Livin' it up at the Hotel California

So I'm sure you've all heard about this.

My first thought upon hearing he wanted to delay the debate was this.

It's bush-league psych-out stuff.

Woo! You got a date Wednesday, McCain!

Thanks for reading.

Long and dark, shiny and black

So believe it or not, KB and my mom and aunt and I went to see Bruce Springsteen play at Giants Stadium on Thursday night last week.

I've never really considered myself a Springsteen "fan," although I can certainly sing along to plenty of his songs, and I've never had any special antipathy towards him, either (like I do towards, say, Rod Stewart). I've never owned any of his albums myself, but both KB and my mom have a lot of them, so I've listened to plenty of his music and become, if not exactly a fan, then an appreciative listener. He has a sort of workman-like quality to his music - no frills, no fancy effects or over-produced noise, just basic, instrument-based rock and roll. His earlier albums are especially classic, and there's a quality of street poetry to his lyrics that reminds me of Tom Waits in a way.

So last December, my mom mentioned that she'd like to see him play and if she got us tickets would we be interested in going? And I was like, "Oh, okay. Sure. I know KB will want to go." So we got our $80 nosebleed tickets and I forgot all about it for six months. And when Thursday night rolled around, I can't really say I was all that jazzed about going - I'm still feeling pretty tired from the placentasmithing and I was coming down with a cold (which I'm just now getting over, thankfully, but of course KB has it now), so the prospect of driving up the Turnpike, standing up and screaming for three hours and getting home at one in the morning wasn't exactly floating my boat.

But boy, am I glad we went. The man knows how to put on a show, even when you're so high up he appears to be 1/8 inch tall and you have to look at the Jumbotron to see what the heck is going on. He's gotta be pushing 60, right? I mean, he and most of his band (for it was the full-on E Street Band Experience) have been making music for like, 40 years or something crazy like that. And he (and all of them) just so genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself, just playing music and having a good time. And they just powered through them! He didn't stop for a lot of stage patter, there were no "We're gonna take a short break" announcements - they played nonstop pretty much the entire three and a half hour show. It was pretty impressive.

He did kind of milk the New Jersey thing a bit - apparently this was the last time he'll ever play at Giants Stadium (they're tearing it down and building a new stadium 50 feet away. Ah, progress.) and he did a lot of "It's great to be home in New Jersey!" kind of stuff, but the crowd ate it up. It's funny, there seems to be a certain level of irony inherent in many of his songs, and I think it's fair to say a large part of the crowd was kind of oblivious to that darker layer of his stuff. Kind of like when Ronald Reagan wanted to use "Born in the USA" as his campaign song, and Bruce turned him down - Reagan didn't get the whole bleak, disaffected thing that song has going on. Ronnie heard the fist-pumping "Booooooooorn in the USAAAAA!" chorus and thought he could ride that wave, never mind that the lyrics are about a man who's been used and abused by his country. So there were a lot of T-shirt and Crocs-wearing, pot-smoking good old boys in the audience who didn't quite get the, how shall I say, deeper aspects of the music.

(It took me a while to realize that people in the stands were not, in fact, booing him throughout the show. They were yelling "Bruuuuuuuuuuuce!" I would hear all this booing and be like, "What's the problem, people? Let him play "Brilliant Disguise" if he wants to!" until I realized what was happening. Duh.)

Apparently, the band have a repertoire of 250 songs that they can choose from at any given show, and they take requests from the audience - you have to hold up a sign with the song you want on it, and he walks around and takes the signs from people and brings them back to the band and they all go through them and pick out which ones they want to play. So it was a nice mix of what they wanted to do and what the audience wanted to hear.

And he did play the one song I wanted to hear, which was "Rosalita." I love that song. We were talking about it before the show, what songs would we really want to hear, and when I said "Rosalita" my mom was like, "Oh, don't count on it. It's rare for them to play that one, apparently." (She watched the 60 minutes special with Bruce on Sunday, so she was the authority.) But it was the final song of the show! It was awesome.

And we didn't get home at one in the morning. We got home at three in the morning. There was a propane tractor-trailer overturned at exit 16W on the Turnpike (which is where the Meadowlands is) so everyone was late getting to the concert. It was supposed to start at 7:30, started instead at 9:30, and he played, including encores, until one in the morning. And I stupidly wore brand-new (cheap) sneakers and got blisters from walking from BFE (where we parked) to the stadium and back.

And I'm STILL glad we went. The man is a class act, all the way.

Thanks for reading.

Inside you the time moves and she don't fade

Well, we had the first ultrasound on Friday (after much wrangling with our crappy insurance company over whether or not they would cover a first-trimester ultrasound) to pinpoint the size and age of the embryo, because my OB wasn't sure after the oh-so-fun manual exam and my periods were irregular before we conceived, which means it's hard to narrow down the due date. TMI, you say? Sorry. So, the ultrasound:

The day we had it done (Friday the 18th) the embryo measured a size consistent with it's being 7 weeks 5 days old, which means I'm a little farther along than we initially thought. Which is good, because it means this wretched period of all-encompassing fatigue and pervasive nausea will come to an end earlier! Woo-hoo!

For those of you who, like me, are having trouble visualing just what the heck is in those pictures, here is a photo of an embryo of the same age:

It's mostly head at this point, as you can see.

That little round ball to the right side of the ultrasound photos is the yolk sac (not pictured in the photo), which will soon become detached as it ceases to serve its purpose (which was to generate new blood cells - that function is being taken over by the liver and the bone marrow).

Kind of freakish, isn't it? Did you even know human beings had yolk sacs?

It was nice to get the ultrasound, though. I've got the symptoms and the positive pregnancy test and all that, but it's still great to see the little sprout on the screen to confirm that all is well. (And that there's only one in there. Which there is. Whew.) We got to see the little heart going wubbity wubbity wubbity, which brought an involuntary tear to my eye.

It's pretty damn strange to have another living creature incubating inside you, even one that you made yourself and greatly desire - I think that's why there are so many horror and sci-fi films that directly or indirectly reference that fear of the alien creature inside of us.

For (an obvious) example, the movie Alien. What could be more explicit than the worm-like chest burster literally tearing someone apart as it makes its way into the world? How many women have had that nightmare in the days before they give birth? And in the third installment, when Ripley realizes she's been implanted and throws herself into the big steaming vat of molten metal, the chest-burster tries to escape and she clutches it to herself in an overtly maternal gesture. Perhaps the aliens (or the pursuit and attempted elimination of them) are Ripley's substitute for children - I think she has a daughter back on Earth (it's been awhile since I've seen the films) but she's in hypersleep so long that her daughter has already grown old and died.

In any case, the H.R. Giger designs for the first Alien (or "xenomorph" as they seem to be referred to in much of the online fan sites I've been browsing through) are strikingly similar to some early embryonic photos I've found. Although Giger always said he didn't get any inspiration from naturally occuring animals, the similarity is still there, and is enough to make you think, "Just what exactly is this thing growing inside me?"




(For those of you who can't tell, the TOP photo is the Xenomorph...)

Or take The Fly, for another example (the 1986 version, that is, starring Ebony's favorite jazz musician boyfriend). The scene where Geena Davis is having a nightmare about her pregnancy with Jeff Goldblum's increasingly bizarre-acting Brundle(fly). She has a horrific labor and basically gives birth to a giant maggot, whereupon Brundlefly crashes in through the window and steals the little grub away. Although the scene doesn't actually occur in the reality of the film (she's dreaming), it is potent imagery nonetheless. What exactly happens when you combine two creatures' DNA to make a third creature? And how do you know there won't be some mistakes along the way?

I could go on and on, I suppose. Rosemary's Baby. The Omen. (The 1976 one with Gregory Peck, that is.) It seems to be a common theme in horror/sci-fi, perhaps because pregnancy is such a common occurrence in the world, and there are millions of parents and soon-to-be parents out there going, "What the hell is going to happen to us now? What are we bringing into the world?"

Or maybe it's just me, watching too many movies, as usual.

Thanks for reading.

You think you're tired now, well wait until 3

Hey, how about them Oscars, huh? Were they long, or what?

But seriously, folks. Did anybody watch the whole thing? Really? I told myself I was going to watch everything, just because I could (KB had no interest and I managed to get Nolan in bed by 8, so I was free to sit there and tube out for four hours) but in the end, I had to skip some of it, it was just so tedious. I found myself flipping back and forth between the Oscars and something on the BBC America with Michael Palin and a flimsy excuse to show all his favorite Python skits. Even when I wanted to want to care (like when the 98-year-old Production Designer/Art Director dude was giving his speech) I just couldn't.

Although I did find some serendipitous moments of switching back and forth between the two, such as clicking to the BBC and the architect/abbatoir/block of flats sketch with John Cleese screaming, "You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds, squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss about the struggling artist..." and then back to the Oscars to see Cameron Diaz trying not to yawn while listening to Robert Boyle (the above-mentioned Honorary Oscar recipient).

I was surprised by a number of the winners: I had thought Julie Christie would win Best Actress and Ruby Dee Best Supporting Actress, simply because the Academy likes to give Oscars to the older long-haul actors who've never won (or, in Christie's case, who won so long ago it was like a different career). Funnily enough, I thought Marion Cotillard's and Tilda Swinton's acceptance speeches were two of the best of the night - perhaps because they weren't really expecting to win and were able to be more spontaneous in their remarks.

I was dismayed to see Diablo Cody win for Juno - it was a cute and funny film, but there's no way in hell that was a better-written screenplay than Michael Clayton. (Plus I find her tremendously annoying personality-wise. Note to "Diablo" [I know that's not her real name]: You are not Bettie Page. Nor are you Louise Brooks. If we all just agree that you're a bad ass, will you please stop showing us your tattoos?) I was betting on Paul Thomas Anderson for director, too, mostly because There Will Be Blood seemed to me to be more the quintessential American picture (Corporate Greed versus Religious Fervor - hey! It IS America!) than No Country For Old Men. I thought the Messers Coen would get the Adapted Screenplay nod (as they did) but that Blood would win for Picture and Director. Shows how much I know.

And now I have two more movies to add to my Netflix list - The Bourne Ultimatum (which won in both Sound categories), because I didn't realize it was directed by Paul Greengrass and had dismissed it as another money-sucking sequel (even though the first two kicked ass, I have to say), and Enchanted, which looked to me from the previews I saw to be another sappy Disney princess-in-peril schlockfest, but which after hearing the three nominated songs I might have to reconsider, as they seemed just snarky enough to make for a fun movie (particularly for those of us who had a seriously Little Mermaid-influenced adolescence).

And Jon Stewart was great. I like that he's not really a Hollywood guy - he does his thing and then gets out of the way of the awards and winners and lets them do their thing. If he comes up with a funny quip spontaneously, he'll throw it in there, but he doesn't force it (a la Billy Crystal). Plus he gave that Czech singer a chance to give her speech, which I thought was very sweet. (That movie, Once, is on the list for my Movies with Geriatrics course, so I don't have to Netflix it.)

But why wasn't Roy Schieder in the "We're Sad They're Dead" montage with Heath Ledger? Did he not make the deadline?

So anyway. What'd you guys think?

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I'll announce the poll winner once I finish tabulating all three of the responses I got!

Is your bed made? Is your sweater on?

So my new favorite album is Vampire Weekend, by Vampire Weekend. I'm not linking to anything of theirs (videos, websites, etc.), because I haven't seen anything. I'm trying to keep myself uncorrupted by hype to see if I really like them as much as I think I do. Does that make any sense? I feel like I came to their music legitimately (whatever that means) because I heard them on the radio first, and responded to their music and nothing else.

I was in the car with Nolan coming back from our music class, and I heard this song that was a crazy schizoid mish-mash of genres - it sounded like some sort of Afro-beat funk combo, but then the singer came in like your traditional semi-whiney alternative white dude, and I was all, "Eh?" Nolan said, "What's this song called, Mommy?" And I was like, "I have no idea, but I like it." And of course the DJ never tells you the name of the song when you want them to, so I made a mental note of the time (Saturday, 11am) so I could look on the XPN website's playlists and find out who it was. It takes a few days for them to get their lists up on their site, so I had to keep checking back. Then when they finally had Saturday posted, I couldn't tell which order the songs were played in, so I didn't know if the top of the list was the end of the hour, or vice-versa. So I ended up going through the list looking for all the names of bands I'd never heard of (which is 90% of them, since I'm such a clueless dork), finding that band/album on Amazon and listening to the sample to see if it matched up with what I remembered of the song in my head.

It took me a while, but I finally found them. Part of the reason it took me so long was the name "Vampire Weekend" sounds to me like a Jesus and Mary Chain knock-off - some sort of Goth wannabe band - so I didn't even try them until the end of the list.

So. The album. Vampire Weekend sound like Paul Simon and David Byrne had a musical love child, and then hired the Shins to be their nanny. Paul Simon and David Byrne happen to be two of my favorite musicians EVAH, and then VW also name-drop Peter Gabriel in one of the songs, thus completing the triumvirate of Angsty White Guys Who Incorporate (Some Might Say Co-opt, Or Even Steal) World Music Into Their Sound And Also Have Excellent Lyrics. The guitar sound is quite reminiscent of Simon's Graceland album, while the beats and riffs are not what you typically get on an "alternative" album. The only place I find the album to be kind of so-so is in the lyrics. They're fluffy and light and silly in places. Some of the songs are better than others (Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, Oxford Comma), but they're all short and inventive, and the album as a whole is fun and energetic and fresh - makes me want to find an excuse to go on a road trip, if only so I could zoom along and blast it from the stereo. (I know, I'll never be a music critic.)

I immediately downloaded the entire album, and then did that embarrassing thing where when you like something so much you pretty much force it on your friends/lovers/roommates just to gauge their reaction and see if they love it as much as you do. Poor KB. Ten o'clock on a Wednesday night, he's trying to go to bed, and I'm shoving my iPod at him going, "You have to listen to this!" (He was very diplomatic in his response - he listened to one song, said, "I can see why you would be into this," turned over, and went to sleep.)

I understand they're quite the media darlings at the moment, or that's what I gathered from reading some of the reviews on Amazon. I wouldn't really know - I haven't watched MTV in years, and I stopped subscribing to Rolling Stone when I left L.A. I guess that's why I feel that my experience of them is somehow more authentic, because I only know them from their music - I have no idea what they look like, how old they are, what country they're from, any of that. I know I could find out quickly enough with a search on YouTube, and probably will eventually, but for right now I just want to keep my infatuation pure.

Now I must go listen again.

Thanks for reading.

I used to love her, but I had to kill her

Argh. Can't sleep (clown'll eat me!) so I'm writing.

Why does my brain wait until I'm all ready for bed - teeth brushed, face washed, prayers prayed (Ha! just seeing if you're paying attention) - and I've gotten snuggled into my warm bed before going into Hyper Creative Drive? Is it just that my sense of what is actually worthy of being written down is skewed by my tiredness and everything seems like a brilliant idea? (kind of like when you're stoned and everything you think seems REVOLUTIONARY!) Or does my brain just like to torture me by waiting until I'm all snuzzy drowsy cuddly with KB before it goes, "Psst. You know what would be a great way to introduce the FBI agent in that horror script? Here listen, I'll tell you..." and I find myself laying there arguing with myself:

Me: "I'll write it down in the morning."
My Brain: "You'll have forgotten it. I promise you."
Me: "No, this is too good. I'll remember it. I know I will."
My Brain: "You won't get all the detail. You won't get the feeling of it. You'll get some vague outline and most of the facts, but it won't be as meaningful and good as it is now."
Me: "God dammit."

And I get out of bed and go into the office and turn on the blinding light and write it down. And it's true, My Brain is right, because it's happened before - I tell myself I'll remember it in the morning, turn over and go to sleep, and then when it's the next morning (or afternoon when Nolan's napping, as is usually the case) and I do try to get it down on paper, I find myself going, "Now what was that great line? Shit."

I have, since the great The Wind That Shakes The Barley tragedy of Ought Eight, been given a virtual kick in the butt, writing-wise. I am simultaneously trying to work harder at writing at least something every day, and also giving myself a break for not being able to be Superwoman and do it all plus be a great writer. KB has said to me many times that this is just one phase in our lives, the stay-at-home-and-raise-your-kids phase, and there will be other phases (hopefully the write and sell and make movies phase) in the future, and I know that's true. It's just so hard sometimes to cut myself slack.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Nolan and I were at the library today, because we've been staying home entirely too much lately, being all homebound and cocoony with no appointments or playdates and I really felt we just needed to get out. It's hard to convince Nolan to change the status quo most of the time - if he's happy playing Constructables, he doesn't want to get a coat and hat and shoes on and go out in the cold and get in the car. So I usually defer to him and we stay home and play on the floor until I'm drooling with ennui.

But not today! Today, I forced him into the coat, etc. and we went to the Library for some interaction with other human beings.

And in the lobby, we ran into this woman, let's call her, um...Heidi. Nolan and I have run into Heidi and her kids numerous times in the past at various playgrounds in Princeton, mostly last fall, just after she had had her third child. She's a pediatrician who works part time, and did I mention she has three kids? When we first met her last fall, the baby had just been born and she was on her six-week maternity leave from work. (And she was completely free of any leftover baby weight that I could see.) We met for a couple playdates (her middle child, a girl, is Nolan's age) and lunch and whatnot, and I wish I could think of a bad thing to say about her, because...there isn't one. The woman's perfect. She has three kids under the age of 5, she works part time as a friggin' doctor, and she's totally cool. About everything. She makes homemade cookies. She knits. She wears Chuck Taylors in a completely un-ironic way, and she gets away with it! And she's not that annoying kind of holier-than-thou mom who let you KNOW that she knits and makes homemade cookies and doen't give her kids any food with high fructose corn syrup. She just does those things. And is totally self-deprecating and slightly goofy and doesn't wear makeup and I hate her.

I have one kid and am home full time with him, I don't knit or bake or do anything crafty, and all I do when KB comes home from work is bitch about what a tough day I had and how difficult Nolan was to deal with. Sometimes I think I just need to turn in my Parenting License to the Parenting Agency and say, "Sorry, I really thought I could handle this, but as it turns out, I cannot. I am a complete wimp and am totally incapable of dealing with adversity in any form, especially as it pertains to my child. Sorry about that. Better luck next time!"

Aigh.

So anyway, we met this woman in the lobby of the library, and we chatted and I invited her and her husband over for dinner. Because I'm an idiot, and apparently a masochistic one at that. I'll get to know her even better over dinner, I'm sure, and it will turn out that she volunteers for Save the Children in her spare time, knits afghans for elderly Katrina survivors, and that she once rescued a litter of puppies from a burning building. While wearing her Chucks. Sigh.

So I'm looking forward to that dinner.

But, and I have no smooth segue here (alas), the real thing I wanted to write about when I sat down was...Paul Haggis. KB and I just watched "In The Valley Of Elah," and I have to say, that's the first Paul Haggis film I've seen that didn't make me want to retch. Or hoot. Or both. Repeatedly. It was actually quite good - some clunky dialogue and some rather obvious foreshadowing of plot points, but on the whole very balanced and subtle and...mature.

I guess it's surprising to me, because when "Crash" won Best Picture in 2006, it really just hurt my brain. I couldn't fathom that anyone could think that trite, preachy, poorly written, hammily acted, obvious, treacly, ponderous, mish-mash of cliches could be on anyone's list of Not Too Awful movies, much less the Best Friggin' Movie of the Year. I laughed when it was nominated, it seemed like such a joke, and when it won I was just flabbergasted.

Not to mention "Million Dollar Baby," which was slightly less painful due to the mollifying presence of Morgan Freeman (he can make reading the phone book seem like Fine Art), but in which I was still able to predict the "big" moments, right down to almost getting the dialogue word for word in some scenes. (My mom hates watching movies with me now - she says I've gotten too snobby - and this was a particularly bad one. We were watching it at her house, since she has the pay cable and the big flat screen TV, and when I started guessing what the lines were going to be, out loud, to KB, she got up and left the room she was so annoyed. Sorry, Mom!)

So with those two movies (plus the screenplay for "The Last Kiss!" Yecch! Now there's a winner!) comprising the entirety of my knowledge of Paul Haggis's, how do you say, oov-rah, I did not have high hopes for Elah. I guess when you go into something with low expectations, it's not too hard to pleasantly surprised. I don't want to be damning the movie with faint praise, because it actually really was quite good. My theory (espoused to KB, my current sounding-board/victim for theories) was that Haggis had written and directed Crash, but only written Elah, and thus had another person (the theoretical director) to reign in his worst impulses and sort of balance him out.

Buzz! Wrong! Thank you for playing, Caroline! Take your year's supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Franscisco treat, and leave quietly, won't you? He wrote and directed both of them. Huh. What do you know. Maybe he's growing and learning as a director and writer? That was the thing about Crash, it was so...juvenile. All the ideas were on the surface, nothing was left for the audience to understand. He might as well have just bought one of those giant billboards on Sunset and wrote "Racism and stereotypes...BAD. Caring about people as individuals...GOOD." and saved us all two hours.

But then, he's the one with the shelf full of shiny gold statues, now, isn't he?

Thanks for reading.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

Well, shit.

I have just had one of the strangest, most frustrating experiences I think I've had in my whole life.

I signed up for a course called "Second Chance Cinema" with the Princeton Adult School, which basically means me and 68 senior citizens in an auditorium on the Princeton campus getting a chance to watch films we didn't get to see in theatrical release. Eighty bucks for 13 films, only two of which I'd already seen. A good idea, yes? Monday night = Caroline's night to go see a flick and have some Caroline time. Yay!

Except today, the first film, "The Wind That Shakes The Barley." I don't even know how to describe it, what happened.

The curator/emcee got up and described the movie, did his intro, gave the proles and droolers a little background on Ken Loach and his style of filmmaking. All very standard.

The lights went out, the movie started, and the first scene was like Paul Laverty broke into my house two years ago and cherry-picked scenes from one of my scripts, inserted them into his screenplay, and made the fucking thing with Ken Loach.

I thought, "This is my movie. Fuck! Fucking Ken Loach made my movie!"

But he didn't, really. It's a very different movie. It just happens to have some of the exact same scenes I wrote in my script The Long Black Veil eight years ago at USC. This has never happened to me before - it was the strangest thing, sitting there, watching scenes unfold almost exactly as I'd imagined them in my head (and wrote them in my script). It was partly exhilarating - like, "YES! That's exactly how it should look!" and "Oh, perfect! That's it! That's perfect!"

It wasn't until I really thought about it a little bit that I was overcome with the "Oh, fuck!" feeling. I can never make my movie now. Or if I do, I'm going to have to drastically change several key scenes.

It's not plagiarism, obviously. It's just a case of two people having very similar ideas. And, the Big Fucking Difference, of course, is that Ken Loach actually went out and got the funds and the actors and the equipment and Made The Goddamn Movie, whereas, what have I been doing for the last eight years? Oh, sitting around with my thumb up my butt, thank you very much. And they're not really the same story, at all. TWTSTB is more of a political polemic (a Ken Loach film, in other words) while TLBV is a romance. A period Irish historical romance. Gah!

I guess I should be glad that it was a Ken Loach movie and not a fucking Ron Howard movie or something like that. Jerry Bruckheimer, worse. At least I like Ken Loach's movies. Mostly.

I'm so angry with myself. I worked so hard on that script, and it's been sitting in a fucking Staples filing box for six years, being carted around from LA to New York to Boston to Princeton. And now it's toast. It's dead. I might as well burn the fucking thing.

But you should see these scenes! See the movie! Go see it! Rent it! The hurling scene at the very opening - the whole idea of sport as a metaphor for war, for the stupid games men play. The scene at the ceilidh dance, with the fiddlers! The couples whirling around, and the camera picking out the couple we're really interested in, seeing their shining faces as they spin because they think they've really got something to celebrate, when in fact it's all going to crumble soon, and only we know how fragile their elation is, because we know what's coming. Those scenes. Those scenes are right out of my head.

Arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh. I'm going to go kill myself now.

Thanks for reading.

What kind of man would take a job like that?

We had the 1st Annual Jane Rauth Memorial Broadway Show trip yesterday. My mom, my aunt, two of my cousins and their half-sister and I all went into NYC to see "Curtains" with David Hyde-Pierce and Debra Monk.


Can you tell we're related?

It was great for several reasons, not the least of which was just getting out of the house with some other "girls" for a day and talking about girly things. We had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant just up the street from the theater, which was that perfect NY combo of delicious, cheap and exotic. Yay, New York! This is one of the reasons we moved to Princeton, so we 'd have easy access to this kind of stuff.
The show itself was quite good, kind of a classic old-school show-within-a-show musical murder mystery comedy type deal. The cast was excellent - really the only snag was that David Hyde-Pierce has a shockingly bad "Boston" accent. He sounded like he was doing a Sean Connery impression with a mouthful of marbles. But other than that, he was impressive and quite funny - he had a chance to do some of the more Buster Keaton-esque physical comedy that I always thought he excelled at (and was underrated for). (See also: Niles Crane attempting to iron his pants.)

(In case you were wondering, Jane Rauth is my late grandmother, and was always the impetus behind all of our various trips to Broadway - she took me and my mom to see "Les Miserables" when I was 13, and when you've grown up in the barren cultural prairie of Wyoming, a Broadway production on the massive scale of "Les Mis" can really blow your mind. So I've always been grateful that she thought having some fun/entertaining/cultural events in your life was important. [My mom of course felt compelled yesterday to tell everyone else the story of my Broadway de-virginizing, when, as the orchestra struck up the overture at the start of the show, I turned to her excitedly and said, "Mom! It's a live orchestra!" Such is the thrill of the Great White Way when you grow up in a town where Cowboy Poetry passes for culture.])

All in all, an excellent way to spend a lovely autumn afternoon. I will save my rant on the exorbitant prices of Broadway tickets for another time.

Thanks for reading.

Quick! Someone call the girl police, and file a report

It is currently 77 degrees here in Princeton, at five o'clock in the afternoon in late October - does anyone else feel that there's something wrong with that? Pumpkins on the porch, leaves on the ground...and shorts and flip-flops on every passerby. Although occasionally I do see someone engaging in what I call "wishful dressing" wearing jeans and a turtleneck, pretending it's autumn and sweating like crazy.

Whew. I'm glad I wrote that last back-to-reality post before I checked everyone else's blogs...Doc Broc's post would have made me a wee bit self-conscious, I think. I don't post those lists to sound cooler than I am*, honestly...it's more like, since I consider this blog (and all y'alls blogs) the way that we keep in touch with each other, I like to tell you what I'm up to. And read what you're up to. And then if we've read the same thing or seen the same movie we can talk about it. You know. Connect. Promote interaction. As much as is possible on the web, anyway.

I kind of went on total non-computer status there for a while - didn't read anyone else's blogs, didn't check e-mail, didn't surf the web at all. I'm not exactly sure why...I just needed to disconnect for a while, I guess. These past few months have felt like a sort of time out of time, an extended summer vacation, and the ridiculously warm weather hasn't done anything to disabuse me of that notion. I keep feeling like this life we're living in Princeton is just for now, and that sooner or later we'll have to go back to "real" life, whatever that is. Maybe it's because we lived like that for so long that I expect it to continue, or maybe it's because we're only renting this house so I don't think of it as our "real" house. I don't know. But there's been a feeling of impermanence hanging around me, and I need to take steps to remedy that - start getting involved in life in Princeton in a real way.

*Precisely 19% cool, if you want to know.

And now, a cute Nolan story, apropos of nothing:

Jake (the bigger, male, slightly-less-astonishingly-dumb one of our pair of cats) was having a spazz attack, running around the house in that sudden urgent way that cats have. Nolan was eating breakfast at the table. Nolan says, "Why are you running around, Jake?" and then answers himself as Jake and says, "I'm chasing my tail!"

And another bizarre message has arrived from the outlands of my brain regarding my choice of reading material and inter-arts confusion: I'm reading a book called "The Shadow of the Wind," a sort of gothic, multi-layered book-within-a-book set in Spain around the time of the revolution. It was recommended to me by my mother-in-law, who read it for her book club, and although I normally steer clear of "book club" books and anything that comes with a so-called "reader's guide" in the back, Ann (my mother-in-law) has pretty good taste in books and has recommended some past winners to me, so I'm checking it out. Of course, every time I go to pick the book up and see "The Shadow of the Wind" on the cover, I get the song from Pocahontas stuck in my head, the one that goes, "Can you paint with all the colors of the wind..." but since I never really got into Pocahontas the way I did some of the earlier "new" Disney movies (see also: Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc.) I don't know the rest of the words to that song, just a vague scrap of the melody, and then that runs over and over through my head and becomes distorted until it further resembles Ronnie Dobbs' plaintive show-stopper "Y'all Are Brutalizing Me" from Mr. Show's second season. And then I start thinking about that episode and how the movie they made from it, "Run, Ronnie Run" (with a guest appearance by Ebony's mayun) never really lived up to the brilliance of that episode, and how some comedy skits should just be left in their short incandescent wonderfulness and not be stretched and tortured into full-length films. Not that anyone from Saturday Night Live would listen to my puny little opinion, and not that I'm not grateful for the sight of Mandy Patinkin, stark naked, singing "Can't a man not control his bitch with violence?," but still. You see where I'm going with this? Neither do I, but it's far, far away from General Franco and the plight of everyday people in war-torn Spain, which is where I started.

Sigh.

Sometimes I worry about me.

Thanks for reading.


P.S. Yes, some new Nolan pictures are coming soon. Soon, I tell you!

Everyone goes south every now and then

Howdy, y'all.

No, I'm not dead, everything's fine. I just took a little blog break, that's all. I went through a month or so of thinking, "I really should post soon, it's been awhile" and then another month or so of thinking, "I'd better come up with something really good to post about to break this long silence, to somehow justify my continued absence from the web," and then the pressure (admittedly self-imposed) was too much and I didn't think about it at all.

So now I just thought, "Fuck it, Caroline, just write whatever, jeez. It's only a blog."

So here I am. We are all fine, Nolan's good, KB's good (Happy Birthday tomorrow, Sweetie!), I'm good, Princeton's good.

Things I have discovered in the past two months:

The ocean is a force to be respected.

Skinny jeans are not a trend I want to have anything to do with.

I'm much happier when I don't have to drive, but if we do go somewhere in a car, I wanna be the one driving. I have control issues.

You don't have to be a good gardener to grow good tomatoes.

Watching birds is really quite peaceful and relaxing.

Every home should have a musical instrument or two.

Sometimes it is better to want something but not to get it (a material item, that is, not something like world peace or a cure for cancer.) It keeps you craving and alive. Ditto for being hungry. It's okay to let yourself get hungry every once in a while. You appreciate your food more.

Books I have read in the last two months:

"What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng" by Dave Eggers - Powerful, grueling, humbling and inspirational.

"Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert - Fun and funny, but quite possibly the worst possible book to read after "What is the What" - they are so different; even though both are ostensibly non-fiction, they take place in totally different universes.

"The Book of the Dead" and "The Wheel of Darkness" by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - I used to love these guys; I read "Relic" in one sitting, but lately it seems like they just have a formula and they plug in the old reliable characters, add a dash of supernatural intrigue, and then half-bake the results. Don't know if they're worth my time anymore.

"The Big Girls" by Susanna Moore - I felt the same way I did about "In The Cut" - bleak and thrilling and like nothing else I've ever read.

"The Echo Maker" by Richard Powers - Picked this one up totally at random at the library and got lucky - an interesting amalgam of medical procedural and meditation on the meaning of identity.

"Bad Monkeys" by Matt Ruff - Fun and silly thriller, right up until the final one-twist-beyond ending, when I lost my patience.

"Midwives" and "The Double Bind" by Chris Bohjalian - Eh. Maybe I read them too fast, but I saw the ending coming a mile away in "Bind" and didn't care much one way or the other with "Midwives."

"On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan - Engaging and typical of McEwan, in that he allows his exploration of the innermost thoughts of the characters to comprise the entire story ("novel" is too generous a word for this one), but c'mon: a Booker-prize nominated book about premature ejaculation? Thank goodness it didn't win.

"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon - Very good, but not as good as Kavalier and Clay. Again, I suspect I may have read this one too fast.


Movies I have seen in the last two months:

"Michael Clayton" by Tony Gilroy - Amazing and well-written, going to have to see it again. And find the screenplay. So nice not to be condescended to at the movies.

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" by Shekhar Kapur - Fun costume drama/soap opera. A real "movie" movie. Plus, Clive Owen in a puffy pirate shirt! Alalghalghaglaglllll...

"The Descent" by Neil Marshall - Started out sooo promising, then descended (pardon the pun) into typical schlock horror-gore. Disappointing.

"Raging Bull" by Martin Scorsese (yes, this was the first time I'd seen it) - Not really sure why this is considered such an awesome movie. Awesome acting, yes, but fairly pedestrian as bio-dramas go.

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" by Shane Black - Pure pulp. Very funny and arch - made me love Robert Downey, Jr. again.

"Hot Fuzz" by Edgar Wright - Not as good as "Shaun of the Dead," but still better than 90% of the straight buddy-cop movies out there. KB laughed his ass off.

"Miller's Crossing" by Joel and Ethan Coen - Excellent, excellent, excellent.

"Richard III" by Richard Loncraine - Interesting adaptation. Ian McKellen kicks ass, of course, but not as revolutionary as I would have thought.

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard (had to make KB watch it) - One of my all-time favorites. Every time I watch it I see new things to love.

"Coffee and Cigarettes" by Jim Jarmusch - Uneven but ambitious. Some of the scenes/skits made me think, "Why am I wasting precious free time watching this?" and I almost shut it off, something I rarely do, but I stuck with it and there were some worthwhile and funny bits, too.

So. Yeah. That's what I've been up to.

That and looking at real estate porn. Never in a million years would we be able to afford that house, not even when (if) KB makes partner and is making the "big bucks," but I love looking at it. I (heart) that house.

How are you?

Thanks for reading.

Why can't I stay in one place for more than two days?

So I'm reading that Cormac McCarthy book The Road. Or rather, I'm trying to read it. I'm having a slight difficulty. Every time I pick it up to read it, I get the Tenacious D song "The Road" stuck in my head. If you're not familiar with the D's ouevre, well, let's just say it's not exactly a solemn song, as would befit a book reviewed by the Chicago Tribune thusly: "Why read this? . . . Because in its lapidary* transcription of the deepest despair short of total annihilation we may ever know, this book announces the triumph of language over nothingness." Yeah. Not your typical summer beach read. So this glaring incompatibility between a goofy pseudo hard-rock satire ditty and a grim post-apocalyptic mediation on humanity keeps clonking me in the brain and I haven't gotten very far into the book. Perhaps I should shelve it for now and find something a little more...fun.

*"Short, precise and elegant, like the inscription on a tombstone," according to Webster's New World Dictionary. I had to look it up.

This has happened to me only once before, this contest of wills between different art forms in my brain, and that was with the Wally Lamb book "I Know This Much is True." I kept getting that Spandau Ballet song "True" stuck in my head, which of course lead to that P.M. Dawn song "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss," which sampled the Spandau Ballet song, and then I'd be sitting there going, "Whatever happened to P.M. Dawn? They were pretty decent. Huh. I gotta dig that CD out and listen to it again." and totally not reading the book at all. Of course, I could just blame my complete lack of involvement with the book on Wally Lamb, as I didn't think it was nearly as good as "She's Come Undone," which had me a sobbing mess by the end. (Yes, that is what I would call a good book.) I made the mistake of finishing that book on my lunch break at work and coming back to the office with red eyes and mascara smudges. So professional looking.

Yikes. In looking up the links for these books I see that they are all on the Oprah's Book Club list, apparently. That's sort of frightening.

Aaaaand that's all I've got.

Thanks for reading.