The woods are lovely, dark and… WHAT THE %$#@?!?!?!

I have just successfully avoided being eaten by a mountain lion/zombie/mythical monster.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

My first mistake was agreeing to take the dog out in the first place. I am sick. I should be snug under a pile of blankets, with a cup of tea and an enormous bottle of cold medicine by my side. I should not be out braving the elements – no matter if this is the first kiss of spring that we’re having today – and God was teaching me a lesson just now.

My second mistake was heading into the bloody woods.

Of course, it was broad daylight – and you’d think that the monsters would have the decency to wait until nightfall to slither out.

Not so, apparently.

And how was I to know?

To make a long story short – I decided to be kind to my restless dog and took her down one of those winding “nature trails” off the main path. I figured she needed the exercise, and even though I needed to be back in bed – I thought that providence would reward me for my good deed.

Right.

I noticed that something was amiss the moment we got to the bottom of the hill and attempted to cross the small wooden bridge over the small bubbling brook.

The woods had gone completely quiet. As I mentioned before – spring has decided to drop in for a kind of preliminary visit – and the entire neighbourhood has been erupting in birdsong for two whole days now – the woods in particular. But tt was suddenly so silent that I could almost hear my own frickin’ heartbeat. I stopped. The dog stopped too.

Then, I heard a very loud rustling noise. There are no leaves on the trees as of yet – and visibility is actually terrific – so whatever large creature it was that was making the noise – I should have been able to see it. But I saw nothing. I didn’t even see any movement.

“OK,” I thought. “Deer.” They blend in well with last season’s foliage – and they can be very loud. I was actually very excited to see deer, because the dog loves them. She’s always trying to go off and play with them, and they, being deer, are always giving her the slip, but the encounters are nevertheless fun.

I started to cross the bridge to meet the deer, and I realized that the dog wouldn’t budge. It was not excited by the prospect of seeing deer at all. In fact, it was behaving very strangely – as if it was scared. This dog is never scared. I used to own a fierce and loyal Doberman whose only fear was thunderstorms, but this new dog, Zara, doesn’t even care about bad weather. Lighting, thunderclaps – bring it on, she says.

You can imagine that her behaviour immediately struck me as peculiar.

I decided that she was being a little brat, and tugged on her leash. But she refused to go anywhere. She wasn’t whining or howling, but her entire body became rigid, and she looked up at me with a very serious (who knew that Zara, of all living beings, could ever look serious?!) expression on her little face – and her eyes said, “Don’t go, you bloody idiot.”

And she turned away and looked in the direction of the noise again. It was getting closer. It must have been no more than fifteen feet away, and still I couldn’t see a damn thing.

The strange thing is – I wasn’t scared. Which is how I know that something was really wrong – I get scared when I’m not supposed to be scared, and I’m brave when I’m not supposed to be brave. This is the story of my life.

I decided to trust my dog, I turned around, and the dog took off, almost dislocating my shoulder. I had never seen her run away from anything before, but here she was, booking it back up the hill, dragging me with her with a strength I didn’t even know she possessed (she’s not a very big dog). I was running, occasionally looking back, not seeing anything, but still hearing some sort of noise, and deciding, finally, that I needed to get back up that hill and think about what was going on at the bottom later.

At the top, I was breathless. Some old dude walked by, gave me a strange look, and kept going. I didn’t say anything to him. What was I supposed to say? “Um, there’s a monster down there. Nice weather, isn’t it?”

It was probably some stupid garden snake, of course. Only why was it so loud? I don’t know. Why had the woods gone quiet (the birds are chirping away now, even as it gets darker and darker)? I don’t know. Why was my normally plucky dog so clearly worried for me? What was she running away from?

I don’t trust my instincts, not really – but I would trust a canine, any day. And I did.

Obviously, I have just survived an assassination attempt by an Orc, or something. Obviously, I should give Zara a medal, and never go into the bloody woods alone again.

Obviously.

If it ain’t broke – it will be

Can violence ever be beautiful?

For me, the short answer is yes. I say this in spite of the fact that I am usually an ardent protester against any sort of violence – political or personal. This has to do with the fact that I also know what it’s like to be small and helpless. I know what it’s like – strangely enough for someone who has gone so soft in her later years (shouldn’t it be the other way around?) – to look down at a gun in her hand and think, “oh dear, sweet, merciful God – does the steel ever feel good.”

People tell me that I have “internalized the oppressor.” It sounds too good – “internalizing” the man who creeps around from behind after dark. That’s how my memories of violence are – they are shaped like men, they smell like men.

They are part of me, and I couldn’t cut them out of myself even if I tried.

Like many people, I watch the proverbial Dance of Death and find myself mesmerized. There are no easy explanations – and no comfort to be had in this realization. It’s just something that I live with – violence is both terrible and beautiful – and beauty and terror are close cousins.

After the Twin Towers fell – some Westerners were quoted as saying that the sight was horrifyingly appealing. In most cases, they were shouted down. But maybe we should have listened closely; after all, the attraction of destruction is something that we need to understand if we try, in some small way, to prevent future 9/11’s (although who am I fookin’ kidding, right?).

I like to think that there was a time when I was essentially peaceful and innocent – set loose in a green field somewhere as a child – but the more I look at the world, the less faith I have in my own lost innocence. The way a gun feels in your palm – as if it was always meant to be there – proves otherwise.

I remember shooting tomatoes – pop – red, thick sap like fireworks in the air – pop – and the satisfaction of it – more satisfactory, even, than playing Snood. I must have been seven or eight at the time. This is some seriously crazy shit – but it’s my life. And, in the words of Humbert Humbert: it’s “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

Beauty and the “B-List”

spartaaaaaaa

Once again, Gerard Butler’s fans (a cultural phenomenon in themselves – and one that I am trying to be part of in my own small way), have inspired me to turn a critical eye on our culture in general, and film culture in particular.

A blog article recently linked to by GerardButler.net makes references to Gerry as a B-list actor. What’s the proper response?

Considering how wobbly the definition of the A-list can be these days (the “traditional” A-list is reserved for people like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, the “punk” definition – and I use the term “punk” loosely – references the likes of Paris Hilton) – there seems to be no definite answer.

The same is true of the definition of B-list actors: do we mean David Hasselhoff here (don’t get me started on clever use of terms such as C-list, or D-list – I like the simplicity of A and B, OK?)? Or David Strathairn? A fellow Butler fan insisted that Strathairn was the true embodiment of B-list, and I found myself agreeing, at least in theory.

We can argue that the B-list is divided into two major categories: the people who are being themselves, and the people who want to be someone else.

The former are the reason why, in my opinion, we ought to reclaim, or, at the very least, reconsider the term “B-list” (just as I have tried to reclaim the word “slut,” on my own sweet time).

So-called B-listers are an amazingly diverse, peculiar group of individuals. These are not “America’s sweethearts,” or “Hello” cover-boys whose micro-managed lives are beamed into millions of homes across the heartland to be consumed alongside tampon commercials and the somnambulant coverage of the latest wartime debacle. These are not the red carpet marathoners whose former nannies, bodyguards, and adulterous lovers sell their tales to supermarket tabloids and splashy Hollywood-themed news programs. These are people who, in short, do not make me want sit in a dark room for the rest of my life just so I wouldn’t have to hear their name mentioned ever again.

Ewan McGregor is probably the perfect embodiment of a “real actor”, even though he has swung a light-saber around. Ewan McGregor remains watchable, palpable, in short – a human being. Natalie Portman is another “human celebrity” in my book – even if she had more of a career as an adolescent than most people do at age thirty. It’s not the resume that counts here, you see – it’s one’s behaviour.

All of this brings me back to Gerry Butler – a man whose charisma, talent, and fabulous bone-structure are not yet part of the mainstream. Butler has taken on ambitious roles – and his latest, “300,” may make his star rise to an entirely new plane. As excited as I am for him and his fans (the ones who have been supporting him for many more years than Butler-virgins like me have known of his existence) – I do hope that Butler will continue to be himself. After all, it takes someone who doesn’t have a harem of publicists and pool-boys to slyly answer a reporter who is wondering what his subject would do if he were a woman for a day with “I’d probably make love to another woman right away.”

Every person who takes an interest in Gerard Butler has to wonder – why are Butler’s Tarts (i.e. fans) so dedicated? I believe that this has to do with the fact that he is human to them – and they are human to him. A primadonna could never have achieved that level of camaraderie with his supporters, even as he continuously worked his way up the foodchain.

And why do the Tarts strive so hard to respect this man’s privacy? Because he has a reputation for being warm and respectful right back. There is something very accessible about this man – I am speaking as someone who will never meet him – and something that, at the same time, appeals to one’s manners.

All of this might make me sound like a sourpuss who desperately wants the object of her affection to refrain from “selling out” – i.e. being noticed, and overwhelmed, by the affections of others. But even as I struggle to build my own (very different) career, I must remember to be temperate in my tastes and desires. Overexposure is boring and unhealthy in any entertainment/art job. There are people who continue to transcend it, but the majority fall into a kind of glitzy torpor; even the Beatles had to stop touring after the screaming fans had successfully drowned out their music (OK, so, I probably would have been one of those screaming fans – I admit it, I am Miniver Cheevy, born too late).

In conclusion, I’d like to insist that coming from the mouth of a discerning individual – a spot on the reclaimed B-list ought to be a major compliment (the David Hasselhoffs of this world notwithstanding). It can be a mark of pride. It be a term of endearment.

If Gerry Butler wore it so damn well – so can others.