Twilight twitterpation

I'm pretty perplexed lately about the excitement, particularly among adults, over the Twilight series. While working at the Peninsula Daily News and covering the small town of Forks, I was one of the first reporters to actually cover this story (back when Stephanie Meyer had still never even visited the many places in her books.)

I remember being assigned to cover her big visit to Forks where she was doing a reading of Twilight, which was nothing more than an event to create buzz for the book's sequel. Teenage girls flocked from all over the country and even Canada to meet Meyer and visit the coastal timber town of 3,000. It was the middle of summer with 80-degree weather and all of them came wearing rain jackets expecting to relive what they read in the book. Many of them were squealing with delight about visiting Forks High School and begging their parents to move to a desolate area rampant with poverty, isolation, and all the problems that come along with it.

I have to admit, I was less than impressed with Meyer and even less impressed with the portion of the book she read. Perhaps it was just the jealous writer in me feeling frustrated that a woman who never paid her dues in the world of writing got published with a book about a place and people she knew nothing about.

However, I was amused at the excitement this book created in all these teenage girls because the real Forks is pretty rough around the edges—to say the least. It's the sort of place where you go to a restaurant and, after placing and paying for your order, the waitress asks if you'd eat something else because the cook was having an off day and made the wrong item. When you kindly say no, because you want what you ordered and paid for, the waitress walks away annoyed and you end up feeling bad for being difficult in a situation that only Forks can provide. All the while, old-timers from the days of the timber boom with weathered faces and rough hands are sipping their coffee and looking at you like you're nothing but a city-slicker who can't roll with the punches.

So, when I saw all the giddiness in these girls' eyes over a small town that has seen more hard days than any town should, I felt compelled to purchase Twilight and see what all the excitement was about. The book reminded me of a candy bar. Something that you get a craving for, but then halfway through it causes a stomach ache from all the sugar. I couldn't even finish it.

I'm all for fiction and vampire romance, but it just didn't work for me.  It was desperately trying to have an air of authenticity, but it just wasn't connected enough to the reality of life on the Olympic Peninsula. The description of the area felt contrived, and as Meyer admitted—researched solely on the Internet. I also didn't feel an emotional connection to the characters, probably because I was an adult and not a teenager.

A few months later, to my complete surprise, this book and its sequel started flying off the shelves among both teenagers and adults. I was happy the attention was bringing some much-needed cash flow into the struggling town of Forks and its surrounding areas.  However, this happiness soon faded when I found out a movie was being made and it wasn't even being shot in the Forks area, much less Washington state.

If there was any part of the nation that needed revenue from a major movie production, it's the West End of the Olympic Peninsula. Hope and happy endings are scarce commodities in that area of the country. Jobs were and are hard to find, towns dying, timber mills closing, homelessness and drug rates climbing, and a slough of young people dying in horrible car and boating accidents and tragedies such as the war in Iraq.

So, I scratch my head and wonder—what's so appealing about this book and the author who produced it?

"When there is nothing left to burn . . ."

I've been meaning to sit down and write about an insightful conversation I recently had on life and relationships among my generation - but wouldn't you know it - life keeps getting in the way.

So, until I have more time to sit down and write about that conversation in a way that will do it justice, I want to talk a little bit about music.

I've always been a connoisseur of music, which my insane CD collection can attest to. And for some reason lately, music has had an even larger presence in my life, something that is definitely most welcomed and a major reason I wanted to move back to Seattle. (After living in New York for seven years, I can definitely say that Seattle has a FAR better music scene.)

While some people find inspiration in nature, some in faith or religion, and others on the pages of books, I happen to find most of mine in music and lyrics.

I always used to think I was less intelligent and academic than a lot of my friends because of this. That was until I had an editor, who I greatly respected, once ask me if I was a book person or a music person. The answer rolled off my tongue without a bit of hesitation, and a bright light flicked on inside of my head.

While I consider the books I have read to be my friends who I like to keep around, I consider my music collection to be an assortment of spiritual advisers, philosophers, and comedians who keep me thinking, laughing, and dancing.

The reason I chose to write about this topic tonight is that on the way home from work I was struck by the lyrics and rhythm of a song by the band Stars. I discovered this band a few years ago, and they have a sound that would best be described as a lovechild between Death Cab for Cutie and Frente!. (If you don't know any of these bands, I am sorry for you and hope that you can discover their music in this vast universe we call Cyberspace.)

The title of the aforementioned song is "Your Ex-Lover is Dead." Now, despite what your knee-jerk reaction to that title might be, my reason for finding inspiration in it had less to do with my recent heartbreak and more to do with personal survival.

One week from yesterday will mark the six-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I have yet to be able to write about my reflections of that day.

My mind is still processing why it is that a co-worker found me and helped me escape death by mere minutes. Why my life out of thousands of others was spared. Why our country's retaliation has become the forgotten war in Afghanistan. Why hundreds of thousands more have died unjustly in the name of "freedom" in Iraq. Why the American public has forgotten that Bush and Congress work for us, and that we have the right to fire dishonest employees. And why, despite all of this, our lives seem virtually unaffected on a daily basis.

So, perhaps "when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire," to quote the scary old-man voice at the beginning of "Your Ex-Lover is Dead."

(For curious minds, there is a video available of the song on the Stars website.)

What is rich enough?

I was catching up on my magazine reading tonight while enjoying the $3.50 Guiness special at my local pub - which has basically become an extension of my apartment. The magazine of choice, out of my many subscriptions, was the June/July issue of Foreign Policy. It's a magazine of essays about current events by journalists, scholars, and public officials.

The article that caught my eye was "21 Solutions to Save the World," which gave brief theories about how to address the world's top 21 problems. Among those theories was one titled "An Embarrassment of Riches," by Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Gardner's theory offered a way to correct the imbalance of riches among classes of people, which has grown to absurd extremes in recent years.

While I didn't completely agree with Gardner's formula of how to go about correcting the imbalance of riches, I couldn't help but think about how incredibly astute the title of his theory was - "An Embarrassment of Riches."

It got me thinking about my own struggles through the years to make ends meet while going to school and waiting tables full-time. I had written about this subject almost a year ago on my former MySpace blog:

"I can tell you what it's like . . . "
September 15, 2006

" . . . My last day of work at the Peninsula Daily News was Wednesday. I hustled, slept very little and had basically no life to call my own for the past year.

Part of the craziness was welcomed. It was a nice diversion from my own reality of being very lonely and depressed in a place where I thought it would never stop raining. Sadness can swallow a person alive if they let it.

I think the transition from college to career is difficult for almost everyone. The changes in your life happen so rapidly, and before you know it you're waking up in the morning asking yourself, "Is this really my life now?" There's no semester breaks, summer vacations or a final destination.

I didn't miss the semester breaks or summer vacations so much. Mine were always filled with work, which usually consisted of waiting tables in high-end restaurants and serving people who were living off trust funds and completely detached from reality. Their babies were treated as fashion accessories, who turned into black American Express cardholders by age 13.

I remember over one Christmas vacation I was working a busy brunch shift at Fred's, a restaurant on the top floor of Barney's New York that charged $25 for a hamburger. We were two waiters down, and I was covering a full section that consisted of about 12 tables with 36 demanding customers.

I approached a family of three - a mother whose face was paralyzed from botox injections, a father who I'd served a few days earlier when he treated his mistress to lunch, and their 19-year-old daughter. The father had just made a lame joke that their daughter was well on her way to earning a major in shopping after her first semester of college.

I didn't laugh. I didn't have the energy to pretend I cared. It was the holidays, I missed my family and my feet were aching.

The father looked up at me and said, "Didn't you get it? She's majoring in shopping." He then took a moment to laugh again at his joke.

I cracked a smile so I could get on with taking their order. At that point, his wife grabbed my hand and said, "It's okay honey. It's a joke for educated people."

I wanted to scream at her, "Look bitch. I'm an honors student at Hunter College a few blocks north of here. I don't have time to take your demeaning remarks today as I'm swamped in serving the heartless and wretched just so I can buy my textbooks next semester. So maybe you should tell your daughter to apply herself now, or she might end up like you with a face full of cow poison and a husband who doesn't recognize the woman he married."

Instead, I snapped my hand away and asked they wanted to eat. I couldn't afford to open my mouth and be fired. ..."

In remembering this story, it brought to mind recent discussions I've had with my father about the importance of financial security and making a living wage - or the discussions with peers about how insane it is that the federal government defines an independent as someone 25 years or older if single (forcing a great majority of young adults, like myself, to go into extreme debt to pay for college.)

So, my question to all of you is, "Where is the line drawn between being rich enough, and embarrassingly rich?"