SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Comic-Con, Part III

Down the Rabbit-Hole

Ah, Comic-Con: the coolest place on Earth to get the migraine of your life. Don't get me wrong - the Con is one of my favorite times of year. But the exhibit floor alone is 575,701 square feet of insanity. That's about ten football fields. And that's not even counting the upstairs areas where the panels are held. Do yourself a favor and save yourself at least a little stress.

Tip #3: The Programming schedule is your Bible.

As usual, the Con schedule for this year went up barely two weeks before the event, leaving precious little time to plan - especially if you could only manage to attend for one day. (In that case, you were screwed, because all passes for Friday and Saturday - the most glittering, celeb-friendly, panel-heavy days - were already sold out.) It used to be that you could look up the schedule a couple of days in advance, figure out what you felt like attending, and wander in fifteen or twenty minutes before the panel started. As recently as 2003, I drove down to San Diego around eleven, stood in line for an hour, hour and a half max, to get a badge, then meandered upstairs to get a seat for Joss Whedon's post-Buffy panel (which was awesome, by the way). By contrast, last year I got in line for Ballroom 20 an hour before the Heroes panel, didn't make it in, stayed in line to catch the Battlestar panel and then stayed through the intervening two panels before Joss Whedon because I was afraid I wouldn't get back in if I left.

You don't necessarily have to plan where you'll be every moment - chances are it won't go exactly as you plan anyway - but you should look through the schedule and mark anything you'd be absolutely heartbroken about missing. If it's in Ballroom 20 or Hall H, plan on being there two hours early. At least. The good news is that the San Diego Convention Center reached fire-code capacity (125,000 people) last year, so it literally can't get any more crowded. The bad news is that 125,000 people is still pretty damn crowded.

A lot of the smaller panels will be less well-attended, so you might be able to just walk in a couple of minutes before they start. But in any case, know what you want to see, and - almost as importantly - know where it is. It takes a lot longer to walk from one end of the Convention Center than you think it does, and for crowd-control purposes some hallways will be one-way. There are maps posted on the Comic-Con website - they'll pass them out in the hall too, but I suggest at least scanning it before you get to San Diego.

Also, know where and when you'll meet the people you're going with. You probably won't all be in the same panels - and DON'T count on being able to save seats - but you'll want to be able to find each other afterwards, and if you don't plan ahead it could be very difficult. Don't plan to meet on the exhibit floor if you can help it - it's huge and crowded and almost impossible to navigate quickly. Better spots to meet are upstairs in the Sails Pavilion, where there are tables to sit and eat and compare swag, or upstairs on the patios/smoking areas. They have benches and usually aren't that crowded. If you do lose track of your party, make sure everyone has a phone that can send and receive text messages - cell phone calls are a huge no-no in panels, but a discreet text (with your phone on vibrate, obviously) can usually pass unnoticed.

Tip #4: The Convention is an Endurance Sport - For Spectators

It seems obvious, but I'll take a moment to go over the basics. Wear comfortable shoes. The convention floor is (as I've mentioned) huge. Your feet will hurt by the end of the convention, but you can decide how much. (Incidentally, this is one piece of advice I never follow; costumes rarely lend themselves to comfy footwear. Ah, what I sacrifice for my passionate yet useless hobby!) Other than that, you can wear pretty much anything and still not be guaranteed not to be unique. If you're not in costume, dress casually and maybe bring a jacket; the Convention Center is ferociously well air-conditioned.

Bring some water. It's always good to have some, and you can take it everywhere in the Convention Center. You might also want to carry some food. The food in the exhibit hall is basic (pizza, hamburgers, chips, and Starbucks), expensive, and not that great. It's not bad, certainly, and I always end up eating there at least once, but you might as well save your money for souvenirs. Bring things that travel well - jerky, granola bars, fruit, candy. You don't want to bring too much to carry - the swag will take care of that, but it's good to have a snack for when you're waiting in yet another line.

Bring a book or a portable video game system. There will be lines, and more lines, and while it's fun to strike up a conversation and get to know your fellow geeks, it's also nice to have something surefire to amuse yourself with.

Well, that's all for now. I am, of course, currently running around like a madwoman, finishing the last touches of costumes, doing laundry, baking brownies (not that kind), and finding all my confirmation numbers. Speaking of which, one last tip: bring your registration barcode. You do not want to get stuck in the line of people who don't have theirs and need to be looked up by hand. And pick up your badge on Wednesday (4-day passes only) if you can. There's nothing more frustrating than starting your convention experience with a two-hour wait in the hot sun (the line starts inside, but where it ends, nobody knows...), missing the first panel you wanted to see.

Good luck, fellow geeks. See you on the floor!

Switching Sides

I've mentioned before that I don't read comics, but that hasn't stopped me from choosing a side in the eternal clash of the titans that is Marvel vs. DC. I've always been a Marvel girl. Ever since I was little, exposed mostly to the cartoons, I always liked Marvel best. The X-Men, with their fascinating spectrum of powers and endlessly tragic romances (Rogue/Gambit and Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops) were always fun to watch, while the Justice League lagged behind. It wasn't so much the particular storylines as the characters themselves that failed to impress me. Even as a kid I had a hard time believing that putting on a pair of glasses was really an effective disguise for Superman. Not having the backstory, I couldn't quite figure out what the Green Lantern's deal was, or why he kept making giant umbrellas and hammers come out of his magic ring. And Wonder Woman's invisble plane? You've got to be kidding me.

But my favorite superheroes (coincidentally, one from each company) were always Spider-Man and Batman. (Remember The New Adventures of Batman and Superman? I used to watch it on Batman days but change it immediately if it turned out to be a Superman episode.) I loved Spider-Man for his sarcastic take on pretty much everything. Nothing ever went right for Peter Parker, but he never lost his sense of humor. He could make quips and throw punches at the same time, and sometimes the bad guys seemed to be defeated more by their confusion than by the violence. And he was still trying to live a normal life - with classes, a job, and sometimes a girlfirend, which made it all the more tragic when he saved the world only to miss the final/graduation/party that he desperately wanted to attend.

Batman was different. He certainly wasn't trying to live a normal life; he had no family and his friends were all to a greater or lesser degree his accomplices. But he was also the only purely human superhero out there: he had no superpowers or mutant abilities or magic spells. He was just a guy with a lot of gadgets and a lot of money and a lot of anger. Although I'm not sure I quite got all the anger when I was little. But he was always intriguing, because he alone of all the heroes had made it all up himself.

I watched Spider-Man and Batman through several iterations of cartoon series (I particularly liked the MTV Spider-Man series and the WB's Batman Beyond), every now and then revisiting the X-Men or the Justice League. And then they made the movies.

I'm not talking about the first four Batman movies. I was too young to see the first two in theaters (my parents are very liberal, but Michelle Pfeiffer's S&M Catwoman outfit was a little much for an eleven-year-old), and I didn't bother to catch the second two, as I was a Band Geek, not a Geek Girl, in high school. I've seen them now, of course, and the first two are minor camp masterpieces, anchored by Michael Keaton's vaguely sarcastic gravitas. The latter two feature leads who only grasped one side of the character (Kilmer - Batman; Clooney - Bruce Wayne) and are mostly memorable for the stunt casting of the villains.

No, I'm talking about the new movies: Spider-Man 1,2, & 3 and Batman Begins/The Dark Knight. When they announced they were making Spider-Man I was deeply excited. I had finals the week it came out, but I was determined to see it as soon as I could manage it. I stayed up until three in the morning the night before my last final, but as soon as it was over I drove to the movie theater (alone) and saw it. And I hated it.

Where was the snarky, sarcastic Peter Parker I'd fallen in love with? Instead we got Tobey Maguire, looking approximately as sexy as someone's bratty little brother and playing Spider-Man as Harry Potter learning to be Superman (apologies to J.K. Rowling). His Spider-Man was angsty and pious and annoyed the crap out of me. Not to mention the endless repetition of the earnest, boring aphorism: "with great power comes great responsibility." No s***, Sam Raimi. You write that or find it in your fortune cookie? Plus the strangely orchestral score and the effects so pretty I felt like I was playing Final Fantasy. I know, I know - millions of people loved it. I just don't know why.

(I liked the second one better, although not a lot better. I wasn't allowed to see the third one in the theater with my boyfriend because he was afraid that the negativity exuding from my pores would lessen his enjoyment of it. He was probably right.)

And then there was Batman Begins. They did a number of things right from the beginning, starting with casting Christian Bale, the thinking woman's action hero (see also: Iron Man). They added a tight, clever script; a dark, slick, and slightly gritty aesthetic; and a willingness to engage with the moral questions inherent in the idea of superheroes. While not perfect - among other things, they chose the ever-popular origin story framework, which tends to drag in places as they provide the necessary exposition - it was nevertheless smart and layered and fun to watch.

So of course last night we went out to see The Dark Knight at 12:01am. We got to the theater two hours early; there were at least eighty people ahead of us in line. It wasn't all geeks, either - memorably, there was the group of twenty-something guys six rows behind us who whiled away the time hooting at any girl wearing something skimpier than jeans and then shouting "penis" over and over again. Those weren't geeks - they were a**h****s. There were actually fewer hardcore fans than I expected. I saw a lot of Batman t-shirts, and even some cool vintage ones, but only one guy in costume. (It was a great costume, though - a dark purple suit and ascot, with the full smeary-insane makeup. Very Heath Ledger, and very well done.) The crowd was up-to-date on their comic book adaptations, though - the Watchmen preview got immediate recognition.

The movie itself, though, was amazing. I won't include spoilers here (although if you're really worried about it, stop reading now... and go out and see the movie already!), but it surprised me more than once and had several moments that took my breath away. It also made me cry (although I'm pretty easy on that score) and, more important, made me think. I spent this morning thinking about the cost of vigilantism and the definition of terrorism. And even during the movie, at one point, when Batman rides off on the Bat-pod, his cape flying behind him, I thought about how apt it is that he's nicknamed "the Caped Crusader". Because the crusaders weren't all good either. They scoured the Middle East in the name of Faith - but only their definition of Faith counted. Batman patrols Gotham dispensing Justice, but his definition of Justice isn't governed by law. And they both do it because it's Right.

Which is not to say I'm not on Batman's side. In fact, in this case, I'm switching sides. I read on imdb.com this morning that The Dark Knight's opening weekend is expected to make more than Iron Man's opeing weekend ($102.1 million) but less than the record-holding Spider-Man 3 ($151.1 million). Well, here's hoping that for once DC kicks some Marvel butt.

See ya, Spidey!

SemiGeekGirl’s Guide to Comic-Con, Part II

San Diego Summer

Tip #2 – Planes, Trains, and oh-so-many Automobiles
So, you’ve bought your passes, booked your hotel room (or your sleeping bag space on your buddy’s hotel room, whatever), and decided on your mode of transportation into America’s Finest City (as it has ever-so-modestly dubbed itself). I can’t really recommend modes of transportation, as I’ve lived within a hundred miles of San Diego for most of my life. I drive there.

Next, assuming you’re not one of the lucky bastards with a hotel on the Comic-Con shuttle route, is parking. While there is a limited amount of parking at the Convention Center itself, if you’re not planning on getting there at 5 or 6am, you’re probably out of luck. There are various other parking options around Downtown; many of them are mapped out on the Comic-Con website. If you’re staying at a hotel that has parking, I would advocate leaving your car there from check-in through check-out (and possibly later, if they let you). San Diego has a decent amount of reasonably-priced and convenient forms of public transportation, which I’ll explore briefly below, and if you can’t bring yourself to share personal space with that many of your fellow geeks, there are always taxis (more convenient, and only slightly more expensive than multiple parking adventures) or the somewhat creepy yet incomparably environmentally-friendly pedicabs.

Or – I know this is a radical idea for many geeks – you could always walk. San Diego’s Downtown area, which encompasses the Convention Center, Horton Plaza, the Gaslamp Quarter, and Petco Park, is actually pretty small in terms of surface area – maybe a two-mile-diameter circle. That’s two miles if you start on one edge and walk to the other. Start or end anywhere in the middle and it’s less. True, it’s a little hilly – as with most coastal cities, it slopes down to the sea – but it’s also surprisingly pretty and clean for a major city, with lots of fun restaurants and bars to pop into. And that’s before you take into account the major cheat factor that happens the weekend of Comic-Con – the wonderful, crazily convenient, absolutely free Comic-Con shuttle.

Merely wearing the current day’s badge allows all Comic-Con attendees to board any of these shuttles in any direction, for any reason. Take it from the Convention Center to your hotel, or from your hotel to your friend’s hotel, from Petco Park to Ralph’s – no one cares. True, the stops are fixed and the loops only run in one direction, but the shuttles run until midnight and can get you within a couple of blocks of almost anywhere worth going in the downtown area. It’s the ultimate shortcut; if you’re in town all weekend, it’s almost criminal stupidity not to take advantage of it. (Especially at eleven pm, after fourteen hours of carrying around ten pounds of swag in three-inch heels: it just might be the difference between a good night’s sleep and a tiny, pathetic manga fairy trading free t-shirts for a box to sleep in on the marina.)

But if the shuttle doesn’t get you quite where you need to go (its absolute radius is admittedly pretty small – if you’re not staying downtown, you’ll probably need something else to get you to your destination), San Diego also has the requisite bus system and something better – the Trolley.

Not only is the Trolley cuter and less smelly than a bus, it also goes to a number of very useful places. It's also under ten bucks for a day pass, which is definitely cheaper than a taxi, and probably cheaper than parking. Parking is free at many of the outlying (i.e., not downtown) stations. And it adjusts its routes for the weekend of Comic-Con so that more trolleys take you straight in to the Convention Center stop (directly across the street from the Center itself). More detailed information - since I'm too lazy to type it all out - can be found at their website: http://www.sdmts.com/Trolley/Comiccon.asp.

But I have costumes to work on and lists, glorious lists to make, so I'll sign off for now. The Programming schedule is finally up in its entirety, so there's a good chance part three of this guide will actually reference things that occur inside the Convention Center. Until then, geeks and geekettes!

The Party at the End of the World

Last night was the second and final night of the 2008 Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball, and it was incredible. As usual, the people from Sypher Art Studios (the organizers) outdid themselves to decorate the Henry Fonda Music Box in Hollywood and to hire amazing, otherworldly dance and music acts to grace the main stage. But the really amazing thing was the costumes people created to wear to the ball.

In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words, so if you don't want to rely on my descriptions, you can go to Flickr.com and type in "labyrinth masquerade" for over a hundred pictures taken by various guests. But if you haven't got that kind of time, I'll list a few of the ones I liked best.

I think my personal favorites were the team of guys who were calling themselves the Ghostbusters from 1884. They had reimagined the outfits - and more impressively, the equipment - of the Ghostbusters from a steampunk point of view, and it was flawlessly done. Each guy had a detailed and bulky contraption on his back that actually did something. One flipped a switch and displayed trapped lightning in a glass tube; another continuously emitted little puffs of steam. It was original, innovative, and well-executed. Wonderful.

I was also impressed by the couple who had only a very small budget for this years costumes, and were forced to become extremely creative with the contents of their closet. (Admittedly, it was a costumer's closet, so they had some stuff to play with.) But her quasi-fantasy duchess (a hoop skirt minus the skirt - just bare hoops covered in masses of silk flowers) and his six-foot green giant (complete with fuzzy aubergine tie and greenery-covered busby) were a testament to absolute creativity (as well as the insanity of people who like to dress up).

There were also, of course, legions of gorgeous fairies, several stellar aliens, at least a shipful of pirates, and any number of creatures that defied description. Thanks to the incredible creativity of a friend of mine, we wore intricately beautiful wire-and-crystal masks colored to match our costumes, which garnered a fair amount of attention. But all in all, I was humbled by the incredible display of effort and talent everywhere I looked. I immediately vowed to start earlier and come up with something spectacular for next year.

Sadly, among all the lovely pageantry, there were a few missteps. A number of otherwise superlative costumes were diminished by their wearers' eyeglasses. I'm sorry, but if you're going to put in that kind of time and effort on a costume - especially if this is something you do even semi-regularly - you need to bite the bullet and upgrade to contacts. Maybe even just for when you're dressed up. Nothing sticks out quicker (especially at a MASKED ball) than a pair of utterly mundane spectacles. And if you can't give them up (although I really do recommend them - I've worn contacts for nine years now and the difference is amazing; no more accidentally looking around your frames), then at least work them into your costume. Steampunk is very in right now, and the Victorians had eyeglasses.

The other tragic misstep was the one that always seems to occur at events like this. I'm a big proponent of "if you've got it, flaunt it", but I'm an equally big believer in its corollary: if you don't have it, know it! There was one girl last night, who is probably quite pretty and not at all overweight in street clothes, who looked quite simply atrocious. She wore a skintight bodysuit of flesh-colored mesh, and accessorized it with a wide, tight belt that sat, unfortunately, just across her hips, cutting into her stomach and giving her a rather prominent potbelly. It was painful to look at her. It was even sadder when you consider that she could have been pretty - possibly even wildly sexy - in an outfit that flattered her assets. Instead, her outfit said "I'm deeply unattractive, and I don't have any friends to stop me from walking out of the house like this."

But tragedy aside, the ball was a rockin' good time. Toward the end, standing off to the side of the dance floor, ignoring my unhappy feet and watching the dancers, I was struck by the idea that this was what a party at the end of the world would look like. People from all different times, worlds, alternate universes, and magical places, pulled out of time and space, brought together in one room to dance and drink and party the night away until the countdown to apocalypse. And if that's anything what the end of the world looks like, I hope I'm invited.


(SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Comic-Con will continue in the next post.)

SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Comic-Con, Part I

Adventures in Obsessive Planning

So I knew I had a problem today when I found myself fervently wishing that Comic-Con was next week (instead of two weeks from yesterday). While that might sound normal enough, I realized that the reason I wished it was next week was not so that I could go to it sooner, but instead because that would mean that the Con programming schedule would be posted on the web already. That's right - I was not looking forward to the convention itself as much as I was looking forward to planning my schedule. (I should probably be more concerned about this obvious slide toward insanity, but that would mean taking time from the preparation lists I'm making for Comic-Con. I'll worry about it later.)

I've been haunting the CCI website all week, waiting for the schedule, since the site promised it would be up "ten days to two weeks" before the event. Well, two weeks was technically yesterday, but nothing is up yet. (Update: even as I was writing this, the schedule for Thursday 7/24 was posted. Which is great but also odd, as I can't remember them ever posting the schedules in a piecemeal fashion before. Maybe they're just trying to spread out web traffic so us geeks don't crash their site.) I've even lowered myself to searching out rumor sites and gossip blogs, with some decent results - a couple places had leaked schedules for Thursday AND Friday. But this was something of a fruitless enterprise for me, as the leaked information was of course "unconfirmed", which is too uncertain for me to build rock-solid plans on. Obsessive compulsiveness aside, it seemed like the perfect time to start my unofficial, deeply biased, guide to Comic-Con. Because how else can I distract myself until the schedule goes up?

Tip #1: An Amalgamation of Quite Useless Advice

Unfortunately, most of the best, most common-sense advice I have to dispense about the Con is already out of date. This is because a great deal of it can be summed up in two obvious words: PLAN AHEAD. Buy your passes to the Con as far in advance as possible. I bought my 4-day pass at last year's Con for the bargain price of $50. Online, 4-day passes went for $75. If you missed getting one before they sold out, you could still buy a pass for each individual day (though you missed out on the bonus time of Preview Night), for a combined total of $110. At this point, individual passes for both Saturday 7/26 and Friday 7/25 are also sold out, so if you still desperately need a pass, eBay is pretty much your only hope. Last I checked, 4-day passes were going for up to $455, which is NINE TIMES as much as I paid. So buy your passes early if you want to get in. As of this year they were still transferrable by notifying the Con, so even if by some chance you couldn't use it, you could give it to a friend (or, clearly, scalp it on eBay). This is the first year where selling out has been this much of a problem, so I'm not sure the transfer-policy will remain so generous. On the other hand, CCI is a non-profit organization, so maybe it will.

A corollary to this tip is: book your hotel room early. As in, possibly a year in advance and certainly before Christmas. While Comic-Con does negotiate with area hotels to provide a block of surprisingly reasonably-priced rooms for convention attendees, there are only approximately 6,100 of them. For 125,000 attendees. You do the math. Hotel occupancy for the weekend of Comic-Con is 94% for the City of San Diego, and most hotels raise their rates accordingly. You have a better chance of getting a lower rate the sooner you make a reservation. Many people make their reservations while attending the convention the year before. This year, I was foolish enough to try and wait to get a room through the Con. Their room block opened up on February 9 at 9am PST. The site stalled/crashed almost immediately, as more people than there were rooms available logged on within the first five seconds. Needless to say, I did not get a room. By the time I was offered one, the only ones left were either very far from the convention center or out of my price range. After a week of frantic searching, I got a room through AAA, at the same hotel I stayed at last year. For twice the price. This year, I will consider myself a failure if I don't have a room by September. The only good part about it is that most hotels will let you cancel without penalty until just a couple of days before your reservation, so if you find something better, or decide not to go at all, you won't be out any money.

Well, I'm sorry this tip wasn't more helpful, but it was important. I had thought to include more than one tip per post, but this one dragged on for a very long time, and the costumes beckon. Stay tuned tomorrow for updates on the programming schedule, my descent into neurotic madness befitting a Woody Allen movie, and tips you might actually appreciate for Comic-Con 2008!

Fireworks Frenzy

I spent the 4th of July as I always do. In the morning I arrived at my grandparents' house and proceeded to bicker with my dad about what still needed to be done. My boyfriend retreated to a corner with his book and tried to ignore my loving yet lunatic family. Around noon, a couple of my cousins came over to hang out and ignore the heat and all the setting up that still needed to be done. After they left, I remembered that people would be arriving in mere hours and returned to pestering my dad to work faster. When he finished the things he promised my mom he'd do, we jumped in his truck to go buy fireworks.

To buy the rest of the fireworks, that is. We already had a couple hundred dollars' worth, left over from last year and brought back from various trips, but it's a tradition that we buy new fireworks on the 4th every year. Also, another one of my cousins was on a softball team that was running one of the stands; we had to go support them. So we drove around town for an hour and a half, stopping at three fireworks stands, the bank, a liquor store, and a grocery store.

When we returned it was really crunch time. My dad went to set up the barbecue, and I rousted my long-suffering boyfriend out of his peaceful corner to help me sort and put up the three boxes of red white and blue decorations. He's used to the insanity that overtakes me on the 4th (did I mention the red-white-and-blue bejeweled tiara I wore all day to top off my firework-patterned sundress?), so he was accepting if not enthusiastic. Bunting and paper bells and pinwheel garlands on the porch, bows on stakes in the garden, a miniature flag for one of the gnomes. Banners around the portable canopy, patriotic tablecloths, star-spray centerpieces, flag-patterned plates and napkins. An hour later, the house was festooned in decorations and I was covered in sweat, shoving all the extra crap into a box in the guest room. My mom and grandma had put out tasty snacks, and (miracle of miracles) my perpetually late friend arrived early, ahead of all the other guests.

Soon, everyone had arrived, and I snuck out with a friend to obtain the traditional surprise finale firework. (Every year, I run out without my dad to buy one big-ass firework, which I then hide until just before the end. Then I present it to him and he lights the finale. He knows I'm doing it, of course, but, like gifts labeled "Santa" in my dad's handwriting, we pretend it's a mystery.) When we got back the delicious food was ready, and everyone stuffed themselves on hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, green salad, chips and dip, and cheesecake bars. My dad made strawberry daiquiris and I whipped up my lemonade punch (4 ingredients - three are alcohol and one is lemonade). After dinner, I left everyone chatting and slipped inside to prep all the fuses before it got dark.

Then, finally, it was showtime. We started with the traditional round of sparklers. We were lucky enough to have some of the old, no longer sold, metal sparklers left, as well as the new "safer" variety. Interestingly, the metal ones proved not only prettier but also less dangerous than the new ones, as they were more predictable and went out promptly when their sparks were used up, rather than smoldering ominously. "Safe and sane" my butt! Then we lit the Friendship Pagoda, which we keep as a souvenir all year. After that it was a free-for-all. Pink Diamonds, Killer Bees, Crackling Cactus, Purple Rain, The Sizzler, Pharaoh's Treasure, Monster Parade. My friend busied herself braiding long thin fireworks called Crack the Whip and filling the interstices with Ground Blooms and Crazy Eyeballs. Her husband threw Jumping Jacks until one whizzed past my ear and I noticed. I explained that only COMPLETE MORONS throw lit fireworks, and he stopped. For a while.

I ran in and out of the house, fetching new fireworks and marshaling people to light them. I missed some and watched others. I danced in the middle of the street holding a 3-foot giant sparkler in each hand. Throughout, I worried about whether everyone else was having enough fun even as I enjoyed myself. And then it was time for the finale. I retrieved the final firework - a half-kilogram monstrosity called 3 Ring Circus - and presented it to my dad. I looked at the audience gathered in lawn chairs on the lawn. Miraculously, a seat was open in the very center of the front row. I dropped into it and watched the finale live up to its name.

And for about two minutes I ceased to worry about anything.

I love the 4th of July.

I'm too sexy for my hat... maybe?

Since the 4th of July is my favorite holiday of the year, I try to schedule myself some downtime the day before to relax and get into the blowing-stuff-up mood. (I know guys are always in the mood for explosions, but, as with other things, it takes a little more for us girls.) I usually get a manicure/pedicure, sometimes an eyebrow wax, and often a haircut. This year, I saved a portion of my Christmas bonus just for this day, and I got through the last interminably boring hours of Wednesday at work trying to decide upon the exact shade of red to color my hair.

And then, last night, my boyfriend and I went out to see a late showing of Wanted, and I learned a very important lesson.

NEVER go to see an Angelina Jolie movie the night before a day when you will want to feel sexy. Give it a week at least. In fact, for optimum self-esteem, you should probably give up all movies featuring Angelina Jolie entirely. There is one scene in Wanted in which she climbs out of a bath, her back to the camera, her hair piled artlessly atop her head, and glances back over her shoulder.

Did part of me enjoy the moment? Absolutely yes. Ms. Jolie is quite possibly the most beautiful woman in the world, and the purely aesthetic pleasure that anyone sighted gains from her face and form are undeniable. But another part of me in that moment realized with absolute certainty that I will never, ever, under any circumstance, as the result of surgery or magic spell, look that good.

It wasn't quite as depressing as it sounds. On some level, it's like realizing you're never going to be as flexible as an Olympic gymnast from Belarus. It's okay, because you never really thought you were, and how would being able to put your ankles behind your head improve your life anyway? (I know what you're thinking, but that's really more attractive in the abstract than in practice. If you need a gimmick to attract a guy that badly, just bribe a girlfriend to make out with you - at least that doesn't require years of practice.)

But it does kind of make all my girly primping rituals feel useless. I mean sure, I'm now a fairly hot redhead wearing my traditional 3rd of July outfit, a barely-decent white miniskirt and spaghetti-strap blue tank top with red white and blue star earrings, and sure, migrant workers honked at me and one guy driving next to me stared so hard that he forgot to go when his light turned green, but what does that matter when I'll never be Angelina Jolie?

I tried to snap myself out of it by reminding myself that she's currently pregnant with twins and thus not quite as shapely as she was onscreen. Alas, my brain ruthlessly reminded me that she is sexier than me even while pregnant, and also the twins were fathered by Brad Pitt, which I'm pretty sure gives her some sort of bonus points.

But I went and had my hair done today anyway, and I'm not planning on renouncing makeup anytime soon. So far, general public reaction has been favorable, and my self-esteem is slowly recovering. I can guarantee you this, though - if I ever get married, I'm hiding every Angelina Jolie movie in the house.

Just until after the wedding.