Twitards

So...Twilight. I admit. I read the books, more like ate them, like a starving dog tears into meat. But even at its best, and at my most obsessed, I don't pretend it was the height of writing. I imagine that I read them so quickly because they were a good few steps below my reading level. They were written, like the harry potter novels, to entice young kids to pick up those dusty things called books that they had chosen to forsake long ago, and so they contain a level mix of sexual tension that borders on the adult world these kids will soon be entering, and the ease of reading that lets them forget that for a long time they refused to read in the first place because its 'uncool'. I think I also devoured them because long before that lanky kid with no fangs and golden eyes started flirting with/stalking that mousy girl with all the intensity that teenage girls WISH their boyfriends would pursue them with...I loved vampires. Then again I still prefer mine with fangs and sans sparkles. But I was intrigued by this new 'non-vampire', this fangless vegan vamp that stayed in murky forks so no one had to see him glitter like a princess' tiara. And I'll admit I briefly fantasized about my very own Edward. But then I snapped out of it. I never thought that Edward existed. He is a collage of all that the best men can be. But the books have this horrible side effect of making girls and women stop appreciating their wonderfully flawed men, and instead start wondering 'why isn't he like Edward?' Truth be told, I think Edward would irritate me, with his incessant worry and his refusal to let me scrape my knees on the cement of life. His trying to live my life for me. Yeah sure, he'd spout platitudes of you being his life and how he'll never hurt you. But then again, the unspoken end is that you must be his life as well, that you must listen to him, and deal with his stupid brooding silences every time you got a bruise. Not my idea of bliss. But to so many others, thats exactly what it's become! And now, with the movies burning up the screen, I want to laugh. How exactly has Robert Pattinson become the end all be all for tweens worldwide? When did unwashed hair and a body so androgynous that David Bowie begins to look unequivocally male become the tastiest thing on two legs? And how did this happen when that film is chock full of better looking guys? In fact, I will wager the only guy in that movie I find less attractive than RPatts is the kid who plays Mike...well...and the various males older than my dad (with the exception of Billy Burke, who is actually a very nice looking man if you shave off the kiddie toucher mustache). But BOTH male baddies are far and away better looking, even if Cam (the guy who plays James) tilts his head much like a hawk sizing up prey (and its not the character, he did it in never back down as well). Pattinson is a stringy, gristle-like man with a teenager's willowy voice and a kind if inherent awkwardness to him. In truth he is not that great looking, after all he was in a harry potter film and left that role as unknown as before. These silly girls that google him searching for delicious pics of him are the same ones who thought that the series was the best they ever read. In some cases it probably was. But let me make this so very clear. There are better books, better movies, and better boys out there. Trust in that.