Twilight rant

I was just perusing photos of the as-it-happens, latest Twilight premiere (hey, i'm still a girl, i like a big fancy several-thousand-dollar gown as much as the next chick). I see flocks of teenagers sure, but more than that, i see grown women brandishing oversized signs portraying an airbrushed-even-in-his-prime twenty something, announcing their never ending love for him, or his character. Or something.

Yep, that's right. Their undying love for a fictional character nearly half their age. No wait. He's actually over 100 years old so he's twice their age. OK but he's in love with a teenager so it's hard to remember that he's actually a senior citizen and not, um a pedophile. I've heard this argument (raise your voice an octave and read this part w/ a nasally twang because that's how i hear it in my head every time i hear it in real life) that the books are an easy read and they're a great escape and the romance is so hot and BLAH BLAH BLAH. I get it. Your Twilight is my Housewives of New Jersey. It's trashy trash we probably shouldn't admit to liking. I guess I find reality TV more realistic than this-yes, sad and ironic. In my world, when i read, i want to read. I want to dig in and think AND be taken away to somewhere more interesting with someone more exciting. When i want to shut down, i watch tv. That's not to say everyone has to behave that way, that's just how i am.   I see books and movies as art forms and i just don't feel the same way about tv shows.

Some people might say that my loathing of the success of the Twilight books is jealously. I'm going to have a grown up moment here - those people may be right. I certainly would love to see my own literary piles of sh!t hung in the air for all to see -and have those same people spend their savings on life-sized cardboard cut-outs of my main characters and tattoos of my plot lines. I truly would savor every gratuitous moment. But in this case, i find Stephanie Meyer's fame tastes as sour as Paris Hilton's. What did either of them really do to earn their keep? Stephanie Meyer stole bits of character from great literary works and hacked and mangled and glue sticked them together. Devils advocate: there's nothing new under the sun Snark. OK, while i don't really buy that, i know it's not easy to be original -that's what separates the women from the girls. And the best Meyer could come up with is 'they sparkle when the sun hits'em!' What the f&ck is that? That's just silly y'all.

 So she nabbed the entire concept (vampires, forbidden love) from, like, a million other better written novels, so what. Well, she couldn't even create believable vehicles to drive this already familiar plot. She penned boring, vapid characters no one cares anything for (I once heard her main character compared convincingly and with Harvard Debate Club precision and gusto- to a lego brick)-but i hear that's ok because they're teenagers.

 People, that's not ok. Teenagers are the farthest thing from dull. Teenagers are lustful and dramatic and believe it or not, insightful. The problem is usually they think too much - and not about the right things. So they do stupid things for what they think is love maybe, and then they learn something, and do something equally stupid but in a different way the next time. They are exciting little sponges. Somehow, Stephanie Meyer made me bored to tears with this girl Bell.

 More than that, however, i find this mania extremely disheartening. Why is this no-talent hack making oodles of bank when writers with real talent are forced to self-publish and build slow cult followings over decades before they make it big? What does this say about us? Hilary Thayer Hamann wrote a book about a teenager that I could not get over. Do you need to relive your teenage years as someone more interesting? Her teenage heroine is believable, relatable and totally interesting. Is anyone reading Margaret Atwood anymore? Hold on, you want to have a little somethin' somethin' with a teenager? You need a little John Irving. Oh you want a real romance - try John Galsworthy - his Forsyte Saga is epic. Yes I'm annoyed that Chuck Palahniuk was writing for years before people realized how on the f*cking edge Fight Club was. Why do people only know Tolkien as 'that guy who had something to do with the Lord of the Rings movies'?

 So no offense to those of you who enjoyed the Twilight books, i guess, like i said, i think i get it, but i'm sort of embarrassed for the world the way women and young women are acting over these poorly written completely unoriginal badly acted pieces of regurgitated sh*t.