Trans/plant/portation

Once again we’ve passed a doomsday, this one set for October 21, 2011. Well, Hello, October 24. I guess we made it. Hysteria around the Mayan Calendar aside, there are perhaps a few other signs that collectively we’re about to face Armageddon anyway. Here are my guesses, for what it’s worth.

The movie Anonymous—Of course the theory about Shakespeare’s fraud on the world of playwrighting has been around for millennia, but to put it into a blockbuster movie, by the same director who made us all terrified of 2012? It’s got to be evidence that soon we won’t need movie making anymore. Because we’ll be fighting over the last can of succotash in the bombed-out grocery store, that’s why. Read More…

Even small towns as isolated as Walla Walla, Washington, may fall prey to a zombie outbreak at some point, especially given the global nature of travel and commerce. Although only two state highways connect to the city, it does receive regular cargo shipments by truck and by rail, and it does house a working airport with connections to Seattle, a major seaport and airport on the West Coast. Looking at the nature, history, and geography of Walla Walla can help identify concrete strategies for defending against and surviving a zombie attack when it comes to the area. Strengths and weaknesses of the region, and specific tactics will be the subject of the rest of this brochure. Read More…

Like a flailing restaurant patron who has a chunk of beef stuck in his windpipe, I write speculative fiction. It’s a messy process, of combing through research so I retain a kernel of accuracy in the story, say of physics or history, of plot points and character sketches, scratched out, erased, and written over in my notebooks. There are many notecards and scraps of paper tucked into my journals, so many that I tend to break the bindings of lesser-made books. Don’t forget this detail, that sub-theme, this one scene that keeps popping up in my daydreams. I go back, rewrite, reconceive, get frustrated, re-execute, finally feel satisfied.

It could very well be that all of my energy is in vain, and none of it is any good. I think it’s healthy for writers to drink a cup of hubris with a side of humility every so often. There is so little that keeps us honest. Writing is supposed to be sellable, and to make it to the commercial market, it needs to be definable—what’s the synopsis, who’s the audience, is it like any other bestseller out there, what’s the genre? It had better not fit in too many boxes, or the marketing department at the publisher will implode like an old Vegas casino.

Octavia Butler was one of those writers who defied pretty much everything in publishing—its tightness on genre categories, certainly, but also its expectations around audience appeal, topics that could be covered in fiction, and what bestselling authors should look and sound like. Read More…

Let it never be said that Grey’s Anatomy’s writers were afraid of multiple season-long story arcs. We’ve got a few this year, and we’re only a little way into the season, but so far there’s the adoption story line, the Lexie-Jackson affair, the baby angst between Owen and Cristina, and Alex’s plight of isolation. This week, those stories continue, sometimes with a little poignancy, but they mostly took to the backstage, two-upped by the twin moments of us meeting a character’s mother for the first time, and with The Trendsetting Surgery of the Week. Spoilers after the jump. Read More…

I’ve had it. I gave Chaz Bono’s interview with The New York Times a tired, jaundiced eye because there was a lot of gender stereotyping going on in his comments, and at the time it reminded me of other problematic things I’ve heard transfolk say when the spotlight is upon them. But I freely admit that a lot  of this is about the questions culturally incompetent people ask (read: I don’t think David Letterman has any training in which questions to avoid asking trans-identified people), and the stress of coming up with responses on the spot. Given the documentary that focused on Chaz’s transition, and Chaz’s gracefulness during the Dancing with the Stars competition—in which people have questioned his manhood, his fitness, and his dance skills—I’d say Chaz is treading more carefully now, repeatedly speaking about listening to his elders in transition/transitude, and more importantly, speaking only for himself. I dare say it’s a level of diplomacy that Thomas Beatie, a.k.a. “the pregnant man” has not shown himself capable.

Certainly, I didn’t have high hopes for the national response to Chaz as a transsexual, but even skeptical moi is surprised at the intensity of the vitriol and resentment. Read More…

I’m just going to put the spoilers announcement right up front this week because honestly, I can’t say anything about this episode, even in my introduction, without giving anything way. So, spoilers from here on out, folks. Read More…

This is an occasional series on popular culture tropes and narratives. Previously I looked at doomsday narratives.

It could be that vampire popular culture is on the wane, and if so, I for one am good with it. I’ve had it with evil-possessed, remnants of humanity’s whimpering stories, or the good-girl-meets-renegade-vampire paranormal romance. There are loads more creatures, myths, and epic battles to create and explore. But underneath the cult favorites of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and True Blood, what do these monsters say about our fears? Our culture? I’ll try to come up with some possibilities.

So in the spirit of the Halloween season, here is a non-exhaustive list (I’ve left out aliens, androids, and machines for another post) of the beings that go bump in the night, and why they haunt us. Of course there are more ways to interpret these creatures, so if you’ve got another take on it, please let us know in the comments—I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

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An adorable baby has gone into the foster system that Drs. Shepherd and Grey wanted to prevent for her, but Grey’s leads off by talking about leadership. Leadership? Not to be found in the bickering couple who seem to love arguing more than each other. Not for Dr. Kepner, who is trying to find her feet as Chief Resident. We’ll get into leadership among the fifth-year residents in a minute, but again, who wants to discuss such things when baby Zola is gone? Spoilers from here on out!

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Shonda Rhimes promised fans that the Grey’s Anatomy season finale of year 7 would be the emotional equivalent of what had happened in season 6, which notoriously ended with a drawn-out shooting rampage from a grieving widower. But whereas Rhimes and her writers spent the better part of the post-cliffhanger episodes coming to terms with the violence’s effects—witness Cristina’s terror at working in an OR, relationship juggling between McSteamy, Callie, and Arizona, and the doctors parading through a PTSD specialist’s sessions—season 8 begins by erasing much of what we watched last May.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s not Portland’s Chamber of Commerce who comes up with the tragic storylines for the Seattle area. The ferry disaster, an airplane accident, now a sinkhole in the middle of the city, it seems that Emerald City is one treacherous place to live. When I lived there, I really just found it stressful to get going at a green light when sitting at a 50-degree angle, but overall, it was lovely.

Lovely is not a place Grey’s got to see last night, except in the fleetingest of moments. Spoilers from here on out, folks. Read More…

Another in a series of posts by guest bloggers, today’s is from Kirthana Ramisetti, a.k.a. the force behind Pop Scribblings on Twitter. I had the good fortune to work with her over at I Fry Mine in Butter, and I highly recommend reading anything she has to say about television. Thanks, Kirthana!

It’s hard to do a “very special episode” of a character giving birth without devolving into eyerolling cliches. But once in awhile there are some memorable ones, and in honor the arrival of Emile Dean Maroon Beechey and his parents, here are some of TV’s best baby episodes.

The Cosby Show: I always appreciate when a TV show lets its pregnant character give birth in a hospital rather than come up with a contrivance that forces the poor woman to give birth somewhere ridiculous like a broken elevator or an airplane. The Cosby Show only allows one slight cliche when Sandra and Elvin surprise their families with the news of twins (“It’s a boy!” “Awww!” “And a girl!” “What?”).

But the nice thing about letting Sandra give birth in a normal way is that the focus of the episode was on the family moments, as Cliff and Clair react to being grandparents for the first time. The best part of the show was Cliff and Sandra’s sweet and funny conversation about becoming a parent. Sandra telling Cliff “I just want to say how much I’ve loved having you as a father” is genuinely touching, as is Cliff’s response: “Good parents are made by good children.”

(the scene begins at the 2:54 mark)