason why I shouldn't get to be stupid," Bella says to herself. So basically, Bella's going to spearhead a revival of Jackass in Forks. Well, if she sets herself on fire like two of these other fools did, I guess it saves Darwin and me the trouble?
So after some more florid language, Bella decides to get out of the truck, since she already stopped when she realized that she's in no condition to drive (another drink for realizing it and being responsible), and realizes that in her haze, she basically parked just right for blocking somebody's driveway, I'm surprised she didn't drive on the sidewalk and hit an animal, or maybe she did but it was glossed over. In any case, we're treated to a florid telling of how Bella saw a couple of motorcycles on the lawn, and an infodump about how Charlie hates motorcycles because whenever there's an accident involving one, it usually means somebody's a smear on the road. Charlie can think of several negative words to describe motorcycles. Like reckless. And stupid. The wheels in Bella's head are turning now, though they don't complete many revolutions before she's marching up to the front door.
The family that lives in the house whose driveway is being blocked by Bella also have kids who go to the high school, because this is a small town and everybody knows each other in a small town. I'd drink to being reminded of Cheers, but that's a product of my own brain and not of this book. The younger one answers the door is surprised to see her, but Bella launches right into asking how much he wants for the bike. Conveniently, probably a bit too much so, the kid just tells her to take the bikes if she wants to, because apparently his mom made his dad put them out there so they'd be taken out with the garbage. The kid talks her into taking both bikes, since she could scavenge for parts, which makes good sense. Too bad the convenience of the plot invalidates the drink.
Now Bella hasn't thought things through enough to know what she wants to do with the motorcycles. They're reckless and stupid, and so is she right now, but there's nothing threatening about a busted bike. Here comes another convenient memory, as she remembers that while her truck was owned by family friend and Quileute chief Billy Black, his son Jacob did a very good job of keeping it working. If he could keep an old truck in good stead, surely he could do the same for bikes, right?
So surprise number two comes as Bella calls her dad at work, and he finds out that no, nothing is wrong, she just needs directions to the House of Black. With them in hand, she heads off. The sound of the engine naturally tips off Jacob, who comes out to meet her halfway. The next several pages introduces a very refreshing change in Bella. Specifically, the first flash of life I've seen ... well, ever. She's surprised to actually be happy to see Jacob, mind you, but this is more than I've seen. She actually feels comfortable to at the Black residence, since there's no painful memories to get trapped in, though on the way up she wasn't wholly looking forward to seeing Billy, since he had been opposed to her association with the Cullens. I don't know if I covered it before, but the relationship between Quileutes and the vampires are sort of like what you'd get if Asa Harman McCoy never got killed and the Hatfields and McCoys just glared at each other. Kinda like a mildly cold war.
Bella asks Jacob about fixing the bikes, and Jacob instantly agrees. Whether he's doing it for Bella or because he's just a mechanical junkie is left for speculation. He gets offended when Bella says she'll bankroll the project, but seems very pleased when Bella instead offers to give him the other bike in exchange for lessons on top of it. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the latter is also an indicator of interest in Bella, since I was reminded of a line from Iron Fist, the sixth book of the Star Wars X-Wing book series by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston: "Few things make a male feel as grand as the opportunity to teach a young, fascinated female." Although Bella is two years older than Jacob, so I wonder how the dynamic works in that case.
There isn't much else to tell here. The bikes are being moved, Jacob's cool with keeping this all on the downlow, and Bella's using money from her college fund to get the parts needed. As Bella puts it, "Only a teenage boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn't see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods." Granted, Bella did note that she needed to rope it in a little bit because when she proposed a joint birthday party for her and Jacob after they realize they both missed each other's birthdays, Jacob's eyes sparkled a little too much when he said it was a date. However, I recall something I mentioned five weeks ago when I started this thing.
A vampire is a woman who exploits or ruins her lover.
Here we have Bella sort of taking advantage of a young boy who seems to like her to be reckless and stupid ... because it means she can hear the voice of the guy she really loves. Good thing the chapter ended, otherwise my soda would stay forever closed, I think.
RATING: BAD!
I originally had higher hopes for this chapter, because it was short and at first glance it seemed to get things moving. But even though it is short, Stephenie Meyer's florid language + Bella's melodrama + seeing Jacob kinda get used = me being pissed off. I was going to take another picture to show how much of the soda I drank, but I don't think there's really a noticable difference. Maybe if I'd used the eighteen-ounce plastic cup instead of my shotglass, but I figured that'd be too easy, and then I'd be more preoccupied with drinking the soda. Really, if all it took was over-dramatization to be good, then I ought to be a genius. Gah!
COMING NEXT SCENE: Bella's charm's a joke, she's broke, and her love life is DOA.
We're gonna try something just a bit different this time. Please observe the following image.
In my left hand (on your right) is an unopened 2-liter bottle of Sunny Select Real Dr. soda. For the uninitiated, this is a store brand knockoff of Dr. Pepper, one of my all time favorite sodas. I got it for eighty-three cents. In my right hand (your left) is a shot glass I won at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk last year but haven't had much opportunity to use since I don't drink much. Yes, I decided to spice things up, I'd play a little drinking game. Nothing as sophisticated as the various Twilight-related drinking games I've already seen out there, and obviously not involving any alcohol. If something happens in this chapter that I approve of, I'll take a shot. We'll see how much of the soda is consumed with this approach. I also figure that maybe it'll help the book dig itself out of its current hole, because I'll be looking for things to like so I can drink.
So anyhow, last time, my cat was scartching the couch and would have had this five-hundred-plus page monstrosity chucked at it if I hadn't decided to give up on the last few pages of last chapter. We've fast-forwarded I don't know how far to Newton's, so I'm guessing this is Saturday, which is tomorrow. It's the afternoon, and Mike Newton is suggesting that Bella go home. It was a slow afternoon, and the only two customers are busy trying to one-up each other with stories from the trail. I'm guessing Newton's is a outdoor supplies store, or something like that, which makes me wonder why the girl who went emo and got lost in the woods two chapters ago is working there. Then again, as klutzy as she is, waiting tables probably isn't her speed either.
Bella notes that everything seems oddly close and loud today, as if she were having a hangover. Obviously she's coming down off of whatever crazy high she had last night that made her hallucinate about James and hear Edward's voice, and whatever nightmares were associated by it. Thankfully we're saved from more whining about this because she can't tune out the hikers. One of them has dark brown hair but an orange beard and looked like he just came fresh from the mountains, and the other is described as having a face that was "tanned and wind-whipped into an impressive leathery crust."
...
Okay, I'll drink to that, I guess. Good to know that there are people who aren't impossibly good-looking in this piece.
Orangebeard is busy telling Leatherface about some gynormous black bear he saw by the trail, and Leatherface isn't buying it because black bears don't get that big. Orangebeard insists that the bear was taller on all fours than Leatherface and as thick as a house, so Leatherface takes the mick out of him. Orangebeard turns to Mike and asks him if there had been any warning about bears in the vicinity. Mike takes the opportunity to try and sell "bear-safe canisters", and Bella takes the opportunity to leave. I'll drink now too, cause I figure the next couple of pages will suck too much to promote it.
Bella, predictably, falls back into being trapped inside her own head, and since she doesn't want to go back to an empty house (I figure Charlie's at work, since I imagine the chief works Saturdays), she just drives around aimlessly. More accurately, she's driving around cluelessly, because eventually she's barely keeping the rules of the road in mind. She gushes about her nightmares and how much pain they cause her for a couple of pages in the process. I'll give her props (though not enough to drink to) over having a pretty realistic nightmare. She's not afraid of ghosts or zombies or anything that typically induces fear, but she's afraid of nothingness, of searching and searching for so long that she forgets what she's searching for and wonders if there really is absolutely nothing for her. On the other hand, I find it a little hard to swallow because Bella never seemed to be this deep before, and even if it was it all ties back to Edward anyhow.
Edward's last words, specifically "It will be as if I'd never existed," are still hitting Bella hard enough to sideline her even four months later. There is a brief moment where it seems like she'll redeem herself, thinking that maybe in several years time when she gets over it, she can look back fondly on her months with Edward as the best time of her life, and be thankful that he could give her that much. Naturally, she ruins it by wondering what will happen if she never gets over the pain, which makes me want to smack her one and tell her that she isn't going to get better unless she tries. She'll respond that she's trying, and I'll just smack her again and tell her to really try, and try hard, and not just be some empty shell that Charlie or whomever has to prop up. I'd say she oughta keep happy and productive and healthy for when Edward sees the light and comes back, but mentioning Edward's name will probably case Bella to flatline again.
However, what really makes me smile is that Bella apparently agrees with me in thinking that Edward's promise is stupid and impossible, and that just taking away gifts and pictures won't cause Edward to cease to exist, because he lives on in the one place that truly matters: Bella's heart. Sure, Bella doesn't really say it like that and instead mentions that her looks have changed to the point where she feels that if she were beautiful and seen from a distance, she might be mistaken for a vampire. So even though Bella's agreeing with me in a whiny and semi-petulant kind of way, I'll take the small victory and the drink.
Now things get dangerously stupid, because Bella now starts to rationalize that Edward can't keep his promise, she sees no reason to keep hers any longer. She's gone from "Edward made an impossible promise, woe is me," to "Edward broke his promise, so I'm gonna break mine now, woe is me."
"There's no reason to avoid recklessness, no reason why I shouldn't get to be stupid," Bella says to herself. So basically, Bella's going to spearhead a revival of Jackass in Forks. Well, if she sets herself on fire like two of these other fools did, I guess it saves Darwin and me the trouble?
So after some more florid language, Bella decides to get out of the truck, since she already stopped when she realized that she's in no condition to drive (another drink for realizing it and being responsible), and realizes that in her haze, she basically parked just right for blocking somebody's driveway, I'm surprised she didn't drive on the sidewalk and hit an animal, or maybe she did but it was glossed over. In any case, we're treated to a florid telling of how Bella saw a couple of motorcycles on the lawn, and an infodump about how Charlie hates motorcycles because whenever there's an accident involving one, it usually means somebody's a smear on the road. Charlie can think of several negative words to describe motorcycles. Like reckless. And stupid. The wheels in Bella's head are turning now, though they don't complete many revolutions before she's marching up to the front door.
The family that lives in the house whose driveway is being blocked by Bella also have kids who go to the high school, because this is a small town and everybody knows each other in a small town. I'd drink to being reminded of Cheers, but that's a product of my own brain and not of this book. The younger one answers the door is surprised to see her, but Bella launches right into asking how much he wants for the bike. Conveniently, probably a bit too much so, the kid just tells her to take the bikes if she wants to, because apparently his mom made his dad put them out there so they'd be taken out with the garbage. The kid talks her into taking both bikes, since she could scavenge for parts, which makes good sense. Too bad the convenience of the plot invalidates the drink.
Now Bella hasn't thought things through enough to know what she wants to do with the motorcycles. They're reckless and stupid, and so is she right now, but there's nothing threatening about a busted bike. Here comes another convenient memory, as she remembers that while her truck was owned by family friend and Quileute chief Billy Black, his son Jacob did a very good job of keeping it working. If he could keep an old truck in good stead, surely he could do the same for bikes, right?
So surprise number two comes as Bella calls her dad at work, and he finds out that no, nothing is wrong, she just needs directions to the House of Black. With them in hand, she heads off. The sound of the engine naturally tips off Jacob, who comes out to meet her halfway. The next several pages introduces a very refreshing change in Bella. Specifically, the first flash of life I've seen ... well, ever. She's surprised to actually be happy to see Jacob, mind you, but this is more than I've seen. She actually feels comfortable to at the Black residence, since there's no painful memories to get trapped in, though on the way up she wasn't wholly looking forward to seeing Billy, since he had been opposed to her association with the Cullens. I don't know if I covered it before, but the relationship between Quileutes and the vampires are sort of like what you'd get if Asa Harman McCoy never got killed and the Hatfields and McCoys just glared at each other. Kinda like a mildly cold war.
Bella asks Jacob about fixing the bikes, and Jacob instantly agrees. Whether he's doing it for Bella or because he's just a mechanical junkie is left for speculation. He gets offended when Bella says she'll bankroll the project, but seems very pleased when Bella instead offers to give him the other bike in exchange for lessons on top of it. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the latter is also an indicator of interest in Bella, since I was reminded of a line from Iron Fist, the sixth book of the Star Wars X-Wing book series by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston: "Few things make a male feel as grand as the opportunity to teach a young, fascinated female." Although Bella is two years older than Jacob, so I wonder how the dynamic works in that case.
There isn't much else to tell here. The bikes are being moved, Jacob's cool with keeping this all on the downlow, and Bella's using money from her college fund to get the parts needed. As Bella puts it, "Only a teenage boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn't see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods." Granted, Bella did note that she needed to rope it in a little bit because when she proposed a joint birthday party for her and Jacob after they realize they both missed each other's birthdays, Jacob's eyes sparkled a little too much when he said it was a date. However, I recall something I mentioned five weeks ago when I started this thing.
A vampire is a woman who exploits or ruins her lover.
Here we have Bella sort of taking advantage of a young boy who seems to like her to be reckless and stupid ... because it means she can hear the voice of the guy she really loves. Good thing the chapter ended, otherwise my soda would stay forever closed, I think.
RATING: BAD!
I originally had higher hopes for this chapter, because it was short and at first glance it seemed to get things moving. But even though it is short, Stephenie Meyer's florid language + Bella's melodrama + seeing Jacob kinda get used = me being pissed off. I was going to take another picture to show how much of the soda I drank, but I don't think there's really a noticable difference. Maybe if I'd used the eighteen-ounce plastic cup instead of my shotglass, but I figured that'd be too easy, and then I'd be more preoccupied with drinking the soda. Really, if all it took was over-dramatization to be good, then I ought to be a genius. Gah!
COMING NEXT SCENE: Bella's charm's a joke, she's broke, and her love life is DOA.
YOU!
(Anonymous) 2009-11-27 10:56 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2009-12-08 12:22 am (UTC)(link)