I read some of the highlights from the recent Vanity Fair interview with Angelina Jolie and was a tad confused. Seeing as how I skimmed the article, though, I shrugged off my confusion and started worrying about more important things. Like whether or not I could get away with putting onions in the spaghetti sauce without Aidan or Wes noticing.

Then, I ran across this post on Mama Pop. It’s perfect. It sums up so perfectly why I was confused by the VF interview. To wit:

[Angelina Jolie is] making her screenwriting and directorial debut with the upcoming film  In the Land of Blood and Honey.  She tells the magazine that the screenplay was the result of trying to cope with a two-day stint with the flu.

“I had to be quarantined from the children for two days,” Jolie says. “I was in the attic of a house in France. I was isolated, pacing. I don’t watch TV and I wasn’t reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end.”   Alright.  I’m calling shenanigans on this one.

1. Who paces while they have the flu?
2. Can we just cool it with the self-righteous “I don’t’ watch tv” claims?  WE ALL WATCH TV.
3. Really?  A first screenplay in TWO DAYS?  Either the story sucks or she has a really talented ghostwriter with a rock-solid non-disclosure agreement.
4. The attic?

These were my thoughts exactly! I have no doubt (or, well, maybe a little doubt. I don’t know her personally, so I can’t vouch for her integrity) that Ms. Jolie poured a ton of time and effort into bringing this movie into existence. I applaud her efforts. It’s good to have a mother accomplishing such lofty goals. Yay moms!

On the other hand, the longer I work on my writing and the more I learn about the craft of storytelling, the more annoyed by celebrity memoirs, novels, and what-have-yous I get. That Angelina claims she hammered out an entire screenplay in two days with the flu is insulting, really.

I mean, maybe it happened. Maybe she’s some kind of a screenplay-writing savant, like a Mozart for screenplays, but I think it far more likely she wrote down a few ideas and scenes while she was sick. Either that or she hallucinated the whole thing (she had the flu, remember).

And yes, she’s been an actress for many, many years. Terrific. I’ve been an avid reader since I was seven, but that doesn’t mean I can write a first-draft novel in two days. Telling a story gets a lot more difficult when you factor things in like story arc, character development, and research. I’ve got to assume she wasn’t able to just wing this one spur-of-the-moment because she had the flu. Otherwise, I might cry.

I mean, if celebrities are more attractive than us, and wealthier than us, what is the freaking point if they’re able to do things we find difficult quickly and while impaired? Am I to assume Angelina doesn’t dissolve into a miserable, feverish pile of nausea when she gets sick?

I agree with Kristen from Mama Pop. I call shenanigans on this claim. I have to. For my own sanity.

I have opinions on something I shouldn’t have opinions on. I’m irritated at myself for having opinions about it, and I wish I didn’t. It’s annoys me so much I’d rather be living in a hermetically sealed cavern without Internet access than know enough about it to have an opinion.

Man, think of all the writing I’d get done if I didn’t have the Internet. Still, I’d be limited in my research so the writing would probably be a tad shallow.

Anyway, the thing I’m so mad at myself for having an opinion about is the whole stupid Kardashian wedding thing that happened last weekend. Ugh, even just typing in that name makes me feel like bleaching my brain and then reading some Tolstoy.

Angsty teenage Erika (who read Tolstoy for fun) would write some scathing poetry indeed if she knew I knew about anything relating to a reality TV family.

As much as it pains me to admit, I’m curious about the wedding only so much as it pertains to pretty things. I do so love pretty wedding things. It’s a holdover love from my job at Bottle Your Brand, when it was my job to research weddings and pretty things.

This wedding, where money was no object, is bound to be full of pretty things. But in order to see them I’m going to have to watch an episode of the reality show it was filmed for. And that will ramp up the self-loathing to a dangerous place. So that’s annoying.

I don’t really care anything for the people involved. Yes, I think it’s awfully vain to talk about your own wedding as the wedding of the century, and then go on to say you’re American royalty. Then again, they seem awfully good at talking about nothing but themselves, so in that way I suppose they are American royalty.

But insomuch as they seem well-known, they’re well-known for being reality stars. And that makes me uncomfortable. Because people who are famous for having no shame are not the people I want associated with the reigning royalty of where I live.

And yet, as much as my mind quails in horror that I care, I do. Not about the people involved in the wedding, but about the pretty things. And that’s not really much different than caring about the people, because when you get right down to it, it all boils down to being interested in pretty things, doesn’t it? Pretty things, pretty people. None of it’s going to help me write better, or be a better mother or wife, or change the world.

And yet and yet, I still care. Feeling-superior Fail.