First Twilight, now The Hunger Games — modern YA books and the cloud of phenomena they stir bear absolutely no resemblance to spinning the paperback carousel in the “Teen” section of the library in the Ye Olden Eighties.
I have read both of these books, probably more than once. Back in the day, All That Glitters weren’t no vampire.
The closest I remember to a clamor is trading Sweet Valley High titles or finding out there was another addition to the Kobie series.
And so of course, where there’s a fuss, there’s me four years later. This is up next — as soon as I finish my Marco Pierre White memoir, and get over wanting to be called an “enfant terrible.”
There will be no chilling. Do you remember how tortured and full of angst Raphael was? That was no alien. More to the point, thou shalt not cowabunga when this conversation happened today, with no preface.
The actual piece (My So-Called Life: Where Are They Now?) grabbed me — the author’s bio made me want to meet her. (But only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 5:30-6:00, of course. That’s when meetings happen.)
This week take time to celebrate well, November 17th: Wise Owl Day.
“Come live with me in a hollow tree, little Owl,” said the Big Brown Bear.
“Though it’s cold as ice, we’ll be warm and nice with the two of us living there.”
But the Owl said as he shook his head, “Mr. Bear, that will never do.”
“For if I know my name, when the springtime came, there’d be nobody left but you.”
Wise Little Owl! exclamation mark included, is the November 17th poem from The Golden Book of 365 Stories, the story/poem/rip off (Oh Mommy ! I’ll be the only one wearing a rain coat and rubbers!) a-day book that was read in our house conservatively 17 times.
That owl gets smarter and smarter, the older I get.
That’s how my grandparents answered the phone, way back when picking it up was a big mystery — who could it be? If Frank picked up it was, “Well, Zoë! How the heck are you!?” And I bet they had this very phone book, the Tri-Cities in 1968.
And suddenly it all becomes clear: Statler and Waldorf were the original internet commenters.
“This show is awful!”
“Terrible!”
“Disgusting!”
“See you next week?”
“Of course.”
Much the same, the most interesting of comments, heckle.
There’s an art to the heckle. It’s not as simple as haters gonna hate — to heckle isn’t to hate. For that, you wouldn’t even show up in the balcony. To heckle is to love to hate, the delicious communion of pointed rejoinders with a shared canon as ammunition.
And to find the Statler to your Waldorf? (Mustache. The more you know.) Is probably nothing short of a life quest.
