Brace Yourself for Judy Blume

You know what I didn't remember about Deenie? Her mum is repulsive.  She's shallow and she's stupid and she has labelled one of her daughter's 'the smart one' and the other 'the pretty one' and she parents with different expectations and rules accordingly.  She also doesn't drive and relies on this 'Aunty Rae' character, who is equally shallow and stupid (and clearly a loser who just hangs around 'Ma' wanting to do things for her) to drive herself and her daughter's to the department store for purple turtlenecks.  Do relationships like Aunty Rae and Ma's still exist as innocently as Judy Blume writes it, or if the Deenie story continued past Janet's party, would we soon discover Aunty Rae's single white female tendencies and/or lesbian attraction to Ma?  Parallels can perhaps be drawn between Aunty Rae and 'Susan Minton', the girl who hangs around Deenie in 'formroom' and wears the same clothes as Deenie and gets her hair cut the same way (even after Deenie's mad scene... which is SO crazy... when she hacks off her beautiful long hair the night she comes home with her 'Milwaukee Brace').

And here's a thought.  Back in the day, and even earlier today when I was reading it, I relied on Deenie/Judy Blume's words to describe a Milwaukee Brace for me... and I think I imagined it pretty well.  But look now!  We have internets!  I will pause now to google 'Milwaukee Brace' and I will attach a link for you too.

(creates new tab... googles 'Milwaukee Bracd' by mistake but Google knows what she meant, reveals that there was a trashy telemovie starring the mum from Home Improvement with what looks like the same plot as Deenie as well also a gory black and white photo of said brace amongst the image results)

What a horrifying contraption!  As the girl in the telemovie said, 'you may as well just tattoo 'freak' on [their] forehead'.  But what I can see from the pictures is that Buddy Brader would have had no problem copping a feel at the seventh grade mixer when he coerced Deenie into leaving the gym with him for the dark quiet of the locker room.  While I gained immense satisfaction reading this part of the book as her little teenaged heart flipped at the requited encounter with her love interest, I was terribly sad that the one thing I thought I remembered clear as crystal about this book was actually wrong.  I had rewritten this scene in my head so that a) it happened at Janet's party and b) they were in a closet and c) they were cheered into that closet like happens at so many of those parties in so many of these books.  I guess I will just have to comfort myself with the fact that I at least remembered that this book was about a pretty girl who had to wear a back brace.

A few general notes before I leave this book and move onto the next (Sally J Freedman next, methinks): the writing is incredibly teenaged, flipping around from one thought to another like a squirrel to a nut.  It absolutely flies by (I think maybe two hours cover to cover) and you get Deenie's every little thought, just like listening to a fourteen year old on a bus.  Every paragraph deals with a different idea or incident, and just pages from the end when the idea of Janet's party is introduced, an experienced reader suspects that there isn't room on the remaining pages for the two weeks to pass to get us to Janet's party, let alone room for all the goings on at Janet's party... but sure enough, we get there and it gets done.  I hate to spoil it for you, but it turns out that Janet's party is less about Deenie trying to pash Buddy than it is about Deenie learning a valuable life lesson, becoming less shallow and being an honest and upstanding daughter of which Frank and Thelma Fenner should be proud.

Also... Deenie does touch her 'special place' a couple of times in the book, but it is just described as making her feel nice and helping her fall asleep.  I still argue I might have thought this was just a little over the shoulder self administered back rub, though I can't explain what I could have understood by the scene where Mrs Rappaport discusses 'masturbation' with the girls during gym class. 

My eagle eyes also spotted a mistake, which has provided the same satisfaction as seeing a wristwatch in a movie about the Roman empire.  Deenie's friend Janet is described as jewish and her dad is a kosher butcher... but in one scene when they are talking in the cafeteria, Janet 'spits out her ham' when Deenie tells her something that surprises her.  Shame on you, Judy Blume.  The devil is quite literally in the detail.

Final Word: The image above is not the cover of my current copy of Deenie.  There are plenty of covers out there, it would seem, and I really hoped I would remember what was on the cover of the much loved family copy of Deenie when looking for the image to match this post... and then I found this page 15 or so of Google Images and I knew it like I know myself.

I Haz Them...

I've come to realise that my blog is like the opposite of a 'fairweather friend', for which I know of no word or word combo.  When times were a little tough, first world style, I found myself constantly looking around for things to write about.  Now, when the sun is shining (metaphorically and literally), little comical musings are going unmused or unreported, though I still greedily search my two favourite blogs for updates. 

I have, however, collected a couple of first world problems for your consideration.

1) We had air conditioning installed last week.  It's still not properly wired up, but it's wired up well enough for us to learn that when the fan is on at mid range speed or above, it blows stuff off the coffee table.  Like lolly wrappers.

2) The new designer light that I bought my lil pal for his birthday last week smells.  I've never known a traffic cone to have such an overwhelming stench, but then I've never met a brand new one, have only had one indoors once (university...  where it was practically a prerequisite) and I've never put a heat source inside one.

3) I'm worried that 'Planet 31' is not going to come out in 3D.  I have the glasses... I just need a fun movie to see (and Avatar is not the fun movie I am looking for).

4) I think I have got used to the feeling of being full and I think that it is becoming my new normal.  Not long after lunch I am thinking about the next flavour I need, despite the fact that the stomach is full and appetite sated.  I blame constant birthday and christmas functions... and the ham I bought for a bonus farewell picnic squeezed between birthday and christmas functions.

In other news, the Judy Blume books I bought on Ebay have arrived.  Judging by the reaction of all the women present at the lovely dinner party attended tonight, this is going to be one popular little library of young adult fiction.  Might make myself up some library cards and some sort of cataloguing system.  As an aside, one of the ten books is actually a book of letters received by Judy Blume over the years and compiled as a guide for parents, apparently.  One quick look at the contents page and I was immediately drawn to page 168... where all the letters about touching oneself  'in your special place' can be found, brought on, apparently, by the experiences of one 'Deenie' in the book Deenie.  I look forward to rereading that book and trying to figure out why I never really knew about female masturbation in my teens.  I can only assume that, like in Forever, my innocent mind interpreted the words differently - I never could understand how 'he' could 'come' when he had been in the room the whole time.

PS - is this image horribly insensitive, or does it help to demonstrate that I realise how trivial everything I think and do is in contrast to poverty and hunger?

Unwired for Sound...

Yeah... um... hi.

Remember me?  We met at camp... like... three months ago or something?  We stayed up late at night talking about stuff that happened in our days?  I promised I'd write everyday?  Remember?

Well, I been mutherfunkin' bizzy.  Unaccountably busy but horribly overwhelmingly 'unable to deal with the most basic of basic tasks without lists and anxiety' kind of busy.  By way of example, tonight has been the longest amount of consecutive waking hours spent at home since... last Thursday?  Casual pizza and beer at a friend's house, birthday party, in-law extended family Christmas function, MY extended family Christmas function, christmas and birthday shopping, work... and then about eight special hours spent on the phone to technical support about mysterious and terminal router problems.  Yes... there is just too much on in this month to have that trouble compounded with that most first of first world problems... a lack of wireless internet.

It changes everything.  Aside from the excruciating frustration of a technical fault that has no reason or solution, that ethernet cable was like an anchor that tethered me to a room of disorder and squallor, upturned two weeks ago when some new 'old' furniture was brought into the house.  Every useless article of stationery from every Christmas stocking from the last ten years was spread disrespectfully across the spare bed.  Bills, notepads, printer cartridges.  Pile upon pile of sheets and towels awaiting relocation into a linen 'cupboard' from their temporary home in a linen 'box'... and no time to get it in order... and no freedom to walk away with laptop under arm to a more pleasant place. 

I felt... not ill, but genuinely psychologically unbalanced by the situation.  I cried.  About a fucking faulty router.  My internet habits changed entirely, because checking my facebook or composing questionable blog posts bore no resemblance to enjoyment, and that left me without my usual weapon of mass distraction... and that only allowed me to be further consumed with how overwhelmed with life I was.

This is only very recently resolved with a borrowed router and I am back on the couch, late at night, with some crap about Octomum going past on the television, and I am calming down.  I am not calm enough to have sorted out and wrapped all (or any) of my lil' mate's birthday presents for tomorrow, but I have asked for an extenstion until the afternoon and been granted it.  So let's just hope that as I am out in the world tomorrow morning trying to find the perfect location for Jay Laga'aia's music DVD for kids, I stumble across the perfect something to give the current inventory of birthday booty a bit of a lift.

SWALK

Next Blog >>

Interwebs procrastination has once again yielded a lucrative path to further interwebs procrastination.  And it was right here in front of us all the time!

See up there... right up the top... the little 'link' saying 'Next Blog'?  I just read about it on my 'Blogger Dashboard' when I was trying to find out what 'Blogger Buzz' was, and now I want to share what I've learnt with you. 

Apparently, if you click on it, it will take you to a random blog selected not so randomly.  Somehow, 'it' knows how to find blogs 'just like this one' and perhaps more importantly, in the same language (because we all know how much of an inconvenience it is that the internet is so multilingual). 

That is the news.  What follows is the editorial.

Two clicks. 

First one: a german teenager called Nikki Something who took photos of her hair in front of her bedside lamp and commented that if she had her wish, it would be curly.  She also wants to travel this year. 

Second one: somebody touting herself as an artist who 'posts her daily thoughts and inspirations' on her blog.

I feel in desperate need of a rebrand.