Julie

Are you guys seriously on board with this? Pete, you're bored at work, right?

So apparently we're bloggers. On Friday night, I went to see Julie and Julia with two girlfriends, a movie about a 2002 New Yorker (Julie--who is also a failed writer--no surprise there) who decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it. I loved the movie. Until this morning, when I read its review in my Time magazine, which I'm easily and shamelessly swayed by each and every week.

The Time critic points out that, while charming and graced with Meryl Streep who has all but become Julia Child, the movie lacks balance between Julie's story and Julia's. The audience is supposed to see a parallel between the women coming into their own, finding themselves, creating a niche, or a string of other applicable cliches: a mid-life coming-of-age story, as Tim has (accurately) categorized the genre. Except that Julia is lovable and resilient and hardworking and easy to root for, while Julie is, well, less--of all of those. Mostly, it seems, she wants to be a writer so that she can be famous.

Earlier today, after the Time critic had so astutely pointed out to me this disparity in the characters, and after I'd had some time to consider, I began to fear that I am much more like Julie and much less like Julia. And then my boyfriend sent me an invitation to join his blog. And here I am. Am I really self-important enough to be a blogger? Guess so.