Hey, look! There's a vampire!

Yeah, I was one of the folks who caught Twilight and helped the movie grab a whopping $70.5 million its opening weekend. Was it enjoyable? Yes. Great? Uh... Not as good as the book but that is to be expected. Plus, I'm not really the target audience. Luckily I'm not SO old I can't remember what it was like in school. And I can state with great certainty that if I was in junior high right now I would LOVE this film. I'm on book three now.

Update - 10:28p.m.: Perhaps intrigued by my sudden absorption in these books Darren has started Twilight. I'm betting he lasts longer with this one than I did when I tried to read the first book of the Left Behind series.

Update - later that same night : And now the passage that brought Darren's Twilight journey to an end...

Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to the table where the strange family sat. They continued to look at the walls and not eat.

"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked. Surely I would have noticed them on one of my summers here.

"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

I felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.

As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today -- he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.

"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.