Hooray for Westwood

The other night I got to attend the premiere for the new Zac Efron movie, Charlie St. Cloud, you guys. If you know me at all, you would know I was pretty excited as soon as I saw the poster, way back when, because I love boys with good hair who gaze:

Hey, actually, guys, can we talk for a minute about how the new Google image search sucks? I had to find this image myself. It never would actually display an image of the poster of a movie that’s about to come out. WHAT THE HELL.

Anyway, I have lived in L.A. for awhile so I have worked a couple premieres before and even attended one (randomly, Juno, and all I really remember is my friend talked about wanting to kiss Ellen Page while we were standing very closely to her, oops, and that I was really sad Allison Janney wasn’t at the party), but I must say this was the most insane thing I’ve ever been to.

Why?

Uhhh. This is why:

APPARENTLY SOME PEOPLE REALLY LIKE ZAC EFRON.

I mean. I think he’s dreamy and all. I think his hair is epic. (HIS HAIR IS EPIC.) But, dude. We were still driving to the valet, and with our windows up we could hear the screaming.

Holy crap. The screaming! It was like Beatlemania. Or some kind of deadly outbreak. Just. Decibel-splitting levels of lust and crazy.

I had to cross the red carpet to get inside the theatre, and I mentally thanked the blockades for existing and took out my camera to document the hoards of fans held back by said oh-yes-I-love-that-you’re-here blockades.

An unidentifiable girl yelled out: “How did YOU get a ticket???”

The question could be interpreted in a number of ways. Perhaps she asked everyone how they got a ticket to the premiere! Perhaps she thought I looked super unimportant! Perhaps she thought, how did that purple-striped-hair freak lady get in when I am but trapped beyond these horrible gates?

The crowd looked kind of threatening:

So instead of pondering the question or coming up with an answer, I retreated inside very, very quickly, and drank a free Diet Coke.

My favorite moment of the night was, obviously, being yelled at on the red carpet. This was my second-favorite moment:

We were waiting in line for the bathroom once we got to the afterparty. There is a tiny commotion of sound, and then I hear the voice of a dude I think I know. But it is not a dude I know! It is Zac Efron, who has just exited the men’s room. (Stars! They’re just like us!) All the girls behind us in line are little (hey, what did you do when you were twelve, guys? for me it was NOT “attend premiere afterparties”) and they are FREAKING OUT. FREAKING OUT!

Two speak to him. He is so nice to them! What a class act. They get back into line. They are so weak after this encounter they must face the wall and lean on it for support. The first exclaims, “OH MY GOD I SPOKE TO HIM HE SPOKE TO ME OHHHHH MY GOD” and I’m not gonna lie, if He Of Epic Hair ever spoke to me I might have this reaction too, at least internally.

Her friend shrieks in horror! “HE’S STILL STANDING RIGHT THERE! HE CAN HEAR YOU RIGHT NOW!!!!!!”

I have never heard such an amazing unique mix of love, lust, and fear distilled into two short statements in my life.

My Fictional Boyfriends – Round One

I started thinking about fictional boyfriends because all the lovely ladies at my new office are deep head-over-heels crazypants in love with… Edward Cullen.

Now, look, you guys. I (sometimes) think Robert Pattinson is pretty hot:

…but Edward would be a terrible boyfriend! He can’t even enjoy a good meal with you (unless you’re into biting fresh bunnies or something)! I’m a foodie, so what the eff would we do on dates if we can’t enjoy food together and we can’t get it on? Also he tells you what you can and can’t do! He watches you sleep, which would be a total dealbreaker for me:

…and not just because I’m a snorer and I prefer the boys not to get a whiff of that right out of the gate.

The same ladies mocked me for my High School Musical calendar, but lemme tell you something: Troy Bolton is a way better fictional boyfriend.

Firstly, let’s just get this out of the way: not only is his hair just as dreamy, IT’S ACTUALLY FRESHLY-WASHED. You just know it smells like conditioner and freshly-applied product, not freshly-eaten animals and forest twigs and cold marble. Because, you know, speaking of that, also HIS SKIN WOULDN’T FEEL LIKE COLD MARBLE.

Also: he is a good dancer, he respects musical theatre, and he’ll prioritize your college/career plans ahead of his own when necessary. OK, he’s not perfect. Sometimes he gets a little caught up in his fancy-pants friends and Italian shoes, and he eschews washing certain garments to bring luck to his basketball team, but he’ll dance it out and make amends. This is not a boy tethered too tightly to gender norms.

Next up, because I suppose I should try to balance out my TV and movie refs with LITERATURE, is If I Stay’s (and Where She Went’s!!) Adam. Ag, Adam. You’re dreamy too, and even though I assume you have spectacular emo hair and a punk rock DIY touring sched, I bet it’s relatively clean and fantastic-smelling.

But, YES, he’s a musician! But even though he’s rock ‘n roll, he’s gonna respect my dorky tastes too, as evidenced by just how much (HOW MUCH!) he got out of that Yo Yo Ma concert. Right? Oh, yes. Boys who are passionate about things – and by “things” I don’t mean “how your blood smells” – are boys I can get behind. And, um, other prepositional phrases.

Which leads me to my last point about Adam, which is that he doesn’t care about not besmirching your precious virtue or whatever. BESMIRCHING BE DAMNED. VIRTUE BE DAMNED. PRECIOUSNESS BE DAMNED. Swooooooon.

This concludes Round One of My Fictional Boyfriends. Stay tuned; there are more in store.

On Not Liking Things Ironically

The other day my dear friend Josh asked me what was up with my Zac Efron love. Was it ironic, or did I really think he was dreamy?

Well, I think that’s obvious:

POW.

Anyway, this is the thing. You know what I think? I think people claim to like things ironically, when in truth liking things ironically means liking things one knows aren’t cool or intelligent or even very good. But LIKING them. It’s like you still want your awesomepants cred but you want to like crappy and/or uncool things.

Well, guess what? I have given up on my awesomepants cred. I probably had it at one point, back in the day no one had heard of the bands I loved or the web sites I visited, and I’d learned to sneer at anything that was popular. BUT GUESS WHAT? I don’t want to be awesomepants hipstery anymore. I want to be loud and proud about the things I like you may deem uncool.

Because, sorry. Liking something ironically? It’s still liking it. So just admit it!

Here are some uncool things I like:

Well, this, obviously:

Roxette! OK, their lyrics are, at best, inane and/or English as a third or fourth language, but I truly think this is effing good pop music. Some of their hooks make me a little insane with glee. I wanted to post a video, but EMI is insanely stupid with not letting you embed things (right???) so go here and watch.

Do I even have to explain this one? I do not think so.

There’s the fact that this is one of the only TV shows I never miss:

Hall and Oates, oh man! One time a cute boy I ended up tragically dating but before it got weird and awkward got into an emotionally charged argument about which Hall and Oates song was the best. We then realized how passionate we’d gotten over the subject and quickly stopped. But I still believe the only answer to that is this number:

Have you guys ever seen this awful movie Sydney White? Well, it is AWFUL. And I love it. There is a scene where BOYS SING IN A LIBRARY. Hey, I go to the library all the time! NO ONE EVER SERENADES ME.

There are periods of my life where this is one of my favorite restaurants:

So I encourage everyone to loudly embrace all that they love, cheesy or uncool or awful or all three as they may be. I’ve been enjoying being a giant goober more than I ever liked being cool.

Productive Amy Is Productive

Somehow, amazingly, I find myself staring down the very last chunk of my book during a rewrites process that initially seemed daunting and unending. Yes, I’m now left with shifting a key scene in a huge way so it’s not like I’m gonna breeze through to that finish line, and of course Critique Partner still needs to work her magic, and I still need to give this sucker another full read or three, but, man, it’s amazing what good notes can lead you to do.

So, of course, because I am a neurotic beast who is never happy, now I feel like dragging my heels because at the moment, rewriting seems so much frigging easier than getting back to Current Project and its ragged, first draft ways. I used to live for first writes and I never bothered to polish (which probably explains why I have so many deleted/burned manuscripts haunting me) but now the polishing is what I live for.

(Of course, when I got ready to start rewrites I was all annoyed because Current Project was flowing and it felt terrible abandoning it. SO I KNOW.)

Very much off-topic, I took a break last night to see 17 Again, and now I am convinced Zac Efron is an alien sent from a superior race who will distract and hypnotize us all with his abs and his hair before they invade.

I made a picture for you guys to demonstrate this.