Hidden Gems: All I Wanna Do (aka The Hairy Bird/Strike)

I've found that Gawker's a really good place to find something new. This goes for just about everything: books, music, movies, TV shows...

While the articles on this site amalgamation do talk about these different forms of entertainment, one can find some interesting recommendations in the comments, which are often far better for the researcher of precious pieces of art that fell out of range of the pop-culture radar (or at least, my pop-culture radar) dominant in one's time.

The other day I uncovered such a discovery: a reference to a movie this commenter dubbed "The Hairy Bird." I was intrigued, especially since one of the movie's stars is Kirsten Dunst (an actor I'm rather fond of) and centers around an all-girl's school (a setting that I am at least intrigued by, if I haven't watched a lot of movies/read a lot of books about girls' schools). I immediately searched for it online, under the name of "Strike! (All I Wanna Do)"... and in the title credits it's called "All I Wanna Do"...with a vaguely pubic peach-colored bird prancing around the names in the cartoon opening. Why it goes by so many titles, I'm not sure...and I'm not really a fan of any of them.



The premise: in the 1960s, an all-girl's school is about to go co-ed due to a lack of funds, and several of the girls object to this change. Thus, they plot to thwart the Board's plans, which include making the boys of the school they're to merge with look like their true selves--that is, assholes.

I liked the movie a lot. It's an adventurous girls' school comedy that endorses empowering, testosterone-free havens of learning for girls--and presents that case in a compelling way. While there are a few tropes typical of this kinds of movie (the girls rebel, there's a prissy stuck-up foil who's picked on by the protagonists, and all wrongs are righted in the end, and rather quickly), All I Wanna Do stood out drastically from a lot of the other high school movies I've seen. Not least because female solidarity and sexuality were central themes.

The cast is, naturally, predominantly female, the teenaged girls are horny (even in 1961!) and not ashamed to admit it. The characters also had other interests besides boys, and most had careers in mind for their post-secondary plans. Dunst's character could be labeled the "mean girl;" but her meanness has a different motive. And in the end, she grows and changes--not a comeuppance. Of course, her status as a "mean girl" is more attributable to her role as a clever mischief-maker than as one of the "popular girls." She and the primary protagonist do become friends, after all. The one characterization I had specific issue with was that of Heather Matarazzo's (of Princess Diaries and Welcome to the Dollhouse recognition), who played a girl who obviously suffered from disordered eating, if not bulimia--and the others, who were supposed to be friends, treated it like it was just some weird diet. Granted, they probably didn't know how bad eating disorders really were in the 60s, but a tad bit of sensitivity would have helped. (On the other hand, her roommate, another not-conventially-pretty character, was much more self-confident)

But what truly shines is the dialogue. In addition to the kooky catchphrases like "up your ziggy with a wa-wa brush", the characters express thoughts pertaining to the larger themes of the movie in realistic ways... even if they came off as a little obvious. I had not really thought about how co-education marginalized women for decades because the boys were too often considered the smarter, more capable, and more valuable members of the classroom, as they were the ones who were expected to go to college and have a career. At an all-girl's school, girls were better able to learn because they weren't being ignored. It made me think, and further sympathize with the protagonists. As stuffy as the girls' school was, they were all up against the man--quite literally.

Plus this movie's really funny. I give it four out of five stars for sheer uniqueness and entertainment value!

What the Death of Borders Means to Me

This past week, former bookstore behemoth Borders succumbed to the inevitable and liquidated its remaining assets, i.e., closing the rest of its stores and going out of business. Now, there were a lot of factors that contributed to its demise--a changing literary landscape, widespread digitalization, the rise of Amazon, egregious mismanagement, etc.--that led the majority of the publishing and bookselliing world to conclude that Borders would not last the year. And these factors have been discussed thoroughly by those more knowledgeable than I, who agree that Borders should just die already.

My personal experience with Borders was not a terrible one--far from it. Though hardly as charming as the numerous smaller, intimate indie bookstores in the Boston area (my current place of residence), it retained the mute, cozy presence of bookstores that I do enjoy. And considering that many of its stores were pretty large, it was easy to just spend hours in the store and get tempted to buy any book I found the least bit interesting. In all, Borders didn't particularly stand out from other bookstores, except that it was huger.

But for most of my life thus far, I haven't lived in a town with a lot of bookstores--at least, not many that I knew of. (for my first sixteen years, I was dependent on my parents for transportation and had restricted access to the internet, so I didn't really know about the indie bookstore gems hidden in the 30-mile radius of my hometown) So for much of my childhood and adolescence, there was only the Waldenbooks at the mall, plus the library. Much later, a Barnes & Noble opened. And not too long after that, the Waldenbooks closed. (gee I wonder why?)


Waldenbooks was its own independent bookstore chain for 50 years before it got bought by K-Mart in 1984, then merged with Borders in 1994, and became an entity inseparable from Borders starting in 2004. So for most of the time I went to this Waldenbooks, it was already a part of Borders. I got rather attached to this store, needless to say. In addition to plenty of picks for my hungry young mind to peruse through, this Waldenbooks had an impeccable selection of manga--which was a godsend to me after my former go-to manga shop (and the place where my otaku phase started) closed. Barnes and Noble's manga offerings, by comparison, were pathetic, especially to a fan of shojo manga (they mostly had shonen manga and more adult stuff). (In other old sad news, TokyoPop, the publisher of some of my all-time favorite manga titles, folded this year, as well) Since I'm usually indifferent to salespeople when I already know what I'm looking for, I liked Waldenbooks because I could find what I was looking for, and even find something new that I didn't even know about. There were more than a few times when I walked out of that store with books that I didn't even know existed when I went in. Waldenbooks was my go-to place to spend my gift money--I hardly ever needed to give it a second thought. When I found out that it closed, I was saddened by the loss, indeed. Though at that point I was only living at home part-time, so it wasn't as big of a deal as the anime store closing was.

So, while Borders never really meant much to me, Waldenbooks did. And Waldenbooks was already dead.

As for what the future holds? Ultimately, I'm glad Borders is dead. I hope that this brings in new indie bookstores to neighborhoods that now will no longer harbor the increasingly obscure niche that is a bookstore, people will patronize their local libraries more often, and indie authors, publishers, and booksellers alike will be able to flourish with one less corporation grabbing for their shallow purses. One unfortunate consequence could be that Amazon grows even larger, putting publishers in a stranglehold and overshadowing the intrepid brick-and-mortar booksellers who just can't compete with Amazon's price gauging. I hope that the death of Borders will help to usher in a new era of publishing, as publishers and booksellers rethink their current models more seriously.

In all, I hope Borders will not die in vain.

Photo cred: Culture Tease and the Carnegie Center blog

More Posthumous Praise for David Foster Wallace

The other day at work I had the pleasure of proofreading an anthology of essays by contemporary writers, thinkers, and journalists, which featured two essays by the one and only David Foster Wallace. I also just recently finished reading his essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I've written a bit about him before, and I'd like to expand my thoughts to his nonfiction, which bears a lot of similar characteristics to his fiction--albeit less tangential and unorthodoxically structured.

Wallace is one of those writers whom you like more and more as you get more familiar with their particularly peculiar style (like that great guy who's a little rough around the edges, a new bicycle, or prog-rock bands). The first work of his that I read, I liked enough to read more, and after reading three whole books by him (Infinite Jest, Fun Thing, and Interviews), he's become one of my favorite writers. I read Infinite Jest too early to truly enjoy it, as I think I'd like it better now that I'm more accustomed to Wallace's style. Perhaps I will read it, in bits and pieces, again.

But what's much more remarkable about Wallace's writing is his voice. This is most apparent in his essays, as his fiction isn't always third person. The details he gives in both genres are so intricate and yet so strange and striking as to almost be hyperbolic, making the mundane and generally not very interesting (tennis, state fairs, Caribbean cruises, among others) absurd and extraordinary. Wallace's journalistic style is observational and honest to his point of view. He also meanders from topic to topic, though it all underlies the same basic themes of the essay.

One of the numerous praises included in this edition of the book called Wallace, unimaginatively, "smart and funny"...and that really sums up his narrative voice (though the phrase "clever and humorous" better reflects his writing level). Though the more carefully crafted writing voice is not necessarily indicative of an individual's speech abilities, I can imagine that Wallace would be rather a pleasure to converse with--and it makes me all the more sad that I will not be able to meet him, at least in this life (not that I'd ever have the guts to approach an admirable writer at a book signing or whatever).

What's more (and this is what I was originally getting at) is that his writing voice makes him a person who's so--likable. Part of it is the fact that he does not write himself out of the nonfiction story he's telling (very often because he is experiencing the subject), so we get a lot of his perspective. And I found that I could identify with his various thoughts about a given situation, since he reasoned them so well. And I don't agree with Wallace on all things, by all means. He does acknowledge his privileges and shortcomings (though he doesn't feel entirely good about it), and he's nonjudgmental. Wallace occasionally ribs on a strikingly funny character of a person, and certainly expresses pity for and admits an inability to identify with ordinary folks, but does not accuse anyone of anything. Rather, he almost admires these ordinary people who end up in his essays, as he himself feels like a dysfunctional member of society. Though perhaps they could stand to be a bit more thoughtful (not in a condescending way, though).

It's impossible for me to say whether his writing style was indicative of his true self--one would think that such thoughtful prose would only come from the heart of the writer, as it often is. And from some of the posthumous articles I've read about him, it seems as though it does ring true. There's enough to say about David Foster Wallace to make up an entire dissertation (if someone hasn't already, I'm sure they're on it now that his oeuvre is complete), but for the sake of brevity, I'll stop here. If unusual, funny, and absurdist fiction or nonfiction floats your boat, check out his writing!