WAYT: I’m onto your mind games, social media!

I’ve been gone from this site for so long, it’s almost laughable that I’m writing now.  As usual, the naysayer Devil on my shoulder is cackling about it because he thinks no one has missed me.  It’s hard not to believe that he’s right, but I feel fairly certain that there are enough people who used to read this blog that surely they’ll be glad I’m back. 

And that is my problem these days.  Between Facebook, Twitter and the hits and comments on my blog pages, I seem to think that everyone is my friend.  Maybe I spend too much time conversing with the Devil on my shoulder exclusively, or maybe people are really my friends. 

I’ll never know, because Facebook, Twitter and comments are so faceless and without value, that in my heart of hearts, I know it’s all superficial.  It’s not real friendship.  (But is it????)

Case in point: I feel like I am best friends forever with Jack Morrissey and Sylvain Reynard.  Jack Morrissey is Bill Condon’s main squeeze.  Yes, you read that right – Bill Condon, as in, major Hollywood film director.  Sylvain Reynard is the millionaire author of these books that I totally love (read about it here and here).  I’ve exchanged tweets and/or Facebook messages and comments with these two totally awesome, mega-rich and greatly beloved people and if anyone asked me, I’d tell everyone all about those tiny few words we’ve shared. 

Because social media wants me to think they’re my best friends.  Social media wants me to believe that these interactions make me someone special to these people who are so much larger in life than little old me. 

But really, are SR and Jack telling their friends, “Oh my gosh, this chick Kayla from Illinois tweeted me and I totally wrote her back and now we’re best friends because I love her Facebook profile picture!”?  The answer is no.  I need to get some perspective.  (But really, if you’re my Facebook friend, I don’t know how you can’t LOVE my profile picture.)

Except the sad thing is that I’m totally addicted to social media for that exact reason: I think they’re my friends and I want to keep that connection alive. 

Today, I curse myself and whatever I must be thinking, setting myself up for a sad, empty life with no tweets and no notification on my Facebook homepage from these celebrities and important people.  I also curse myself for hoping that they’ll read this and remember that one time we were BFF because Facebook and Twitter brought us together for one magical moment, and I want us to hold hands and sit around the warm campfire of our shared interests once more. 

“It’s all so laughable,” the Devil reminds me, so that I never forget.  Curse him to Hell!

WAYT: I've got the fever

I have a confession to make: I’m not always right.  (What am I thinking, admitting to being wrong?  My husband will undoubtedly print this out, frame it and wave it in my face at every available opportunity!)

Usually when I’m wrong, I like to be very hard-headed and take way too long to admit it.  So once and for all, I will just come out and say it.  I like Justin Bieber’s music. 

I have fought him off for years.  I find Bieber, as a person, to be absolutely obnoxious.  I do not believe that anyone his age should be getting up to some of his antics.  For example, should a 17 year old be on vacation in Hawaii with his then-19 year old girlfriend and be photographed with his tongue down her  throat?  Should a 17 year old be driving a car likened to the Batmobile?  Should a 17 year old be commenting about Canadian healthcare policies in entertainment news magazines?

And come on with that hair.  That used to be my biggest annoyance.  Thank the Lord he finally cut it. 

But dang if he doesn’t make catchy music!  And you know how I love music. 

I’ve been wrong about pop culture phenomena before.  I mercilessly mocked my sister for liking the movie Twilight.  And now look at me – my first website visit every day, after my email, is www.twifans.com.  I spent several hours of my life trying to figure out a way to trick my husband into giving our son a Twilight-related name.  Last November, I went to a Twilight movie marathon and watched nothing but Twilight movies for ten hours straight. 

Now, I just got back from my local Target store where I purchased an iTunes gift card so that I can buy the new Justin Bieber CD.  (For $14.99, this CD better validate my complete 180 on Bieber.)

I thought you could never make a Twi-Hard out of me.  I also swore you could never make a Belieber out of me.  What is the world coming to?  I’m supposed to be a grown woman!  I’m supposed to be growing more cultured with age!  Maybe I should start listening to 60’s music or something…

I blame it all on The New Kids on the Block.  If they hadn’t been the thing when I was in first grade, where would I be now? 

But I can’t deny it anymore.  Justin Bieber’s got the right stuff (see what I did there, NKOTB fans?) that makes me turn up the volume and sing along. 

What do you think of Justin Bieber?

WAYT: Fifty Shades of - wait, no, it's all the same color

Celebrity gossip is one of my “things.”  I love following the lives of celebrities to see what stupid thing they’ve done now.  My mom buys me a subscription to People magazine for my birthday every year and this year I treated myself to a subscription of Entertainment Weekly.  As an avid reader, the annoying thing I’ve found is that these two magazines both feature the same recommended books.  Maybe there are only so many good books that come out every week but for me, the subliminal message is that since two publications both like a particular book, it must be good!  I bought a book based on their recommendations a few weeks ago and it is vile.  Now I’m out $12 and have a crap book in my Nook library that I’ll never read. 

The latest big thing in book news is Fifty Shades of Grey.  It’s even on the cover of my Entertainment Weekly.  I don’t know how many of my readers caught this in my first post, but I’m a HUGE Twilight fan.  I can’t possibly quantify what I mean by HUGE because my obsession is really beyond measure.  I might need a medical diagnosis and some kind of prescription, actually.  This book, Fifty Shades of Grey, is an insult to Twilight and it's really getting on my nerves that it's getting so much attention.

My Twilight obsession led me to the world of Twilight fan fiction a couple years ago.  In this world, talented (and talentless and misguided and brilliant) writers pick up the characters and give them new life.  In fan-fics, Edward and Bella may continue as vampires, they may be re-created as all-human and their lives are sometimes drastically changed.  The basic idea is to use the characters however you want and further indulge in the world of Twilight.  Some stories even choose other minor characters and spin new stories, and some pair Bella with Jacob.  (Oh, no!  No.  Not for me, ever.)

Fifty Shades of Grey was a fan fiction story.  I started to read it back then and quickly went elsewhere.  It wasn’t very compelling to me.  (My favorite fan fiction story was published last year.  It’s titled Gabriel’s Inferno.  Check it out!)  I am begging you to NOT jump on this Fifty Shades of Grey bandwagon because it is so wrong! 

The idea of fan fiction is to keep the story alive.  Anyone who loved Twilight didn’t want to see it all end and fan fiction, a world endorsed by Twilight’s author Stephenie Meyer, gave fans a safe place to spin their tales.  Gabriel’s Inferno, as the fan-fic The University of Edward Masen, was compelling.  The author deeply understood the characters, imagined a complete (as in fully formed) new world for them and took the reader on a new journey. 

Fifty Shades does none of that.  Author EL James kept them in the same place (Washington even), kept nearly every single thing about them the same (except for now they’re all-human) and dropped the characters off in a sexy smut land.  This isn’t far-fetched for fan fiction because fan-fic authors and readers love to explore the places (read: bedrooms) that Twilight didn’t but in Fifty Shades, it wasn’t sexy to me.  It was gross.    

If you’re going to borrow (or pretty much plagiarize) from a book that is so widely read, watch how you use it.  And try not to be so lazy. 

I haven’t read Fifty Shades in its new form except for the content I got as a free sample.  The reason that the sample was enough to turn me away is because the author even adopted the same tone of narrative that made Bella so relatable in Twilight.  For me, Bella’s voice was so genuine to her situation in life.  She was self-deprecating, sometimes immature, naïve, sometimes thoughtless but at all times, in over her head.  So is this girl in Fifty Shades.  It’s annoying that the author didn’t bother to brand any part of her story as her own except for the BDSM.  Within the sample, she introduces her Edward character, Christian Grey, and talks about how gorgeous he is and how he’s magnetic and makes the Bella character, Ana, fumble and fall apart.  Also in the sample, Ana repeatedly says something like, “Holy cow!”  If there’s one thing I remember Bella saying in Twilight, it was “Holy crow!”  Bella was funny like that. 

Sounding familiar?  What are you thinking, EL James?  You’re not fooling me!

I don’t like to take on the fan fiction community because it brought me Gabriel’s Inferno and a few other stories that I truly love (Litany at Dusk, Not Like This, TNGUS, etc.) that I still like to re-visit.  But seeing Fifty Shades in print is beyond infuriating when it’s so derivative.  If I were Stephenie Meyer, I’d say enough is enough.  Cease and desist!