One Last Thing...

I know I said the last post was the last post but I thought of something I wanted to include immediately after I posted so I am going to blog twice... in forty minutes...

Was I the only one who kind of liked Peter's sisters in Fruit? I know they are awful to him about 90% of the time and the scene in the mall with Christine is ridiculously heartbreaking. But... at the end I think they redeem themselves. As soon as he says he wants to lose the weight and he wants to go jogging or to aerobics class, they offer to help him. I thought it was interesting that they were all overweight (Christine isn't during the duration of the novel but he mentions that she used to be the fattest of them all). And then Christine and Nancy get skinny leaving Peter to become the "fat" one. So instead of hating the sisters (who I thought were just trying to break free of the fat and their family) the character I hated the most was the mom. Peter is unhealthy and the doctor is telling her this and she's not listening. And she just keeps feeding him. At the end of the novel, when Peter wants to lose weight and make a change his mom doesn't understand. Instead of being supportive, she bitches (pardon the language) about how all her kids are blaming her for their weight problems (page 251 and 252). I guess I just liked that in the end, when his mother is making everything about her, Peter and his sisters reach a mutual understanding and they support him when his mother doesn't.

Now I'm done. For real this time.

Final Thoughts

Ahhh... the last blog post. I'm not going to lie... I am not sad to see the end of this assignment. I really liked reading what other people had to say about the course material, it was just difficult to force myself to blog/comment every week (which is probably why I am so far behind on my commenting... woops!) Anyways, as this is the last week we will have to post, I figured I would just end with some of my overall thoughts about the semester. This course was challenging for me. It forced me to think about things I hadn't before and sometimes our class discussions made my head spin. The theory was, in a word, terrifying but I got through it and I feel more informed because of it. I really enjoyed most of the novels we read. Favorites?: Fruit and Zami. I liked that both of these novels (or novel and biomythography, I guess) blurred the lines between what is real and what is not. Fruit managed to take us inside the head of a 13 year old, sexually confused boy who thinks his nipples are talking to him. The scene in the basement with Billy Archer where Peter is drunk really blurred the line between fantasy and reality: as a side affect of the alcohol, Peter reverts into one of his bedtime fantasies (I just had to look up how to spell "fantasy" in plural form...it's going to be a long week) even though he is very much awake and still in the presence of other people. Zami is a biomythography. As we discussed in class this is kind of a complicated genre; reading it, you're not sure if this is her life as it really took place, if this is her life as she imagined it happened, if this is fiction and if it's a combination which parts are which. I think my favorite lecture of the semester was the Brian Francis visit (I am sure I am not alone in this...) He was personable, well spoken and interesting, and it was nice to end an often confusing, frustrating semester on a really positive note. Anyways, I am off to get to work on my assignment-pile-of-doom. Good luck to everyone on finals, papers, assignments, etc...

Tiny Shorts

I'm not sure if we are supposed to blog this week because of the holiday. But I figure because I didn't post last week (wooops...) I should today. I don't have a whole bunch to say so this is going to be fairly short. I really enjoyed our class on Camp (and yes, I know this is taking us back to a week ago...). I haven't laughed that hard in a class in a while. I forgot how cheesy the old Batman and Robin was. I remember watching it when I was little and really liking it, and I'm thinking the fact that it's so campy probably only added to my enjoyment level. I like that they take themselves soooo seriously but the audience knows how ridiculous they are being. Also, how can Robin take himself seriously when he is wearing such tiny shorts? (I actually wrote this down while we were watching the clips in class - Robin = tiny shorts.) Anyways, this was kind of a lame blog entry but oh well. Hope everyone is having a nice break from school.