Also there was a Pemberley Moment

[melannen]

Last Saturday was the fall flea market at our church, and I never got around to posting about it; I ended up bringing home:
a mid-calf-length late-'60s cashmere coat with a fur collar;
a mid-calf-length gray wool coat of the same vintage;
"Original Rock & Roll Volume 1: The Greatest of the Great: For Professional Use Only", undated, no publisher or editor listed -> someday I will make a proper post about old-fashioned Fake Books in the history of music piracy
"50 top ten hits complied from billboard magazine 'hot 100 charts'", 1972
"The best of Simon & Garfunkel: The Paul Simon songbook", 1966 (I was like 'why does this not have some of their best-known songs in it? Oh, right, because they hadn't been written yet.")
"100 Years of the Automobile", 1985 -> So many pretty pictures! And then it talks about how mid-80s cars are the prettiest of them all. :D

That was my share of the $10 change. Plus a bag of walnut-chocolate bars for $.50 and lunch. Also afterward we took the leftovers to the Salvation Army store and I found another pair of brand-new waterproof hiking boots, that fit me, for $2. \o/

And then this Saturday was the great biannual holiday of the two Methodist Church flea markets and the historical society book sale!

At GBUMC, I bought:
3 slip-cast pottery mugs, @$.25 each
"A little house of my own : 47 grand designs for 47 tiny houses" by Les Walker, 2000 @$.50
Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, volume IX, issues 1 and 3 @$.25 each
Also a paperback for a Christmas present, @$.25

At the used book sale, I bought:
"The submarine boys for the flag" by Victor Durham, 1910, @$.25
"Watching for the wind; the seen and unseen influences on local weather" by James Edinger, 1967
"Crystal Singer" by Anne McCaffrey, @$.25
"African Systems of Kinship and Marriage" by A.R. Radcliff-Brown, 1965, @$.50
"Dinosaur in a haystack : reflections in natural history" by Stephen Jay Gould, 1996, @$.50
"Arkansas Wildflowers" by Ruth Gier, 1977, @$.50 (I figured that Arkansas 1977 is about the same climate range as Maryland 2012.)
My Enemy My Ally, The Romulan Way, Vulcan's Glory, and The New Voyages 1&2, to give away to fangirls who need them: @ 5-for-$1
"Essentials of Latin: An Introductory Course" vol. 1 and 2 on LP: @$.50 each
The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse, @$.25, which it turns out I already had;
and "Naked Pictures of Famous People" by Jon Stewart, @$.50, which may also be to give away to fangirls.

At the SPUMC sale, I bought:
1 pair brand-new waterproof hiking boots, @$.50 (I think I am good on boots for a couple more years now, at this point.)
1.5 yards lightweight brown wool suiting, @$.75
A tin cup, $.50
"Sword at Sunset" by Rosemary Sutcliff, 1963 hardcover with original dust jacket, @$.50
"What Kind of a House is That?" by Devlin Henry, 1969, @$.50
"Flower Making for Beginners" by Priscilla Lobley, 1970, @$.50
"Lao Mien embroidery : migration and change" by Ann Goldman, 1995 @$.50
"Dinosaurs of the East Coast" by David Weishampel, 1996, @$.50
"The Great International Paper Airplane Book" by Jerry Mander, 1971, @$.50
"Taran Wanderer" by Lloyd Alexander, 1967, @$.50 (I already had a copy of this, but this one matches the editions of the rest of my set. Which I believe were bought at this flea market about fifteen years ago.)
"Passing" by Nella Larson, 1929, @$.50

...yes, I am out of shelf space again. And coat closet space, incidentally.

Anyway after that I ended up going and hanging out with xerahanadu and lindentreeisle and company in Baltimore, and X-Men: First Class was watched.

I feel like I should be writing a thoughtful post about the fact that every time Charles and Erik were on screen together, the reaction from the audience was giggles as we waited to see who would be the first to give in and shout "KISS ALREADY!" at the TV, and what that says about society and the media and gender and sex, but I didn't get in until 2:30 AM last night and then I had to get up for church, so instead I'll say: it was a fun movie.

But it made no sense. I mean, I'm used to reading a bunch of fanfic for something, and kind of working out a pretty good idea of what happened in the show, but there will be a few things that aren't entirely clear from the fanfic, so I'll eventually watch canon, and then I'll go "Oh, that makes more sense now!"

XMFC is the first thing I've ever encountered where canon made less sense after I saw the movie. O.o Every fanfic I've read in the fandom had deeper characterization, more logical worldbuilding, more believable dialog and better-strung plot than the movie. Yes, even the fratboys!AU where they're all drunk off their asses the whole time. So, y'know, yay XFMC fandom, I guess?

There's probably something wrong with me, but I've decided that this movie makes about twice as much sense if you accept the postulate that mutants are a new species of humanity, Erik and Charles are the first wizards of mutantkind, Shaw is an incarnation of the Lone Power (his power seems to be taking organized energies and converting them into heat: if that's not an avatar of the power of entropy I don't know what is), and Erik chose power while Charles saw Death.

Also: We let this movie play with Science, and it broke it. So then we gave the movie its very own Science that had nothing to do with ours, and it broke its own Science, too. So we have decided it isn't allowed to have any Science at all anymore.

Moments other than the "Kiss already!" that got vocal reaction from our audience: the Wolverine cameo, which was basically the best thing ever committed to film (Aside from the bit in the second XMM movie with him and the kitten) and the scene where Darwin died, in which the only member of the audience who was completely unspoiled shouted, "OMG THEY KILLED OFF THE BLACK GUY? SERIOUSLY?" and the rest of us mocked her for her naiveté.

The guy who played Young Patrick Stewart was actually really good, and I loved what they did with that character while deeply disliking him (and pretty much every character in the movie, but I think I was supposed to - they managed to make a movie full of deliberately unlikeable characters which was still fun to watch, which is interesting.) The girl who played Mystique kept looking strangely familiar and I can't figure out why.

The guy who played Young Ian McKellen was way too bland - bland-looking, bland-acting. Of course, it doesn't help that people keep posting photos of young Sir Ian, which have made me save stuff to my Hot People folder for the first time in about a year. I mean, nobody could have lived up to that, even if they'd cast someone who wasn't a wifebeating asshole.

The title of the troll version of this movie is A Talented Psychic Seadweller Rescues From Drowning A Renegade Threshcutioner Bent On Revenge And They Attempt To Build A Moirallegiance As They Gather A Team To Find The Cruel Subjugglator Who Killed His Lusus, Until The Unexpected Flowering Of Their Black Passion Leads To The Destruction Of Alternia Through The Release Of Thousands Of Missiles Carrying Nuclear Fission Bombs; There Are Seven Kisses, Three Of Which Are Followed By Explosions And Three Of Which Are Vectors For Nonconsensual Psychic Manipulation.*

It's probably a better movie than this one, too.

*I am assuming that Troll XMFC actually had kissing at some of the places where we had to just yell "kiss already!"