How Stephanie Meyer Made Me Buy a Coat and Other Tales...

When it comes to pop culture, I tend to miss or ignore a lot of trends. Trendy fashion, I can handle (except those awful booties – are you ever going away?) but I tend to let a lot of TV shows, movies, music and books slide under my radar. As we all know, there is an awful lot of amazing, interesting stuff out there, just as there’s an awful lot of time-sucking…well, crap. Sometimes this indie-leaning mindset of mine is a good thing – for instance, never in my life have I wasted even an hour of my time watching Survivor. Other times, I eventually find I’ve been missing out (The Office, The Wire, Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA) and play as fast a game of catch-up as I can.

There are some pop culture phenoms that I just know I should like (ahem, Harry Potter, cough, cough) but for whatever reason, it seems I’m missing the gene that understands the intense, wait in line at midnight draw for these things.

When the Twilight craze began brewing loud enough that even I heard it – through my hipster tunes on my Ipod, obviously – I decided to give the books a shot. That many people - grown, adult, women - can’t be wrong, I figured. So last fall, while the rest of the world was reading the last book in the series, Breaking Dawn, I somewhat begrudgingly headed to a neighborhood book story to buy my own copy of book #1 – Twilight.

100 pages in, I wasn’t getting it. The prose was driving me utterly insane and the editor in me was dying to take a red pen to the copy. For every one adjective, Stephanie Meyer used five. The story seemed to go on and on in circles – they like each other, he’s a vampire, she doesn’t care because she’s obsessed with him and he her…and by page 400 I wanted to scream out loud “OKAY! EDWARD IS HOT! I GOT IT!” In all honesty I was relieved when I finished the tome. I even sold it back to a used book store at the end of my block, which if you’ve ever seen the amount of books strewn throughout my apartment know is something I rarely ever do.

I have some very smart, literary, well-educated friends, almost all of whom were dismayed when I dismissed (and yes, okay, bashed) Twilight in front of them. “How can you not love it?” they all asked. “It’s so terrible yet so good at the same time – like the ultimate guilty pleasure.” Still, I’d shrug my shoulders, unconvinced. If I wanted a guilty pleasure, I figured, I’d buy a pint of Hagaan Daaz and read a Sophie Kinsella book – at least her editor kept her in the 300 page realm.

Then.

A funny thing happened.

New Moon opened last Friday (which, I’m sure by now, seeing as it was the 3^rd largest opening ever, even my father is aware of) and a few of my friends started pinging around emails and facebook messages about plans to go see it together in the theaters. We decided we’d wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday to head to the theater – hoping by then most (er, some) of the screaming tweens would have had their fill of vampire heartthrobs. Of course, I could have just begged off from this date night, told my friends I’d catch up with them at some screening of a black and white foreign film or a poetry reading some other time instead, but since when I have I said no to a night at the movies? Especially with these ladies.

SO. In an effort to prepare myself, I took a moment and removed the very large I can’t stand Stephanie Meyer and her stinkin' vampire stories chip that was hanging out on my right shoulder and sat down with one of my friends on Friday night to finally watch Twilight.

Um.

Heh.

I just have one question:

HOW DID I NOT REALIZE HOW AMAZINGLY HOT ROBERT PATTINSON/EDWARD CULLEN IS BEFORE FRIDAY NIGHT?

Oh, sure I saw him present during the Oscars last year and thought “Huh. He’s cute, nice accent.” but then I moved on to drooling over actors closer to my own age. But Friday night? I finally, finally got it. Don’t let my enthusiasm mislead you – the movie is absolutely cheesy and a bit silly – but the thing is, even though you know that the entire two hours you’re watching? You’re also watching EDWARD CULLEN and no matter what you try you CANNOT STOP WATCHING EDWARD CULLEN. The movie does what I wanted to do with the book – it strips away the drawn out, adjective riddled copy and gets us to the heart of the story. Which still has its moments of course, but I am telling you, as a woman very much in the “eh? Twilight?” camp that I was smitten even during the cheesiest – sparkling - scenes.

Of course now I’m completely jazzed about our upcoming plans to see New Moon next week. (Two more hours of Edward Cullen? Sign me up!) On my way home from work last night, while reading (of all things) a book about Mormon Fundamentalists I got to thinking about the Twilight story…and – dare I admit it? – kind of, sort of, began to wonder what would happen next to Bella and Edward. By now I’ve heard a rough summary of all four books so I’m not completely unaware of what’s coming with New Moon but last night on the T a very deep, very hidden pop culture lover was silently screaming within my brain to be let out.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday I decided to indulge her. Last night I drove myself to my nearest Target – I know, I know not even an independent bookstore, I did check their first though, I swear – and waltzed over to the book section of the store. I’m still not even completely sure how it happened but suddenly a paperback copy of New Moon was in my red shopping basket. Whoops.

After I grabbed a bag of cat food (the real reason for my Target run, obviously) I walked up the aisle toward the check out counters…which also happened to be the aisle that took me past women’s outerwear. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted houndstooth and what girl doesn’t look a good houndstooth pattern, right? When I strolled over to investigate I found myself developing an instant crush on this little number, which I justified, because hello – I live in New England – every coat purchase is justifiable.

Which is how Ms. Stephanie Meyer completely, totally forced me to spend $58.96 at Target last night.

Ah well, I suppose in the end, the ultimate guilty pleasure justifies the means.

And all you Twilight haters (are there any?) out there, don’t worry too much. I’ve packed four books for my upcoming Thanksgiving weekend travel – all of them literary – except that, um, one about the moon.