Thirteen Kisses

Today I was sitting next to an extraordinarily loud woman who claimed total disgust at some hi-definition screen kiss. Truly, the actors' lips were the size of baseballs, affording us ample lip-real estate to evaluate the smooch.

"It looks like they're eating each other!" said loud woman.

"We don't know the context. It's just a preview," I said.

"Maybe it's about cannibalism."

"Maybe."

Mostly this just made me think of the Seven Midnights of Kisses we celebrated here at the Vortex two years back. Seven days for each of us to find the type of kiss that makes our toes curl. Some of them were sweet, some funny, most iconic in their own way. If you weren't with us then, or wish to relive the fun for New Years Eve, here they are:

Midnight 1 Midnight 2 Midnight 3 Midnight 4
Midnight 5 Midnight 6 Midnight 7

Two years is a long time. We've covered so much kissing ground since! Who can forget

the hairy-chested Christopher Plummer kiss?
the world's thirstiest gerbil kiss?
my first kiss-ugh.
Robert Doisneau's The Kiss?
Elvis's Wild kiss?

With all this kissing, you'd think we barely had time to squeeze in Fabio, time travel and nineteen MacGyver references. (You know you want to follow the Fabio link again. What's better than a laaaaahve attack on New Year's Eve? You're welcome.)

My favorite kisses, though, are the ones you have yet to read. It is my fervent hope we'll add at least one to next year's list: the published kiss.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Remembering in a Vortex: The I-Hope-My-Priest-Didn't-Find-That-Page Blogpost

First things first: Congratulations to Barbara, whose name popped up in the drawing to celebrate Seven Midnights of Kisses. Email me at la-mitchell@la-mitchell.com and we'll work out the specifics. Yeah, Barbara!

Many thanks to everyone who chimed in with comments and those who came back faithfully each day to discover the next installment. What a fun way to start 2009.

This week marks the two year anniversary of this blog. For some writers, having a blog is the thing to do. A buzz. Something agents and editors preach in the name of platform and fan base. For someone like me who labors for far too long in the desolate stretch of novels, mostly in secret, hoarding words as if their glimmer will die if shared before it is time, a blog is a balance. Dark prose to light banter. Creative isolation to an impulsive need to reach out. For those who came in the beginning, and for those I've met along the way, thank you. I am blessed to have had the chance to express myself and humbled that others should listen.

Each day this week, I'll revisit a post from the previous years. Some I chose because they continue to step forward in my memory. Some I chose because they marked something worthy along the way. All I chose because they are the perfect time machine to the writer I was in that moment, on that day.


Snapshots at a Kroger
originally posted May 12, 2007

The back pages of my manuscript are in a community box at the base of my desk, used for everything from hand-scribbled to-do lists to elaborate Crayola caricatures of our family in stick figure form. To reuse them sends my environmentally-aware Catholic-guilt side a message that the forest of trees sacrificed so that I could spin a 90,000 word yarn was not in vein. No one would doubt the critical nature of a grocery list with 30 items and only twenty minutes to spare.

Not one of these pages, no matter how torn or frayed, makes it past my internal editor. Standing at the refrigerated section of Kroger, frigid wind blasting my still-anemic Winter legs, I turn the list and reread a tiny snapshot of my story. Sometimes I adore what I find-barely able to recall that the words had come from me. Sometimes, I make myself crazy reconstructing a sentence, no matter how much it seems to have that "ring of inevitability", that it's always been that way and will until we're all reduced to ash. Most of the time, something interrupts my muse and I realize how crazy it is to revisit the same lines like a parent clinging to a child ready to begin a life of independence. Almost always, someone is there to break the spell--a gangly teenager stocking yogurt, a family member with more pressing concerns than the words that filled our character's world-and I'm grateful. It helps me see the forest past the trees between my fingertips.

And the few times my list has slipped out of my control, blown to the dust bunnies beneath the snack food aisle? Maybe one day it'll show up on grocerylists.org, a site devoted to publishing found lists. Maybe someone, somewhere will read the snapshot of my novel and the craving to read more will be stronger than their urge to gorge on the chocolate-covered Macadamia nuts hidden in their basket.

A writer can only hope...

I remember this day in vivid detail. I still make grocery lists on the back of my drafts. I still lose them occasionally. I still wonder.

Kisses, Time Machines and Giving

I know-Seven midnights of kisses! Where's the seventh day? It's finally here and not quite midnight. In my defense: sick kitties, WIP, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and life-not necessarily in that order, though Rex Harrison's salty sea captain chuckle was certainly the highlight. But, alas, no kissing in that one. Not even a Gone With The Wind-style kiss set against an excessive crescendo of dramatic strings. Just love and romance in its purest, most innocuous form.

For the seventh and final installment, I give you a montage series that does a far better job preserving our memories of the finest kisses on film:

Great graphics and choices. Music, not so much.
Movie's Best Kisses Top 30 (30-21)
Movie's Best Kisses Top 30 (20-11)
Movie's Best Kisses Top 30 (10-1)

As promised, everyone who leaves a comment anywhere in the Seven Midnights of Kisses series by Sunday at 11 CDT will be entered into a drawing to receive a DVD of one of my favorite movies. No kissing in this one. I promise. At least I don't remember one. When would he have had the time? Ah, but you knew it would have something to do with time, didn't you? Good luck, everyone, and happy commenting.

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The Time Machine, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style YouTube time travel experience, is gaining momentum. Help Chad, Matt and Rob get to their 12 o'clock meeting without dying. Start here to begin the adventure.

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Travis Erwin, a women's fiction writer from Texas, recently lost his house to a fire. Erica Orloff and Stephen Parrish have created a virtual habitat for Travis and his family where you can purchase a brick to help him rebuild. Every little bit helps.

Also, contemporary romance author Gemma Halliday is organizing an auction to benefit one of her devoted young readers who, along with her mother, recently became homeless. Be sure to visit www.romanticinks.com from January 19-26 to browse some of the amazing gifts for writers and readers that have been donated. Read about this teen's journey through homelessness on her blog.

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Lastly, and far less importantly, I'll be celebrating my two year blogoversary next week. Two hundred and forty three posts of time travel, Vortex 10s and writing. We'll be time traveling a bit next week to revisit some of my favorite posts.

Until then, have a great weekend everyone!

Sixth Midnight: The Whiplash Kiss

Forgive me if I don't come from a place of authority on tonight's midnight movie kiss. The Quiet Man was released twenty years before I was born, and I tend to watch classic movie marathons that don't feature Tractor Supply Company ads during commercials. But it is The Duke, and in some realms he's as sacred as chocolate and MacGyver is around here, so I gave this movie kiss the benefit of the doubt.

For context, John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, a man with a dark past who returns to Ireland to reclaim his homestead. While there, he begins a tumultuous relationship with a poor maiden, portrayed by Maureen O'Hara.

In the kiss-fandom arena this scene polarizes people. Some rank it with Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and herald its coveted place in romantic film history. I'd like to have those women to dinner. Over a mandarin pecan salad, we'd discuss exactly which part excites them: the category four hurricane blowing outside the thatched hut or the drunk, animalistic noise that erupts from John Wayne to set the mood. Quiet man, indeed. Aside from the Rick Astley overcoat(again with that-a prevalent costuming choice for heroes in kiss scenes), and the homage to a romance novel's clinch cover at 1:19, it will go down in my book as the worst movie kiss ever.

After I torment my cats with The Duke's beastly cry one more time.



Someone be the Tony Kornheiser to my Michael Wilbon. I just don't get it.

Fifth Midnight: The Ghost Kiss

Okay, so he's not a ghost yet.

According to a recent Blockbuster Video poll, Ghost's pottery scene kiss was voted the most romantic of all time. Yes, it is a Soundtrack Kiss, but it's also a veritable treasure chest of phallic symbols and absent dialogue that makes this kiss a delight to ad lib.



0:11 Sam: Oh, Molly, that is sooo G.I. Jane.
0:14 Molly: Either you licked my fingers or the magic hand sanitizer fairy slipped in through the window.
0:21 Sam: I'm one spin away from igniting this sheet on the lamp, but passion knows no fire safety. Did you know I was a dancer?
0:52 Molly: With a stomach like that, I can almost forget you look like that guy from that awful movie, Roadhouse.
1:10 Molly: I'm opening my mouth, but there's no rain.
1:20 Sam: I perfected this sway. I call it the Johnny Castle sway.
1:41 Sam: Did you get pottery goo in my hair? My coiffure looks like Liberace in silhouette.

Ad lib, ad nauseum, Vortex readers...

Fourth Midnight: The Soundtrack Kiss

Some kisses just go better with pop culture. The perfect marriage of soundtrack to scene can raise the emotional impact exponentially. Yes, James Horner's instrumental provides a timeless slant to the kiss, reaching an emotional touch point that spans generational tastes. But compare Titanic iconic kiss scene:

To the tabletop finale in Sixteen Candles:

If the photo isn't enough to jog your memory, try this yummy tribute to Jake Ryan, complete with the original kiss scene at 4:20. Who isn't instantly transported back to the 1980s when the Thompson Twins' If You Were Here accompanies the moment?

My favorite soundtrack kiss is Never Been Kissed. Any kiss that lays out the plot's climax right in the title, builds toward it the entire duration of the movie and inspires an entire grandstand to break out into spontaneous kisses gets my vote:

Who would have guessed The Beach Boys? But, somehow, it's perfect. Neither of these pop-culture-esque kisses are spectacular in and of themselves. There's no tempest blowing their hair or heightened moment of impending separation. They're simple and unforgettable because they join our own embedded memories of the songs to the character's experience.

What's your favorite soundtrack kiss?

Third Midnight: The Rain-Soaked Kiss

Today's edition of Seven Kisses of Midnight takes on a battle of the rainstorm smooches. Rain has long been used in literature and film during intimate scenes as a metaphor for cleansing and rebirth into a new, shared life. So much that perhaps it has become cliche, but who doesn't love watching someone get drenched and lucky at the same time?

Would that I could, I'd whip out my John Madden electronic pen and BOOM...break each of these down for you with exaggerated arcs and Xs and Os until one stood triumphant. For now, I'll just throw out the penalties and let you make the call. And yes, I have been gorging on too much football.

Rain Kiss #1: Breakfast at Tiffany's

2:18 and 4:25 Requisite Gaping Mouth in the Rain
2:43-3:40 Almost an entire minute where he fails to assist her in locating "cat". Yes, he stands there in his Rick-Astley-flasher-overcoat looking handsome, but there should be a penalty for his inertness. Like a right hook from the squished cat, who happens to be penalty #3: full body contact interference due to feline.

Rain Kiss #2: The Notebook

0:32 Requisite Gaping Mouth in the Rain
0:05 Positive yardage for the costume designers capitalizing on the inherent sexiness of a soaked white shirt, which is then negated by the shorts beneath Rachel McAdam's dress at 0:06
0:22 Just in case she's mathematically challenged, he takes the opportunity to expound on the three hundred sixty five day reference. Penalty for the writers insulting her intelligence and the audience's just before the kiss.


It's your call: Which is the better rain-soaked kiss scene?

The Food Kiss

Second Midnight: Lady and the Tramp

Perhaps only dangerous should you want to kiss an Italian chef at midnight, the pasta and meatball kiss is by far the most famous animated kiss in screen history. Given their species' affinity for sniffing each other's hind quarters, this authentic culinary treat, complete with a serenade from a beefy accordian player, makes the romantic list every time.

Yes, there are the cliched chocolate dipped strawberries, succulent fruits and alcoholic drinks that only reach their full potential when shaken with tongue, but this leaves me wondering: Should chewing and kissing be a simultaneous show of affection? What would Miss Manners say regarding the serious breach in open-mouth mastication? Does anyone but a dentist need to have intimate knowledge of our intended's molar landscape? If I'm offered a meatball, does it mean true love?

Today's armchair call: Best food for kissing?

Seven Midnights of Kisses

New Year’s Eve…ah, the night of a thousand expectations, none as important as that midnight kiss.

Resolutions, Schmezolutions.

In honor of that preeminent smooch, I thought we’d start the year celebrating Seven Midnights of Kisses. Each day will feature a kissing morsel for your viewing pleasure. Lest this make you how-bout-dem-Broncos-types squeamish, there will be no swooning here. Only writers and movie fans acting as armchair referees. We’ll ad lib, analyze and disassemble the moments until all that is left is a virtual smile capable of making you forget how staggeringly forgettable your own midnight New Year’s experience was. The more you comment, the more you’ll be entered into a drawing to receive one of my favorite DVDs devoid of any osculation. After seven days, we’ll all be like pre-pubescent boys wiping our collective tongues.

First Midnight: From Here to Eternity

A kiss between Army Sergeant Warden (Burt Lancaster) and Army Captain's wife Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr)

What were they really thinking? You make the call.