Here’s what I did for fun last night:

7:30 Fall asleep on the couch with baby.
8:30 Awakened by husband. Eat PB&J sandwich and go to bed.
12:00 Awakened by husband, who wants help getting baby to sleep. Baby falls asleep when I nurse her, but wakes up each time I put her down. Finally give up and crawl into her crib to nurse her. Fall asleep in crib.
5:00 AM: Wake up very cramped. Go to own bed.
7:15 AM: Wake up for the day, only 15 minutes after I was supposed to be at work. Sigh.

Luckily, there were other factors that made it necessary for me to stay home from work today - well, that job, anyway - but still. How ridiculous was that? The thing is, I didn’t even feel all that tired yesterday, at least no more so than I feel the rest of the time. But I guess that’s just how it works out. At any rate, I missed work, I went to bed without posting my blog, and my chiropractor was kind of baffled about how I managed to screw up my back so completely today. (Apparently, sleeping on a couch cuddled with a baby and sleeping in an actual baby crib aren’t so healthy. Who knew?)

I gotta say, I’m a little bit concerned here. Not just because last night was so weird, and I was apparently so tired, but also because I started my second job tonight, at Unspecified Video Store. If I can’t handle one job without fall asleep at 7:30, how am I going to handle two?

Watching the 3 + hour director’s cut of Watchmen has pretty much worn me out. So, for your entertainment, I now provide the “false start” outtake of the column I’ll be publishiing this week, about video games that are adaptations of movies. You can see why I dumped it - it’s fun, but completely, unnecessarily about me:

I am probably what you’d call a casual fan of modern video games. When I was growing up, my sisters and I were all about the Super Nintendo, and we were very much a Mario family. Mario Kart, Super Mario Brothers, Yoshi’s Island, that SNES game that let you play all the old NES games… you get the idea. And I was awesome. Seriously, truly awesome.
But then, something terrible (to me) happened: video game inventors came up with the dreaded toggle. Instead of pressing simple left and right arrow buttons to move your character around, you used a toggle, which is like a teeny joystick, only you run it with one finger. And something in the genetic makeup of my fingers prevents me from doing this with much success. Instead of killing bad guys and saving the princess, my Mario now just ran around all drunkenly, falling into rivers. Not good.
Eventually I learned to be so-so with the toggle, but I never again achieved my former level of awesomeness. Last year, though, I got a Wii, the system that says, “hey, what if you just needed to wave your arms around?” There is still a toggle, but it’s not as important and often optional. I was back in the gameplaying business.

I’ve been reading some of the Comic-Con postmortem over the last couple of days, and it sounds like they’re an interesting little tension brewing between all the people who usually do Comic-Con, and all the people who are there because of Twilight. Apparently, the lifers are a little bit bitter that their most sacred of holidays has been overrun with teenage girls from Team Edward and Team Jacob. These, the geeks sneer, are not “true” geeks. These are imposters.

While I definitely agree that the Twilight thing has gotten a little bigger than the actual material really deserves, the whole thing strikes me as funny on a few different levels. First, there’s kind of an irony here, because only a few years ago, Comic-Con was actually about comic books. Then the poor comic book geeks were invaded by the movie people from all the big-budget superhero movies, and little by little they started taking over the whole con, to the point where anything sci-fi on TV or film makes the cut. Now, the comic book geeks aren’t really bothered by that, because hey, they love Battlestar Galactica as much as the next nerd. So movies are okay, but movies that girls like are not.

Which brings me to my second point: I thought we were moving past the days when comic books and sci fi were only for little boys. Aren’t girls allowed to like sci-fi now, or am I confused? And moreover, isn’t girls liking sci-fi kind of the best thing that’s happened to comic book geeks since Batman first put on tights? I mean, come on people: girls. At Comic-Con. How are we not happy about that?

I’m not the only one to remark upon the silliness of this us-vs-them mentality when it comes to Twilight. The lord of Geekdom, Kevin Smith, has particularly come out in defense of the Twilight kids, as evidenced in this clip. If you’re interested in a less-R-rated description of his feelings, he pretty much summed it up in a Twitter post: “Oh the irony of Hall H-ers booing TWILIGHT fans. Like a Trekkie passing a JEDI fan and muttering “Loser.” Embrace next gen of geeks, people.”

What it pretty much comes down to is that the whole point of Comic-Con is to celebrate, and cater to, the fans. And though that shrieking thirteen-year-old girl sound annoys me, too, “Twilight” fans have just as much of a right to be celebrated as anyone else.

Just as long as they don’t, you know, talk during the movie.

Glorious sleep, how I missed you.

Last night Mattie slept for almost nine hours, uninterrupted. It was wonderful. I woke up this morning…awake, which is a really refreshing feeling. And I’ve very proud of Mattie, as though she managed a huge accomplishment. Which she kind of did.

I’m also proud of her for staying happy all weekend, despite the presence of a number of guests. This was a particularly social weekend here at the Olson-Lane household: Friday night we had a couple of friends over to watch a movie, yesterday we were visited by my grandparents in the afternoon and my cousin and her boyfriend at night, and today the three of us went to a big barbecue in honor of Tyler’s brother. That’s a lot of different people to be exposed to, but Mattie handled it like a champ. In fact, she was happy and content all weekend, except when confronted by Tyler’s older brother, Nick. For some reason, Mattie finds Nick terribly upsetting. Not frightening, really, or maddening, just…upsetting. I think it might be because Nick and Tyler have a lot of physical similarities, and perhaps to Mattie, it’s like a stranger dressed up in a Tyler Halloween costume: close, but not the real thing, and all the creepier for it. I can kind of get that.

I’ve noticed recently that while I have essentially given up on my own appearance (I’ve completely botched the Biggest Loser contest, and I just generally feel fat and gross most of the time), I’ve taken an interest in making sure Mattie is pretty for company. I always said I wouldn’t drown the baby in pink, or spend hours getting her all dolled up, but it’s hard to resist dressing her up in her little cute outfits. (So far, I’ve drawn the line at doing her hair, short of sticking a barrette or headband on her head. My new rallying call is “no pigtail in ‘09!") It’s funny, I don’t remember being all that into dolls when I was a kid - our dog ate my Cabbage Patch doll, I spent about five minutes on Barbies, and then the rest of my childhood attached to a stuffed dog named Rusty - but here I am, with my very own living, breathing doll. And Mattie totally enables this new habit by cheerfully spitting up on most of the clothes I put her in, prompting me to dress her up again. It’s shameful.

Seriously, I’m a little embarrassed…why is this so much fun? Why is it so entertaining to put adorable little outfits on the baby and have her admired by others? Is this the beginning of a slippery slope in which I demand that she always be skinny, perfectly groomed, and poreless? What the hell kind of mother am I, that I get a kick out of little white dresses that match her two new teeth, or a tiny two piece swimsuit that’s more fashionable than any I’ve ever owned? What’s wrong with me.

Sigh. I’ve got to figure out a way to turn this parenting business into a female-empowerment thing, but quick. Maybe I’ll get her started on Buffy the Vampire Slayer a little sooner than I’d planned.

So I’m watching Fast and Furious, and it occurs to me that there’s a lot to learn here about how not to write movies. Amazingly enough, the story here isn’t the worst in the series - in fact, it’s probably the best out of all four. Plotting is fine, casting is good, action is good, even the acting is okay, for the little that it is needed. And for the purposes of this post, I’m going to ignore the gratuitous and offensive use of hot, almost naked semi-lesbian chicks as the new background scenery of choice. These are not hot, almost naked semi-lesbian chicks that have anything at all to do with the story, mind you. They’re just there so the camera has something to cut away to. Oh, you didn’t want to spend twelve seconds staring at a girl’s bethonged ass? Tough.

The problem is that while the writing does follow all the big rules, it ignores the little ones. For example, subtlety. “Fast and the Furious” is very guilty of force-feeding: about six different people explain that Dom is wanted by the police. A girl throws herself at Vin Diesel because, well, that’s what it says to do in the script. The worst offender is the female FBI agent. When another character says the bad guy is holding a race to fill a slot on his roster of bad guys, the female FBI agent: “Let me guess: the winner gets the slot?” (In case you didn’t pick that one up). O’Connor says she’ll have to go “beyond Interpol” to run the fingerprints he’s brought her. “So, that means I’m going to have to contact individual agencies, and that could take weeks. Okay.”

More examples:

Female FBI agent: “I know I’m the newbie here, but…” Translation: female officer is new.
Henchman being held out a window: “I don’t know anything! All I can do is get you in the race!” Translation: there’s a race.
Dumbass lackey to Vin Diesel: “Don’t ever put your hands on me again. (Leering) And say hi to your sister for me.” Translation: “I am a douchebag. Don’t feel bad about me getting beaten up.”

The movie also uses little devices to hep us get through the dense car culture, like a nearly magical enchanted GPS that can project a little cartoon of the entire race, complete with animated near-naked hot semi-lesbian chicks.

Sigh.

Subtlety is an incredibly difficult part of writing, because there’s certain information that you have to get across to tell any story. But in order to be believable, you can’t be noticeably trying to get information across. In real life, people so rarely get all of their motivation from a piece of paper with stage directions on it.

I don’t know, I guess I was just surprised by how pretty good this movie actually is, and I wish it could have gone that extra mile (no pun intended) and done some of this cleanup. Because you can have perfect action scenes and perfect casting and perfect plotting, but if the writing isn’t great, neither is the movie. Until next time, Fast and Furious.

I just figured out why some people are obsessed with concerts.

See, I never gave a crap about concerts - I still really don’t. I like music okay, but my attention span is short, and I hate, HATE, standing up. Don’t laugh - I don’t mean walking, or talking to someone, I mean just standing around. I dropped out of choir in high school because I hate standing up for practice. I just hate it, and concerts always seem to be about people standing around…listening. How boring is that?

So, no, I’ve never had the least bit of interest in going to concerts. But I’ll tell you a secret dream: if circumstances had been a little different, I would have loved to have honeymooned at ComicCon.

It’s geek paradise, and I want to go sooooo bad. It’s happening right now, in San Diego, and it’s not just for comic book lovers anymore (though I do love comic books). The whole even has been invaded by excellent geek TV and movies. I hear the call of my people, and I long to answer.

Lots of people have travel dreams, and money dreams - the things we’d do and the places we’d go if we had tons of money. And it should be no surprise that most of mine are movie-related: going to ComicCon, going to the Cannes or Sundance film festival, even the Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival in Austin. Maybe in a few years we’ll go on a second honeymoon, to someplace that rocks. That’s why I married a geek, you know, to make these dreams possible.

Tonight Mattie and I had to practice stop drop and roll.

Tyler’s mistake was not in using the oven. After all, it’s easy to forget that our oven is a bit…skittish. Particularly on the broil function. No, Tyler’s mistake was in continuing to broil his steak despite the fact that it was causing our house to fill with smoke.

I, being only semi-awake on this, my third straight day of five hours of sleep, didn’t really notice the situation until the first smoke alarm went off. Then I looked up and realized that yes, we were apparently being smoked out.

Cue open windows. Cue open door. Cue lone pathetically small fan that we possess. And cue me, freaking out about the baby inhaling smoke. I tried taking her outside, but we were immediately besieged by mosquitos, which would drive me nuts even if wasn’t anxious about the baby. So we came back inside and just practiced stop, drop, and roll. And by that, I mean I (gently) dropped us, and Mattie practiced rolling.

Ah, the oven. I don’t know what causes the smoke thing, but it’s one of those things that doesn’t happen often enough for us to immediately fix it, and by the next day, we’ve forgotten, until it happens again. And thus, the joy of home ownership.

Today was my first day at Unspecified Video Store, and I’m already wondering how much is going to fall through the cracks now that I’ve got the two jobs. Will I ever fix the oven? Will my house ever be clean again? And how long will it take for this smoke to fully dissipate?

Today is my last day of single job-hood for awhile, and it’s been a pretty nice day. I took a little nap. I ran a couple of errands without the baby present, which makes everything easier. I watched “Dead Like Me” with my husband, met with my most excellent website guy, got Mattie to eat some cereal, not to mention take a nap. And I watched “Inkheart,” a nice little disposable Brendan Fraser family movie, based on a YA book. It’s astonishing to me how many young adult books are being made into movies these days - I blame Harry Potter. I don’t completely hate this trend, because it does occasionally lead to more kids reading books, but on the other hand…no.

When kids, many kids in a very large-group sense, start enjoying a book, I just don’t think the answer is to immediately turn it into a movie. Especially considering it’s so difficult to do well.

“Inkheart” isn’t a bad movie, but I think a big part of its box-office failure must have been that it’s pretty difficult to adapt. When you watch it, there’s just a lot missing. It’s very much as though…well, as though you started a book in the middle.

I don’t know. In this case, maybe it’s a good thing - I admit, I did end the movie really wanting to read the book myself. But maybe filmmakers could remember that it’s very hard to do great children’s books well, and play the odds a little more. Meaning: don’t make so many. And if you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.

I woke up on the couch today, Mattie cuddled into my arms, just in time to see Tyler standing over me, fully dressed. I asked him what time it was, and he told me it was seven, which pretty much made me flip out, because that would mean I was late to work. Again. I passed the baby to Tyler and stumbled into the bathroom, trying to figure out whether or not I had time to shower, or if I should just wash my bangs and layer on the deodorant, and how did I manage to fall asleep with my contacts in again? Then a thought occurred to me and I came back out of the bathroom, moving a little slower. I said, “Honey? Seven at night, or seven in the morning?”

Oops. Seven at night.

This is how life has been for the last week or so. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, but there isn’t necessarily any night or day. Time is not measured by clocks, but by who is home: If I’m home and Tyler’s not, it must be morning. If we’re both home, it’s evening, and if Tyler’s here and I’m not, it must be morning. We are so frickin’ tired.

Mattie’s got a lot going on in her life: she’s teething, she’s starting solid food, she just got over the ear infection, she’s working on sitting up, and so on. That’s all been affecting her sleep, but to make matters worse, she’s been on a kick lately where she refuses to go to sleep unless someone is holding her. She’s always been like that, to some degree, but now she won’t stay asleep unless someone is holding her. It’s like a really terrible game: you rock her and walk around and sing and talk in the talking-to-babies voice (very different from actual baby talk, by the way), and finally, finally she falls asleep. You wait for what you’re just sure is a respectable amount of time, and then you chance it, creeping over to the crib and laying her as slowly and gently as any human has ever laid any baby…and then the screaming starts. Rinse. Repeat.

I’ve tried about everything I can think of: letting her nap more, letting her nap less, feeding her right before bed, not feeding her right before bed, putting one of my shirts in her crib because it smelled like me (she tried to smother herself with it, a Baby Genius she’s not), turning the air conditioning on, keeping the air off, and so on. Getting her to sleep sucks, but it’s the putting her down part that’s the problem, and there’s only so much you can do about that.

In the meantime, I’ve lost all sense of…well, time. I’m drinking caffeine like its my last lifeline to the world, and lately I’ve been having that feeling a lot, where if just one more bad thing happens, you’re going to start crying? It’s not that I’m all that upset all the time, I’m just…tired. Really tired, and really ready for Mattie to sleep again.

Of course, once I start my other job, this is likely to only get worse. On Wednesday I make my renowned return to Unspecified Video Store (UVS), where I will often be working until 12:30 or later (the name of the video store, and eventually the details of my employment, shall go unmentioned due to me not wanting to get fired). Hopefully I won’t be closing much on weeknights, but it may happen, and I’ll still have to be at work at 7 AM. That will suck, of course, but at least then I will be getting paid. Right now I’m pretty much staying up that late for free. If I have to give up some of my sleep, I at least want to get paid for it.

When Mattie’s a teenager, I vow to start waking her up at 5 AM on Saturday mornings, just for revenge. I’ll storm into her room, playing a recording of a screaming baby, and probably Ride of the Valkyries going in the background, too. Incidentally, this will also serve as a brilliant campaign against teenage pregnancy. I’m a genius.

I never much cared for poetry.

Oh, there are a few poets I like, and more than a few poems that I love. But overall, I avoid poetry, because most of it makes me feel stupid. I don’t understand half of Sylvia Plath’s work, for example, and the other half I have to go through line by line, like a little kid just learning to read. It’s tiresome.

But I do have a lot of respect for poets, because they have to write within a system of rules. If you think about it, most forms of writing has rules, from a haiku to a fast food menu to song lyrics. There’s formatting rules and grammar rules and a certain number of words or syllables. That’s part of why I find Twitter so interesting - I think the idea of trying to express who you are and what you’re doing in 140 characters or less is fascinating, I really do.

I’ve been on Twitter. I’ve written press release, and movie reviews and resumes and now a frickin’ novel, and each has their own specific structure to stay within. Now, though, I find myself facing a new form of writing: the query letter.

It’s Finding an Agent time, and that means sending out dozens of these special letters that are supposed to convince agents that:

a) I’m a great writer
b) my book is excellent
c) my book is marketable (almost more important than b)
d) I know enough about publishing to write this letter correctly

The theory is, if you’re not motivated enough to figure out how a query letter looks, or if you’re not smart enough to do it correctly, you probably can’t write well enough to do a book, anyway. Thus, the query letter, also known as “The Hook, the Book, and the Cook.” First, you use some clever hook to draw the reader in, then you describe your actual work, and what condition it’s in, and then you talk about yourself, explaining how you’re so experienced and genius. And honestly, it makes me tired, because learning to write a good query letter is the same as learning to write a haiku or a press release: it’s frustrating and tedious. And as a bonus, there’s an awful lot riding on it.

At any rate, I suppose if the first dozen agents I query turn me down, I’ll know that there’s something wrong with my query letters. In the meantime, though, I’m just gonna tough it out. Maybe read some poetry.

Tonight my little sister and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie. The theater was crowded, and we had to take the only two seats that were left: right next to every moviegoer’s worst nightmare: teenage girls. Who spent the entire 30 minutes (!) of previews and 2 1/2 hours of the movie talking and texting on their phones.

Picture this: Stephi was on my left, and on my right, between me and the aisle, were three high school alpha girls: pretty, leggy, dressed in immaculate Abercrombie and Fitch, and completely sneerful (yeah, I made that up, but you know what I mean, don’t you) of anyone outside their little circle. When I was in high school, I would have been completely awed and intimidated by these girls.

But I’m not in high school anymore.

First contact: five minutes into the film, when the obnoxious texting and giggling that started during the previews had continued into the movie. I leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, “Could you guys maybe stop with the cell phones? It’s really distracting.” Shocked that their behavior might be questioned, the girls gave kind of a nod-shrug and put the phones away. For a little while.

Second contact: two hours later, when I just can no longer stand listening to these girls chatter. They won’t stop talking, and despite the movie nearing its climax they have brought the phones back out again. So I throw over an impatient “shhhhh.” They avoid eye contact and quiet down for a couple of minutes.

Third contact: during the big climax where Harry and Dumbledore are in the caves, trying to get the Horcrux, and these friggin’ girls are friggin’ texting again. I lean over and brightly say, “Okay, girls, I’ll bite. What’s so interesting that you have to text about it right now?” They glare at me, and the one in the middle blurts “Just watch the movie” to me. To me. I shoot her a look that say, in no uncertain terms, “You first, sweetie.”

Fourth contact: the movie is over and now we have to face the awkward moment when the lights go up and we have to actually look at each other. Avoiding this moment is exactly why 95% percent of people in my place don’t speak up to begin with. But I know darn well that I am in the right, that these girls have no manners or respect, and I do not flinch. I fold my arms and gaze steadily at them, not moving, as they get up and swarm sullenly out of their seats. As they walk past me each one ducks a little look at me, to see who it was that was admonishing them, no doubt to better mock me on the ride home. I just stare back. I am coursing with adrenaline, ready to hop the seat in front of me and throw down if one of them so much as says the word “bitch.”

Now, here’s the thing. I hate confrontations just as much as the next girl. (Well, maybe not: I have friends who are positively allergic to confrontations. You know who you are.) And I really, really don’t like having to do this kind of crap in a movie theater. Movie theaters are supposed to be my happy place, darn it. It’s like Lex Luthor invading the Fortress of Solitude. And I’m angry with these girls not just because of their behavior, but because they’re forcing ME to be this confrontational person, when all I really want to do is watch my damn movie.

That aside, I’m also troubled about this from a cultural perspective. I don’t mean to sound like a crabby old person, but is no one raising their children to be respectful with cell phones? There are laws and rules that prevent people from abusing phones in school or while driving, but the movie theater thing is more of a parental responsibility, and it bugs me that nobody seems to have gotten these girls to understand that this is not okay. I would love to believe that my own actions will have some influence on their future behavior, but there’s no way that’s happening.

Maybe next time I’ll just take the phones away, and tell the girls they can get them back at the end of the semester. Or the movie.

With a near-dead battery and a recent two-hour “getting baby to sleep” session, I’m going to keep this short tonight. I have an account with Twitter, and my latest joy is reading something called “First Draft Movie Lines,” which people keep posting. Please check it out for your own amusement.

Okay, seriously, why do I watch scary movies? That are really scary? Before bedtime?

Tonight, as part of our Blockbuster month-long pass, I rented “The Haunting in Connecticut.” And it was scary. That kind of scary that flashes on you in those moments where you’re going down the dark basement stairs and can’t reach the light switch quite yet, or that second where you’re walking up to the front door late at night to lock it. And you get this flash of uber-creepy little kid ghost or whatever. I always know it’s coming, too, and in my head I go, “don’t think about that, don’t think about that, don’t…crap.”

So…why do I do this? Why do I fill my poor little brain space with these haunting (no pun intended) visual tar babies? Do I even enjoy these movies? The answer is…sort of. Horror movies are sort of this two-hour test of toughness. If you get scared, you’re a sissy. If you can watch anything and be all blase and cool about it, then you’re tough. And awesome.

That’s the logic, anyway, am I right? You’re supposed to watch these movies with your friends, demonstrate the pecking order of sissiness, Then you all laugh about it for the rest of the night: those who remain unbothered get to laugh at those who are uncomfortable or frightened. Why do we do this?

The thing is, over the last few years, I’ve started to kind of drop this system. Over the years (including two years of dating a deranged horror-movie addict) I’ve seen horrible, horrible things on film, dismemberments and ghosts and abandoned mental institutes, things that ho one should ever see. I’ve got a whole bank of these images in my head, and I’m to a point where I just kind of have to say….do I really need more? When I know something truly horrifying is about to happen in a movie, I’ve now evolved to a point where I can close my eyes without worrying about losing face (insert some sort of joke about movie victims losing their actual faces…I’m tired, you get the idea). And I’m comfortable with that. But I do continue to subject myself to these movies, which I often respect from a craftsmanship perspective, but am I actually enjoying them?

I’m gonna have to give that one some more thought.

Whoa.

As you may have noticed, either by reading my blog or observing my hysterical giddiness in person, I have completed the first official draft of my book. (Wheeeee!!) As I type this, my five volunteer readers are, I’m sure, frantically soaking in every genius word and scene, desperate to get to the end so they can begin typing up their rave reviews. (Yeah….)

Meanwhile, with the first draft done, I’ve been starting to dig into looking for agents, getting into critique groups, choosing my next project, and so on. And I gotta say…whoa. There’s a lot to do.

So right now, today, I’m trying to decide whether or not a critique group is worth my time (and, probably, money). Here’s the general setup: once you have a project underway, or completed, you join a group of maybe 6-10 other writers who meet regularly and discuss their work. You all read each others’ pages, and make “constructive” comments, and the theory is that it’s very helpful to hear from other writers.

Now, I’ve never actually pursued critique groups, for a very simple reason: writers suck. Oh, not all writers, and not all the time, but I firmly believe that doing a critique group is kind of like owning a cell phone or being on Facebook: there’s an etiquette, and if you follow social and legal guidelines, it can be a helpful tool. But at the same time, it’s very easy to abuse. Thoroughly.

Say you fancy yourself a writer…no, say you fancy yourself a Writer. You hear some would-be peon describing their far inferior work, and you think to yourself, “What a silly peon. He is just about to thank God himself that I am here to show him the way.” Then you begin pointing out all the ways in which the peon’s work could clearly be rescued from the pits of drivel: “Perhaps instead of falling in love, the protagonist could find out HIS FATHER IS DYING!” “You really shouldn’t end with the couple breaking up. Instead they should find out that THEY’RE BROTHER AND SISTER!!” (Yes, Writers really do talk in all caps like that. It’s irksome.)

You would think that being a writer (small ‘w’) myself, I would be a little more tolerant of others. But I’ve just attended one too many conferences or workshops in which some turtleneck-wearing guy with thoughtful horn-rimmed glasses and -honest to God- a scarf, starts discussing the thematic representation of menstrual blood in Stephen King’s “Carrie,” and I want to beat them to death with a copy of “Novel Writing for Dummies.” The thought of paying money I don’t really have to close myself in a room with a whole bunch of these people…well, it just seems like it’d be a lot easier to just put my car in neutral on a hill and go lie beneath it.

And yet…it seems like critique groups are just One of the Things You Do, like proofreading and writing an outline. I’m sure there are plenty of published writers - probably even the majority - who found these groups incredibly helpful. But in my life, I seem to have to do everything a) the hard way, and b) My Way, and I just can’t justify putting myself through this kind of smacking-head-against-desk exercise. I’m going to try to do it myself, first. There will always be time to lay down behind the car later.

Melissa hasn’t been impressed by any entertainment news this week, but she IS sick of hearing me talk about my new favorite thing on the interweb, so here I am to share it with you. And so begins a post from the guest blogger…Melissa’s husband Tyler. Note: Melissa would never call herself Tyler’s wife. Seriously.

It goes like this: I was up in Chippewa with Melissa over the weekend of the 4th and Stephi, Melissa’s sole younger sister, tells me about Darths and Droids. Darths and Droids is a web comic with stills taken directly from the fourth Star Wars movie (read: fourth made, not episode 4) but instead of the existing dialogue, or even alternate dialogue, in the speech bubbles of the characters, we the readers are “listening” to a group of RPGers in a campaign and the visual stills are what is happening in the game. Yes, meta comedy at it’s finest. The best part is, you’ve got the great archetypes of gaming: the uptight GM who will make you sit through endless NPC exposition so that you understand what he wanted you to (although you chose a completely different path), the gung-ho player who really likes to get XP by hacking, slashing and looting, the meta player who almost completely separates what he knows from what his character knows (and even takes an improv class to get better at in-game roleplaying), the little sister one of the players couldn’t find a babysitter for that has this strange aptitude for it despite other stereotypes, the guy who chooses to be a short, armless, mute robot so that he can max out his abilities from the start, and the only person that didn’t make fun of the improv guy at his class when he said it was for an RPG (who happens to be a young woman). Ok, that last one really isn’t a standard archetype, but she’s there too.

This combination of personalities, along with some very creative re-working of the story without changing the sequence of the stills selected or modifying the stills in any way other than to zoom in on a character’s reaction, is amazing and painfully hilarious. I don’t want to give away any of their plot, but I will tell you that it totally explains the glowing orb thingie that Princess Amidala gives to Boss Nass at the end of Ep 1. I’m sure the ubergeeks out there already figured it out and explained it away, but I like this better.

I like this a whole lot better. The meta jokes are fun, the commentary after the comic lends hilarious insight into the world of RPGers and, really, these guys must spend a ton of time looking through these movies (they’re working on Ep 2 now) and getting the stills, speech balloons and text to look as good as it does.

If you have no idea what I mean when I say RPG, GM, NPC or any other crazy word like that, find the nearest geek and ask him to explain it. Hopefully he won’t be a LARPer. Seriously.

And go to www.darthsanddroids.net to see what I’m talking about.