Fall of twilight

It's not me, it's you. Really.

I read twilight on a four-hour layover in Atlanta this weekend, and I liked it. Period. I know I'm damning it with faint praise, but that's about all I can say for it. It's decently written and enjoyable and worth a read if you've got some time to kill. It is not, however, life-changing, profound, or in any way a rival to the Harry Potter series.

I'm sorry, Twilighters. I'm just not destined to become one of you. There are a number of reasons for this, and they're not necessarily the ones you'd expect. While I had admittedly already found the twilight fanbase overly rabid and annoying, and expressed some misgivings over the religious pedigree of the author, I was determined to go into it with an open mind, which I believe I managed for the most part. I was also at a slight disadvantage, having read spoiler-filled reviews of each of the books, which obviously diminished the suspense, but this wasn't a major handicap, as most authors are reluctant to kill their main characters anyway, so you already expect everyone to survive.

But it just didn't grab me by the throat, as it were. I honestly like Bella, the main character, and I want her to get what she wants. Which is, of course, Edward. Who is also likable enough, I suppose. He's very courtly, very protective, very beautiful, very rich... very everything. And that makes sense, given that he's had over a hundred years to become all of those things. But he's a little... boring. He has no humanizing flaws, no fascinating quirks. And again, that makes sense - he's not human. But I have to say I don't understand the appeal. Sure, if he's that beautiful I'm sure I'd stare at him too. Then what? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy you could watch The Simpsons with, or play Rock Band with, or have a tickle fight with. I know those are my own personal hobbies, but he doesn't really seem compatible with any casual pursuits. All he and Bella seem to do together is walk around and sit around, talking about how in love they are and how much danger she's in. Which is lovely and deeply romantic. For about five minutes. Then I'm bored. And then what do you do?

I do realize that the brooding, Byronic hero is just not my cup of tea. I wasn't all that captivated by the Buffy/Angel thing, either. But at least they had a shared mission - they could slay together. And while Buffy was definitely near-obsessed with Angel, she at least had other friends. She spent time with other people, did other things. Occasionally she even resented Angel for being a part of the supernatural part of her world, being part of what kept her from normal. She was torn between being a Slayer and being a teenager. None of this is true of Bella. I know she doesn't have the convenience of being a Slayer - a defined destiny, a duty - but she doesn't seem to have any wants or needs that are not fulfilled by Edward.

In fact, she doesn't really have anything that isn't somehow connected to Edward (except for her family, which she's willing to give up to be with him). She doesn't have likes, dislikes, hobbies, friends, anything. At the beginning of the book, she misses the sunny weather of Phoenix, but when she realizes why Edward and his family live in rainy Forks, Washington, she stops minding the grey days. As she and Edward start dating, he asks her endless questions about herself - but very few of the answers actually make it into the book, leaving her as much a cipher as she was before. Her only distinguishing trait is that she is extremely accident-prone. All this makes her easy to identify with, but hard to know. I could understand a teenage (or pre-teen) girl wanting to BE Bella, to live out her romantic story, but I can't imagine wanting to be LIKE her. How? The answer to the question "what would Bella do?" always references Edward. If you don't have an Edward, you don't have an answer.

Bella isn't a person, she's a reflection. A pale imitation of the real thing - just as Edward isn't so much a person as a marble statue come to life. They're very pretty, and they're very devoted, but their passion is a pallid thing compared to reality. Give me a guy who gets a little dirty, who sweats and laughs and trips over his own feet and misspells words like "cereal", and I can love him in the passionate messy silly way a real guy deserves. Give me Edward, and I can hang his picture on the wall.

Did I mention how bored I am in museums of art?

SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Fall TV

A brief and by no means objective look at the dreck the networks are trying to pass off as "must-see TV" this year.

I'm spending Labor Day weekend on the East Coast, so you're lucky this is not simply a laundry list of all the things I need to accomplish before my flight leaves tomorrow night. Although I will take a moment to ponder where exactly the term "laundry list" came from. Did anyone, ever, actually have to make a list of the things they needed to launder? Could they not remember by looking at them, smelling them, or just picking up the laundry basket? Granted, not everyone has laundry baskets, and some things are easy to forget to wash (they're sheets. They live on the bed. Who remembers that they should be removed just because? Also, this is why I am not in charge of the laundry at my house), so I can see having "wash towels" or "do laundry" on your to-do list. But a laundry list? Really? Who has time to individually list each garment to be washed? And if you're just listing the types of laundry, are there really enough to forget? As in wash lights, darks, whites, and reds? Maybe if you have Alzheimer's. Which is, of course, a debilitating and particularly unhumorous condition. But also almost certainly not the source of the phrase.

Anyhow, I can't finish packing until my unlisted laundry finishes drying, so Fall TV it is. Sadly, this will be brief, as nowadays I use my television mainly as a radio - on in the background for friendly noise - or a screen for the DVD player. By the end of last season, the only show I watched faithfully in its proper timeslot was Top Chef, and that only because I wanted to talk about it with my mom the next day. I know that last season isn't quite representative, what with the (completely justified) writer's strike. But the season before wasn't much better. At this writing, there are no sitcoms I watch on a regular basis (except The Simpsons and South Park, but I'm not sure they count. I watch them almost exclusively in reruns anyway, so in terms of ratings they might as well be M*A*S*H). There are two hour-long dramas I follow religiously: Heroes and Battlestar Galactica (and if season 3 of Heroes isn't better than season 2, it will fall off my list), and three more dramedies I usually intend to watch but only remember about half the time. I also watch Top Chef, Project Runway, and occasionally So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars (although I despise shows where America gets to vote. After we elected George W. Bush the SECOND time, my respect for the American electorate went from tentative to nonexistent. We, as a country, have proven that we are morons. I can only hope we start the long path back the other way this November).

So this fall I'm not looking forward to much. Battlestar Galactica doesn't return until January at least. I will watch the premiere of Heroes, but my hopes are only moderate. (Mostly I hope to see less of the Cheerleader.) I caught up with some of what I missed last season on House over the summer, and I'll be glad to see it return. I've also come to enjoy Bones in repeats, which was a pleasant surprise - David Boreanaz had worn out his welcome with me in the final season of Angel, so I didn't give this show a chance. That was a mistake. I'm happy to see Pushing Daisies return, and I'm interested to find out if Chuck and Reaper can stop seeming like fraternal twins (one sci-fi, one supernatural) and become distinct from each other. I'll give Sarah Connor Chronicles another chance. It didn't wow me the first time around, but the cast is excellent and the premise is solid, so I'll try it again.

And that's it for returning shows. The potential in the new shows is even thinner on the ground. I'm moderately enthused about Fringe, the new X-Files type thriller on Fox. (I'm glad to see Joshua Jackson working again, anyway.) The only drawback is that it's created by J.J. Abrams, the mastermind behind such masterpieces as Alias and Cloverfield. And Lost, which I've never enjoyed but will refrain from bashing here, since my boyfriend reads this blog. I'm also waiting impatiently for Dollhouse, the new drama from Joss Whedon, starring Faith from Buffy and Helo from Battlestar, but it doesn't premiere until midseason.

And I'm done. Oh, there a couple more moderately interesting shows, especially on NBC, which has a couple titled Crusoe (you can guess the premise) and Kings (a modern-day take on the life of King David, who was apparently quite the Biblical badass). But not much to look forward to. The rest of the lineup seems to consist of desperate pandering (the 90210 remake, anyone?), ideas that were kind of stupid the first time around (Knight Rider), and painfully unfunny comedies (check out the ads for Kath & Kim. Molly Shannon lost my sympathies long ago, but I can't help but cringe for poor Selma Blair, squeezed into neon and whining like a thirteen-year-old deprived of Twilight).

I was contemplating getting DVR, but at this point I'll be using it to avoid primetime, not to manage its conflicts.

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!

Of Ends and Endlessness

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the last episode of Buffy. (Now, while I firmly believe that Buffy is the greatest television show of all time, this is not the post where I will defend that point. I don't have that kind of time today.) I'm not actually a fan of the final episode. I can kind of see where they were trying to go with it, but I thought that it fell really short when compared with the rest of the series, and ultimately it left me sad not only that the series had ended, but also that this episode was the last experience I would ever have of it.

Here isn't really the place to go into full detail on that either. Although I will say that the lack of mourning for Spike, the compression of mourning for Anya into one tossed-off "That's my girl" from Xander, the complete waste of time on an in-joke so obscure that all the dedicated fans I know missed it (the Trogdor joke - the only non-fan in the room for the finale had to explain it to us) - suffice it to say that the only thing that kept me from hiding in my room and bawling inconsolably afterward was the fact that I had thrown a party to watch it and my guests were still in attendance.

But all of those minor annoyances aside, I still had a major problem with the big spell. You know the one - Willow sits on the floor with the legendary Slayer scythe in her lap and pulls all the power she can handle to modify the ancient spell that creates and activates Slayers. Connected through the scythe, she holds on long enough to activate every potential Slayer currently on the planet - girls as young as eight or nine up through teenagers. As the show puts it, every girl who might have been a Slayer now is a Slayer. (The show's mythology was always a little vague on Slayer creation - it's hard to say what the earliest age it's possible to identify a Potential is, and there's also no information on at what point you presumably age out of the possibility. I'm assuming the spell did not also activate women in their thirties and beyond, who might have been Slayers if the current Slayer when they were fifteen, say, had died.)

To be honest, I wasn't initially that bothered by the spell. I thought the episode spent a little too much visual time on it (there was one recurring shot in particular, of a girl batting in a softball game - please, just hit the damned ball already!), but in general it seemed a fairly ingenious solution to the hordes of demons the Scooby Gang was facing. What bothered me came later, when a friend told me that Joss Whedon had explained that the spell was supposed to symbolize the final step in Buffy's journey to adulthood - the realization that she is not the only Chosen One, simply one of many, and that her life, no matter how heroic and dramatic, is not the center of the universe.

Which, let's face it, is hugely depressing. The idea that the final step to growing up is, essentially, realizing that you just aren't all that special, horrifies me. I agree that the life-or-death self-centeredness that is the hallmark of adolescence must eventually give way to a more nuanced and inclusive view of the world, of course. And I do occasionally marvel at how little time I spent thinking of others as a teenager. But that ending still seems to take it a step too far. Because if you're not the star of your own life - if you don't get to be the Slayer or the Princess or the Jedi Knight - then you're just a number, living out your tiny life alongside the billions of other tiny lives, lost forever in the vastness of the universe. If that's adulthood, I decline.

But what got me thinking about this was the endless go-round of everyday adulthood. The constant cycle of bill paying and grocery shopping and laundry and everything else. Especially lately, as I've had to deal with getting slightly older on all fronts: socially, where many of my friends are getting married and one pair even managed to buy a house; financially, where I've discovered that saving for retirement is what you get to look forward to even before you've paid off your student loans; and biologically, where I'm having to start taking into account things like maybe I should start wearing sunscreen every day if I don't want to look like my grandmother by the time I'm forty. Which is all pretty depressing in its own right. And I got to thinking that maybe Joss was right after all, that you do grow up and settle down and settle for what you've got.

So I was depressed by my tiny life and the tiny events that could eventually be expected to parade through it (if I could ever scrape together the funds to finance any of them): wedding, house purchase, children, vacations, etc. Until, thankfully, I remembered something that happened on another Joss Whedon show, when Angel had an epiphany.

"If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. Cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today."
Angel, Epiphany (2:16)

Angel was both an adult and a hero, and this sounds like a pretty good philosophy to me. What you do every day matters, at least to you and the people around you. It matters a lot, in fact, even if all you do is all you can do in your tiny life, even if you're not a Slayer or a vampire or a Jedi Knight. And if that doesn't make you the hero of your own story, then I don't know what does.

I grew up with Buffy - went to high school in Southern California the same years she did and graduated college a week before the final episode aired. But it looks like I can't follow her to adulthood (a metaphor which actually works really well, as her story continues in comic book form, which I don't read as I can't seem to connect to the medium). I've graduated to Angel instead. Guess now I know why I moved to Los Angeles.

Dressing Up for Grown-Ups

Buffy: It's come as you aren't night. The perfect chance for a girl to get sexy and wild with no repercussions.
Willow: Oh, I don't get wild. Wild on me equals spaz.
Buffy: Don't underestimate yourself. You've got it in you.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2:6, "Halloween"

They're talking about Halloween, of course, but I've always found that little exchange to be a pretty good summation of why adults put on costumes. Or at least, why I do. Come-as-you-aren't night - doesn't it sound wonderful? A chance to be a princess or an elf or a superhero, or your favorite character from television or the movies. More importantly, a chance to be somebody besides who you have to be every other day.

It's not that being me sucks so much, really. I've got great friends and good family and fun hobbies and gadgets. But I work in a cubicle in an office, Monday through Friday every week, and I go home to my sweet, stable boyfriend of almost three years. On holidays I visit my normal, still-married parents. It's a good deal: believe me, I know it. But it's hardly epic, you know?

And for the most part, that's how I like it. Epic is more often than not a synonym for tragic, and as Chris Rock puts it, the only exciting relationships are the bad ones. I tried being sexy and wild once for a couple of months, and I admit, parts of it were fun - but a lot of it seemed to consist of being broke and hungover. Plus, as much as I always wanted to be Buffy, I have to side with Willow on this one, because I'm pretty sure that wild on me does equal spaz. At least until I've had enough alcohol to relax into it.

So sometimes it's incredibly freeing to be somebody else for a while. Especially when that somebody else comes with a ready-made persona that you'd never be able to pull off in real life. I've been Buffy, Raven, Black Canary, Yvaine from Stardust, Queen Gorgo from 300, Inara from Firefly, and Darla from BtVS. Except for Yvaine (her dress was just so pretty; if only I had a gay pirate stylist!), they're all kick-ass heroines (or villains) - sarcastic and sexy with great wardrobes full of things I could never wear in real life.

Red leather pants just aren't me... except when I'm Buffy. That linen toga/shift thing Queen Gorgo wears requires more social courage than I possess (and some double-sided tape). But I pulled it off all day at Comic-Con. Because when I wear the costume, I get to channel the character, and that's a thrill I don't get every day.

So look for me at the next masquerade ball, and on the convention floor at Comic-Con. I'll be the girl with the attitude and the leather corset.

Why BSG is (currently) the best show on television

So I've just watched the last episode of the first half of the final Battlestar Galactica season, and it was amazing. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet (4:10, Revelations), I won't include any spoilers here. I just want to take a moment to appreciate the many wonderful things about this intelligent, superlative show.

For the many people who mistakenly believe that a "genre" show is somehow lesser than a reality-based narrative, I'd like to point out that this show is built around a series of core questions that are deeper and more insoluble than any brought up by Law and Order or ER. The nature of humanity - always a slippery definition - becomes even more so when faced with a species that looks, feels, and bleeds as we do, yet is somehow separate. The Cylons, in their endless struggle to understand humans, force the humans to try to understand themselves. And while the first question is seemingly obvious: what constitutes humanity? The second question is definitely not: can you choose to be human? And the third is even more unsettling: can you choose NOT to be?

The answer to the latter questions seems, so far, to be in the affirmative. Cylon characters have made sacrifices as wrenching as any of the humans; humans have betrayed their own as they have been doing for centuries, in times and places when literally everything was at stake. Many of the characters have acknowledged this, while others refuse to face it, clinging to their own in the face of all evidence and opposition. The parallels with America's current situation in the global community are obvious, but the implications go beyond that. If peace broke out everywhere tomorrow, it wouldn't last precisely because we haven't answered these questions.

It's true that Battlestar Galactica is set far in the future, in a time of routine faster-than-light space travel and ship-mounted energy weapons. But nowadays that seems hardly more fanciful than The West Wing's benevolent, responsible Bartlet Administration. The people of the Colonial Fleet may live in more extreme conditions than the average American, but they have the same range of choices. Violence vs. peace. Trust vs. betrayal. Self-interest vs. the greater good. The choices they make are sometimes right, and sometimes not, but perhaps that, too, is an indicator of humanity.

I'll reserve my accolades for the acting and specific accomplishments in writing for another post, but I will say that I have more in common with Dee or Cally or Tory any day of the week than I ever had with Carrie Bradshaw or Meadow Soprano. And I'm proud of that, not just as a Geek Girl, but as a human being.

I think that the main reason most people dismiss "genre" shows is a failure of imagination. After all, anyone who thinks Farmer Needs A Wife and The Bachelorette are reality-based is clearly incapable of separating fantasy and reality. And we should all feel sorry for them.

Boots, boots, everywhere, but never the ones I need

Compared to my non-geek friends, I'm really not that into shoes. Admittedly, I probably have 30 or 35 pairs of them, but that stems more from my pathological inability to throw away things that might someday be useful for a costume than it does from any great love of shoes. (I'm not joking: just last weekend I salvaged an atrocious linen jacket from my mom's castoffs and stuck it in my boyfriend's closet, just in case someone we know ever happens to throw a Miami Vice themed party.) So I believe that my shoe collection is quite moderate, considering.

But I do, at last count, own eight pairs of boots. I ordered another pair online just now, which will bring the total to nine. The problem is that no matter how many I acquire, I never seem to have quite the style required to imitate the character I'm creating a costume of. Take the first pair, for instance. Knee-high black leather with a side zip and three-inch chunky heels, I begged my mom for them when I was seventeen and desperate to be Buffy. (If memory serves, I used to wear them with a black mini and a spaghetti-strap tank top with appliqued butterflies. Shudder.) The next two pairs didn't actually have a lot to do with costuming - apparently at nineteen I though pain was sexy. There's certainly no other excuse for the stiletto-heeled torture chambers I bought (in black leather and camel suede both, just to cover all possible outfits). But I still have them, just in case. Next came knee-high slouchy brown suede boots with stacked heels, then Italian leather boots in a rich chocolate that were secondhand and impossible to resist. Then last year I decided to dress up as Raven from Teen Titans at Comic-Con, which required low-heeled ankle boots that I found at Hot Topic. And then I found a perfect pair of Resident Evil Alice boots and decided to make a costume to go with them. The last pair (before today) were tall black leather creations wrapped in more scraps of black leather and studded. I don't know what they're for, but it's probably post-apocalyptic. Does Daryl Hannah wear boots in Blade Runner?

Despite this seemingly comprehensive collection, I still end up needing a new pair for almost every kick-ass heroine I want to dress up as. I did use the Buffy boots to be Black Canary two Halloweens ago, but that costume was basically a cop-out. (If you want to try it, all you need is boots, fishnets, a good black swimsuit, and a bolero. True, only hardcore DC fans will know who you are, but everyone will be impressed by your willingness to walk around in the outfit I've just described.) All of my other boots have yet to be reused for costume purposes.

The lack of versatility would bother me less if it wasn't for one thing: men. My boyfriend owns two pairs of boots: one black leather and medieval-style, the other brown suede and Indian-style. With just those boots, he's been Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet, an evil pirate named Rodrigo, a noble (generic) cavalier, a random masked warrior, an elemental Earth spirit, and Madmartigan from Willow. The only reason he's considering a new pair is that the sole is coming off one of the black ones, and electrical tape can only get you so far.

But today I started working on my American McGee's Alice costume, and as I looked at the images pulled up on Google, I realized with a sinking heart that her boots lace or buckle all the way up to the knee. All of mine are either too short, or zip-fastened. Pair number nine, here I come. Let's just hope I can hold off on number ten until I throw that party for the last episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Until then, I'll be working on my wig collection.