KB's mom left this morning. Nolan and I drove her to the Newark airport and dropped her off, and she is even as I type winging her way across the country back to the Bay.
I am bereft. I suppose I should feel lucky that I get along so well with my mother-in-law, and I do, but right now I'm feeling sorry for myself at losing my wing man. She's like a combination mom/friend/sage/mentor/protector figure in my life, and it's been a great two weeks having her here. She has endless patience for Nolan and all his foibles, and is always willing to get him when he wakes up, or play with him when he wants to play, or just generally take the pressure off of me being the only adult at home all day.
She loves to cook, and we always eat well while she says with us. Plus she's so considerate - pretty much every morning during her visit she's unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher, and just this morning when she was making herself a turkey sandwich for the flight home, she made an extra one, wrapped it in Saran and stuck in the fridge for me to eat later.
She just knitted another sweater/hat combo for Nolan, this time in a pretty teal blue and gray pattern that he looks adorable in, so he's all set for this winter. Nolan got so used to having her here - the first thing he said when we got home from dropping her off was "Where's Grandmama?" as if he expected her to be waiting for us even after we just watched her walk into the airport an hour before. Sigh.
Plus, she's like the greatest gardening guru of all time. She's been instrumental in planning where to put things and deciding what plants to buy, so any success we have with our beans, peas, tomatos and herbs will be mostly to her credit. I wish I had taken a "before" photo of the garden (although the camera was dead) so you could see how much it has improved. I'm going to take some extensive photos of the house (one day, when it stops raining every day) and I'll get the garden in there so you can see how much we've done.
So I am sad.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
I can see for miles and miles
Well, this has been a shitty weekend, both literally and figuratively.
On Thursday night, KB was told that the practice won't be offering him a partnership. In other words, he needs to find another job. The reasons are complicated, but a lot of it boils down to the practice putting their business interests before their employee (KB)'s interests. In some ways, it's a relief, as this possibility has been hanging over us since about mid-March, and now that the proverbial sword of Damocles has dropped, we at least know what the hell's going on. Hell being the key word there.
All of the things I though we had going for us here in Princeton - stability, permanence, a feeling of finally being "home," have turned out to be mere chimeras, like desert mirages that disappear as you get close. We stupidly, and mostly at my urging, just bought a house three months ago, because I was sure things would work out here, and now we may be in the position of having to sell the place six months after buying it. Not a smart idea even in a robust real estate market, much less in the kind of market the U.S. is in right now.
We don't know where we'll be going next - we have until December to find something else - and we don't necessarily have to pull up stakes and move across the country. The non-compete clause in KB's contract only specifies that he not work within a 10-mile radius of any of the current group's sites, so that means we could conceivably still live here while KB commutes to another position.
I'm trying to take the long view - some day we'll look back at this and go "Whew." KB was actually starting to get quite unhappy with his workload with this group - he was doing a lot of the modalities and specialties he's not as well trained in and doesn't like as much (mammo, nucs, ultrasound) and didn't get to do much of the ones he really likes and is well-trained in (musculoskeletal, body-imaging, cross-sectional), so I think he actually is a bit relieved. I can't really blame the group, either (although I'm plenty angry with them) since they have to, as a business entity, put their business interests first. But it's still shitty.
AND speaking of shitty (nice blend, Fozzie, thank you, Fozzie!) I spent the entire weekend either in bed moaning or on the toilet moaning with some intestinal virus I mysteriously contracted while no one else in the family has (thank god for small favors). I'm not sure if it was a psychosomatic reaction to the news (not really likely, but the timing seemed more than coincidental) or what, but suffice to say, it was ugly. I just started feeling better yesterday (Mother's Day) and am almost back to normal today. Yecccch. Too much sharing, I know, but I just had to convey the complete well of blackness that we'd fallen into this last few days, and that was certainly a big part of it for me.
Sigh.
Thankfully, KB's mom is here staying with us for another week - she's been a godsend. She took Nolan all day Friday while I lay in bed sobbing and writhing. I can't imagine what it would have been like had she not been here. That's one of the good things about being married - you get to co-opt your spouse's family members as your own, and when you're sick, nothing helps like having a mom around.
And then, to complete the trifecta of crappiness (not literally) we had a wind-and-rain storm last night and one of the mostly dead trees ("I'm not dead yet!") in the back fell over on the house. At 3:12 a.m. Scared the crap out of me and KB, but nobody else woke up and no damage was done (except to the tree), so it could have been worse.
And so could all of this, really. This isn't the worst thing that could happen in our lives, not by a long shot, (I know one person in particular out there who knows about the worst thing happening, but that's her story, not mine, and I know she'll tell it, and tell it well, when she's good and goddamn ready) and we'll get through it and figure things out. And then there's that whole thing about being stronger at the broken places.* But it sure hurts while you're healing.
Thanks for reading.
*"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway.
On Thursday night, KB was told that the practice won't be offering him a partnership. In other words, he needs to find another job. The reasons are complicated, but a lot of it boils down to the practice putting their business interests before their employee (KB)'s interests. In some ways, it's a relief, as this possibility has been hanging over us since about mid-March, and now that the proverbial sword of Damocles has dropped, we at least know what the hell's going on. Hell being the key word there.
All of the things I though we had going for us here in Princeton - stability, permanence, a feeling of finally being "home," have turned out to be mere chimeras, like desert mirages that disappear as you get close. We stupidly, and mostly at my urging, just bought a house three months ago, because I was sure things would work out here, and now we may be in the position of having to sell the place six months after buying it. Not a smart idea even in a robust real estate market, much less in the kind of market the U.S. is in right now.
We don't know where we'll be going next - we have until December to find something else - and we don't necessarily have to pull up stakes and move across the country. The non-compete clause in KB's contract only specifies that he not work within a 10-mile radius of any of the current group's sites, so that means we could conceivably still live here while KB commutes to another position.
I'm trying to take the long view - some day we'll look back at this and go "Whew." KB was actually starting to get quite unhappy with his workload with this group - he was doing a lot of the modalities and specialties he's not as well trained in and doesn't like as much (mammo, nucs, ultrasound) and didn't get to do much of the ones he really likes and is well-trained in (musculoskeletal, body-imaging, cross-sectional), so I think he actually is a bit relieved. I can't really blame the group, either (although I'm plenty angry with them) since they have to, as a business entity, put their business interests first. But it's still shitty.
AND speaking of shitty (nice blend, Fozzie, thank you, Fozzie!) I spent the entire weekend either in bed moaning or on the toilet moaning with some intestinal virus I mysteriously contracted while no one else in the family has (thank god for small favors). I'm not sure if it was a psychosomatic reaction to the news (not really likely, but the timing seemed more than coincidental) or what, but suffice to say, it was ugly. I just started feeling better yesterday (Mother's Day) and am almost back to normal today. Yecccch. Too much sharing, I know, but I just had to convey the complete well of blackness that we'd fallen into this last few days, and that was certainly a big part of it for me.
Sigh.
Thankfully, KB's mom is here staying with us for another week - she's been a godsend. She took Nolan all day Friday while I lay in bed sobbing and writhing. I can't imagine what it would have been like had she not been here. That's one of the good things about being married - you get to co-opt your spouse's family members as your own, and when you're sick, nothing helps like having a mom around.
And then, to complete the trifecta of crappiness (not literally) we had a wind-and-rain storm last night and one of the mostly dead trees ("I'm not dead yet!") in the back fell over on the house. At 3:12 a.m. Scared the crap out of me and KB, but nobody else woke up and no damage was done (except to the tree), so it could have been worse.
And so could all of this, really. This isn't the worst thing that could happen in our lives, not by a long shot, (I know one person in particular out there who knows about the worst thing happening, but that's her story, not mine, and I know she'll tell it, and tell it well, when she's good and goddamn ready) and we'll get through it and figure things out. And then there's that whole thing about being stronger at the broken places.* But it sure hurts while you're healing.
Thanks for reading.
*"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway.
Monday, April 28, 2008
With a knick-knack paddywhack
Well, we've been to Washington and back, and it was a great vacation, but it's always so hard to come back to real life once you've had a vacation. Erica and El Jefe were awesome hosts, cooking dinner almost every night and providing tons of distraction (bath toys! art projects! books!) for Nolan. Plus we had the whole upstairs of the house to ourselves - it was like our own little apartment in their house. We didn't do a whole heck of a lot, really. We went to the wedding of KB's friend Weissy (the ostensible purpose for the trip), and we made one other trip into Seattle to go to the Frye museum and of course Pike's Place market, but other than that we mostly hung out in Olympia. Erica and I got to have a girls' night out (which meant Nolan, KB and Jefe had a boys' night in, complete with steaks and bourbon) and it was soooooo nice to just hang out for a little while. We've been friends for over 20 years now (yipe!) and it's incredibly easy to fall back into our same rhythm of talking and laughing together. (The sparkling wine and gourmet food didn't hurt, either.) We almost didn't go out because we had all gotten sick (thank you, airplane travel) and we were kind of sniffly and sore throat-y, but again, the sparkling wine was a lifesaver. The girl-time binge made the return to Princeton a little hard for me - I'm once again reminded of my dearth of close friends here, and while I know things will get better with time and there's no rushing it, I still miss it.
So what else is going on, you ask?
Well. Our camera died, for one. The day of Weissy's wedding, right at the beginning of the ceremony. KB picked up the camera, pushed the shutter button, and it just froze, dead. So I am looking for any and all input into digital SLRs the four of you who read this blog might have for me - considering the Canon digital Rebel XTi, but willing to listen to other opinions. And that also means we have zero pictures of our trip.
And zero pictures of my seedlings, which I just planted yesterday. We had one of these indoor plant-starting kits that we, well, started before we left for WA, and while we were gone the green bean seedlings went berserk and pushed the lid off, they grew so fast. So I got the peas and the green beans in the ground yesterday, and I'm giving the tomatoes a few more days to get their strength up (and to hope the weather warms up a little) before I subject them to the same treatment. I put down chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging up the plants (because I was told that squirrels aren't really interested in the plants themselves, they just like digging in freshly turned earth - who knew?) and think I probably killed more seedlings trying to get them through the holes in the chicken wire than the squirrels would have. Sigh. So we'll see.
Aaaaaaaand...what else?
Fiddle lessons are continuing. My teacher said something last week that really struck me, which was "Musicians are athletes of the small muscles." We were talking about the importance of practice and how there's really no shortcut or substitute for it. You have to tell your muscles the correct way to do things ("No, ring finger, for C sharp you're right next to the pinky, not the middle finger.") over and over and over again until they can do it from memory. Even if your brain can think it correctly, that doesn't mean your fingers and arms can play it correctly. So you have to commit yourself to practicing scales over and over just like a tennis player practices serves over and over. There's no other way to do it, to the chagrin of slackers like me who have a dream scenario in mind of playing in an Irish bar pick-up band but don't necessarily want to, you know, work to get to that point.
(And please, can someone explain to me why the names of the scales never have anything to do with the notes that are sharped or flatted in said scales? G major has one sharp, F#. A major has three sharps, F#, G#, and C#. Why? Why isn't a scale with only an F# called F#? I think I need to take a music theory class.)
I guess that's it for now. Nolan is good, KB is good, the weather sucks, the cats are annoying. You know, the usual.
Oh, and we still have no working washer-dryer set up. The new washing machine is installed, but the old dryer won't stack on top of it without a special stacking kit and new legs, so I've ordered those and when they come in I get to find out if KB and I can do it (stack the dryer on top of the washer and hook it up, that is) ourselves. So I'm washing clothes and hanging them on a clothesline I rigged last week. We're so eco-friendly, if not strictly by choice.
Thanks for reading.
So what else is going on, you ask?
Well. Our camera died, for one. The day of Weissy's wedding, right at the beginning of the ceremony. KB picked up the camera, pushed the shutter button, and it just froze, dead. So I am looking for any and all input into digital SLRs the four of you who read this blog might have for me - considering the Canon digital Rebel XTi, but willing to listen to other opinions. And that also means we have zero pictures of our trip.
And zero pictures of my seedlings, which I just planted yesterday. We had one of these indoor plant-starting kits that we, well, started before we left for WA, and while we were gone the green bean seedlings went berserk and pushed the lid off, they grew so fast. So I got the peas and the green beans in the ground yesterday, and I'm giving the tomatoes a few more days to get their strength up (and to hope the weather warms up a little) before I subject them to the same treatment. I put down chicken wire to keep the squirrels from digging up the plants (because I was told that squirrels aren't really interested in the plants themselves, they just like digging in freshly turned earth - who knew?) and think I probably killed more seedlings trying to get them through the holes in the chicken wire than the squirrels would have. Sigh. So we'll see.
Aaaaaaaand...what else?
Fiddle lessons are continuing. My teacher said something last week that really struck me, which was "Musicians are athletes of the small muscles." We were talking about the importance of practice and how there's really no shortcut or substitute for it. You have to tell your muscles the correct way to do things ("No, ring finger, for C sharp you're right next to the pinky, not the middle finger.") over and over and over again until they can do it from memory. Even if your brain can think it correctly, that doesn't mean your fingers and arms can play it correctly. So you have to commit yourself to practicing scales over and over just like a tennis player practices serves over and over. There's no other way to do it, to the chagrin of slackers like me who have a dream scenario in mind of playing in an Irish bar pick-up band but don't necessarily want to, you know, work to get to that point.
(And please, can someone explain to me why the names of the scales never have anything to do with the notes that are sharped or flatted in said scales? G major has one sharp, F#. A major has three sharps, F#, G#, and C#. Why? Why isn't a scale with only an F# called F#? I think I need to take a music theory class.)
I guess that's it for now. Nolan is good, KB is good, the weather sucks, the cats are annoying. You know, the usual.
Oh, and we still have no working washer-dryer set up. The new washing machine is installed, but the old dryer won't stack on top of it without a special stacking kit and new legs, so I've ordered those and when they come in I get to find out if KB and I can do it (stack the dryer on top of the washer and hook it up, that is) ourselves. So I'm washing clothes and hanging them on a clothesline I rigged last week. We're so eco-friendly, if not strictly by choice.
Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
The way I like it is the way it is
I know I bitch and moan a lot about how hard it is to stay at home with Nolan, but there are certain perks to having a small child around the house.
I have now conditioned him, my own little private science experiment, to yell out, "Phone's ringing, Dude!" whenever the phone rings, which is harmless and makes me chuckle.
And I know I have mentioned previously my history of replacing song lyrics with ones suitable to my immediate situation, and that hasn't changed (I've just stopped writing about it):
The other day I was getting Nolan down from the dinner table, which involves much squirming and thrashing and whining when I'm wiping his face (for some reason wiping the hands doesn't bother him, just the face) and to distract him, I started to sing. He was slumping down in his seat, trying to maneuver his face as far away from the washcloth as possible, and I kept repeating "Sit up. C'mon, sit up. Sit up!" so of course the song that came to me was James Brown's "Sex Machine," with its call-and-response "Get up! Get on up...Get up!" structure. So I started to sing it. And lo and behold, Nolan was interested. "What's that song, Mommy?" he said. (As a side note, we have now entered that phase of toddlerhood where he's constantly asking, "What's this? What's that?" and it's not so much driving me crazy as it is wearing me down slowly, question by tedious question.)
So I put it on the stereo for his edification, and we boogied around the living room for awhile, with Nolan doing his trademark arhythmic toddler seizure/dance. We let it play while we were cleaning up after dinner and getting PJs on, then put Nolan to bed and thought nothing more of it.
Well. Our little funkmaster has now made James Brown's "70's Funk Classics" (not even a real album, as far as I know, just a re-issued collection for those of us who want the Godfather's go-to hits only*) his favorite CD. We listen to it at home, we listen to it in the car...he can't get enough. The first time he asked for it, he said, "Mommy, can we play that Brown James song?" and after I got over my giggle fit I obligingly put it on. He listened intently, and each time a song faded out, he would say, "Is there going to be more, Mommy?" and when a new song came on, he would ask, "What's this song called, Mommy?" like he's expecting a quiz at the end.
We listened to it in the car on the way over to my mom's last week to do laundry (for yea, I say unto thee: the washer, it is still kerflooey) and after shoving a load in, I came out into the living room to see Nolan boogie-ing around by himself, mumbling/singing, "Shake your money maker! Shake your money maker!" It did my heart good, I tell you.
And he hasn't gotten tired of it yet. The other night when Nolan and I were snuggling in the rocking chair in preparation for bed, he said, "Where's the bridge, Mommy?" and I was like, "Huh? What bridge?" And he said, "You know, when he says he wants to go to the bridge." (Nolan often comes up with non-sequitors where he seems to assume I can read his mind, and he'll sometimes get mad when I genuinely don't know what the hell he's talking about.) So I said, "You mean James Brown? When he says 'Take 'em to the bridge?'" (and I do my pathetic James Brown impression) and he says, "Yeah! Where's the bridge?" So then we had a whole discussion about actual, structural bridges versus musical bridges. I relayed the whole thing to KB after Nolan was tucked in, and we just shook our heads in wonder.
You got to be careful what you expose your kid to, because you never know what they'll soak up. They're like sponges, they are.
Thanks for reading.
*Although, now that I think about it, it doesn't have "I Feel Good," which I would guess is the number one most well-known James Brown song. Alas.
I have now conditioned him, my own little private science experiment, to yell out, "Phone's ringing, Dude!" whenever the phone rings, which is harmless and makes me chuckle.
And I know I have mentioned previously my history of replacing song lyrics with ones suitable to my immediate situation, and that hasn't changed (I've just stopped writing about it):
The other day I was getting Nolan down from the dinner table, which involves much squirming and thrashing and whining when I'm wiping his face (for some reason wiping the hands doesn't bother him, just the face) and to distract him, I started to sing. He was slumping down in his seat, trying to maneuver his face as far away from the washcloth as possible, and I kept repeating "Sit up. C'mon, sit up. Sit up!" so of course the song that came to me was James Brown's "Sex Machine," with its call-and-response "Get up! Get on up...Get up!" structure. So I started to sing it. And lo and behold, Nolan was interested. "What's that song, Mommy?" he said. (As a side note, we have now entered that phase of toddlerhood where he's constantly asking, "What's this? What's that?" and it's not so much driving me crazy as it is wearing me down slowly, question by tedious question.)
So I put it on the stereo for his edification, and we boogied around the living room for awhile, with Nolan doing his trademark arhythmic toddler seizure/dance. We let it play while we were cleaning up after dinner and getting PJs on, then put Nolan to bed and thought nothing more of it.
Well. Our little funkmaster has now made James Brown's "70's Funk Classics" (not even a real album, as far as I know, just a re-issued collection for those of us who want the Godfather's go-to hits only*) his favorite CD. We listen to it at home, we listen to it in the car...he can't get enough. The first time he asked for it, he said, "Mommy, can we play that Brown James song?" and after I got over my giggle fit I obligingly put it on. He listened intently, and each time a song faded out, he would say, "Is there going to be more, Mommy?" and when a new song came on, he would ask, "What's this song called, Mommy?" like he's expecting a quiz at the end.
We listened to it in the car on the way over to my mom's last week to do laundry (for yea, I say unto thee: the washer, it is still kerflooey) and after shoving a load in, I came out into the living room to see Nolan boogie-ing around by himself, mumbling/singing, "Shake your money maker! Shake your money maker!" It did my heart good, I tell you.
And he hasn't gotten tired of it yet. The other night when Nolan and I were snuggling in the rocking chair in preparation for bed, he said, "Where's the bridge, Mommy?" and I was like, "Huh? What bridge?" And he said, "You know, when he says he wants to go to the bridge." (Nolan often comes up with non-sequitors where he seems to assume I can read his mind, and he'll sometimes get mad when I genuinely don't know what the hell he's talking about.) So I said, "You mean James Brown? When he says 'Take 'em to the bridge?'" (and I do my pathetic James Brown impression) and he says, "Yeah! Where's the bridge?" So then we had a whole discussion about actual, structural bridges versus musical bridges. I relayed the whole thing to KB after Nolan was tucked in, and we just shook our heads in wonder.
You got to be careful what you expose your kid to, because you never know what they'll soak up. They're like sponges, they are.
Thanks for reading.
*Although, now that I think about it, it doesn't have "I Feel Good," which I would guess is the number one most well-known James Brown song. Alas.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Say no go
Whew.
I got a whopping 23 out of 50 on this song lyrics quiz by Defective Yeti's Matthew Baldwin. And now my head hurts.
See, the catch is, he lists the lyrics in alphabetical order (eliminating any repeated words, like the chorus), so even though the song might be quite easy to guess if the lyrics were in the order they're sung in, when they're alphabetical...not so much.
Some of them are actually pretty easy if you can pick out the key words - how many rock songs do you know that have the word "Scaramouche" or "mulatto" in them? - but with the order all f-ed up, songs you really should know get harder to guess. The paradoxical thing is that the shorter the list of lyrics, the harder it is to guess, because there's fewer clues to distinguish one song from another.
And the (perhaps not so) shocking thing is how similar the lyrics are from one song to another. "Baby" and its variants show up about 75% of the time, and when you throw in all the "at"s, "the"s, "be"s and "you"s, it gets damn difficult to distinguish Aerosmith from Simon and Garfunkel. Which you would think would be not too tough.
Okay. Gotta go read a book with the words in an order that MAKES SENSE.
Enjoy. Tell me your score if you do it.
Thanks for reading.
I got a whopping 23 out of 50 on this song lyrics quiz by Defective Yeti's Matthew Baldwin. And now my head hurts.
See, the catch is, he lists the lyrics in alphabetical order (eliminating any repeated words, like the chorus), so even though the song might be quite easy to guess if the lyrics were in the order they're sung in, when they're alphabetical...not so much.
Some of them are actually pretty easy if you can pick out the key words - how many rock songs do you know that have the word "Scaramouche" or "mulatto" in them? - but with the order all f-ed up, songs you really should know get harder to guess. The paradoxical thing is that the shorter the list of lyrics, the harder it is to guess, because there's fewer clues to distinguish one song from another.
And the (perhaps not so) shocking thing is how similar the lyrics are from one song to another. "Baby" and its variants show up about 75% of the time, and when you throw in all the "at"s, "the"s, "be"s and "you"s, it gets damn difficult to distinguish Aerosmith from Simon and Garfunkel. Which you would think would be not too tough.
Okay. Gotta go read a book with the words in an order that MAKES SENSE.
Enjoy. Tell me your score if you do it.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Bow down before the one you serve
Fucking Sears.
Fucking "American Home Shield" home warranty.
Why is it so difficult to get anything done simply these days? Why do I have to spend so many of my precious Nolan-free minutes on the goddamn phone with a goddamn robot trying to get someone to come fix my goddamn washing machine? It's not just: "Oh, the washing machine's broken, let me call the repairman." And the repairman shows up and fixes the stupid thing.
Instead, it's: "Oh, the washing machine's broken." Let me call the home warranty place (on a Friday) and get a robot and push button after button on their voice menu before getting a live human, who then proceeds to tell me to wait for a call back. So I wait for a call back and speak to a human for 30 seconds before being transferred to Sears to talk to their robot (who at least has voice-recognition software so I can talk instead of pushing buttons). I finally speak with a Sears human and am given an appointment time five days in the future (a Tuesday), which means five days of toddler living with no laundry getting done. Then when the repairman comes he tells me he needs to order a part, and when the part arrives THEN I can call to make another appointment to effect the actual repair. Under no circumstances am I to call BEFORE the part arrives (even though there seems to be a five-day lag in appointment-getting). The part finally arrives on the following Monday (after one Thursday trip to the laundromat sans car, trying to get Nolan to walk at a pace slightly faster than a handicapped caterpillar as I push my little-old-lady grocery cart full of dirty laundry and hold his hand at the same time. That was three hours round trip, only an hour and a half of which was actual laundry-doing.) and I call to make a new appointment. I am told Tuesday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. I am stupidly happy to get an appointment for the next day. I foolishly assume that the information given to me on the phone by a Sears rep will be accurate and go to the gym in the morning, only to miss 3 phone calls from Sears wondering where I am when my appointment was for 8-12 that morning. I call back upon returning home from the gym (going through all the robot brou-ha-ha yet again) and am told that I'll have to reschedule. I say, "I don't want to reschedule, I want my washer fixed when you told me you were going to fix it." I am transferred to a "tech repair" specialist who takes my phone number and tells me she will call the local repair routing office and have them call me. Two hours go by. No one calls. I call the main Sears number again and am forced, through gritted teeth, to once more recite my phone number and address for the robot. The customer service rep based in Manila, Phillippines tells me she cannot transfer me to anyone in the "tech repair" department because she doesn't have that capability. I tell her the previous rep did exactly that, but she persists in wanting me to reschedule instead. I am unfailingly polite - I say, "That is unacceptable. I would like my washing machine repaired today, as I was told it would be." She clearly does not know what the hell to do and ends up giving me the phone number for what she says is my local repair department. I thank her, hang up, and call the number (which does have a local area code) and, like something from a Sartre play, am connected to the same fucking robot who wants me to tell her my phone number and address. I hang up and jump up and down furiously while hissing "fucking fuckity fuckity fuck fucking fuckers" under my breath, startling the cats, but thankfully not waking up Nolan. I decide it's really not worth getting that mad and surrender to the robot. I call back one more time and get an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. From 1 to 5.
I will keep my fingers crossed. And shove one more day's laundry into the hamper.
I hate that this has me so upset, and I hate that this is the kind of thing that's making me upset these days - it's so lame. It's so 1950s housewife. I'm in pearls and a full skirt vacuuming and telling KB "Darling, the washer repair got a bit botched, I'm afraid, and so you shall have no clean hankies for work this week." Blargghg! There are more important things I could be doing with my time!
Thanks for reading. Sigh.
Fucking "American Home Shield" home warranty.
Why is it so difficult to get anything done simply these days? Why do I have to spend so many of my precious Nolan-free minutes on the goddamn phone with a goddamn robot trying to get someone to come fix my goddamn washing machine? It's not just: "Oh, the washing machine's broken, let me call the repairman." And the repairman shows up and fixes the stupid thing.
Instead, it's: "Oh, the washing machine's broken." Let me call the home warranty place (on a Friday) and get a robot and push button after button on their voice menu before getting a live human, who then proceeds to tell me to wait for a call back. So I wait for a call back and speak to a human for 30 seconds before being transferred to Sears to talk to their robot (who at least has voice-recognition software so I can talk instead of pushing buttons). I finally speak with a Sears human and am given an appointment time five days in the future (a Tuesday), which means five days of toddler living with no laundry getting done. Then when the repairman comes he tells me he needs to order a part, and when the part arrives THEN I can call to make another appointment to effect the actual repair. Under no circumstances am I to call BEFORE the part arrives (even though there seems to be a five-day lag in appointment-getting). The part finally arrives on the following Monday (after one Thursday trip to the laundromat sans car, trying to get Nolan to walk at a pace slightly faster than a handicapped caterpillar as I push my little-old-lady grocery cart full of dirty laundry and hold his hand at the same time. That was three hours round trip, only an hour and a half of which was actual laundry-doing.) and I call to make a new appointment. I am told Tuesday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. I am stupidly happy to get an appointment for the next day. I foolishly assume that the information given to me on the phone by a Sears rep will be accurate and go to the gym in the morning, only to miss 3 phone calls from Sears wondering where I am when my appointment was for 8-12 that morning. I call back upon returning home from the gym (going through all the robot brou-ha-ha yet again) and am told that I'll have to reschedule. I say, "I don't want to reschedule, I want my washer fixed when you told me you were going to fix it." I am transferred to a "tech repair" specialist who takes my phone number and tells me she will call the local repair routing office and have them call me. Two hours go by. No one calls. I call the main Sears number again and am forced, through gritted teeth, to once more recite my phone number and address for the robot. The customer service rep based in Manila, Phillippines tells me she cannot transfer me to anyone in the "tech repair" department because she doesn't have that capability. I tell her the previous rep did exactly that, but she persists in wanting me to reschedule instead. I am unfailingly polite - I say, "That is unacceptable. I would like my washing machine repaired today, as I was told it would be." She clearly does not know what the hell to do and ends up giving me the phone number for what she says is my local repair department. I thank her, hang up, and call the number (which does have a local area code) and, like something from a Sartre play, am connected to the same fucking robot who wants me to tell her my phone number and address. I hang up and jump up and down furiously while hissing "fucking fuckity fuckity fuck fucking fuckers" under my breath, startling the cats, but thankfully not waking up Nolan. I decide it's really not worth getting that mad and surrender to the robot. I call back one more time and get an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. From 1 to 5.
I will keep my fingers crossed. And shove one more day's laundry into the hamper.
I hate that this has me so upset, and I hate that this is the kind of thing that's making me upset these days - it's so lame. It's so 1950s housewife. I'm in pearls and a full skirt vacuuming and telling KB "Darling, the washer repair got a bit botched, I'm afraid, and so you shall have no clean hankies for work this week." Blargghg! There are more important things I could be doing with my time!
Thanks for reading. Sigh.
Monday, March 24, 2008
You mighta heard I run with a dangerous crowd
How is this even possible?
This man, this smart, witty, kind, caring, gentle man...is dead.
But how does someone who's only 34 just...die? Of natural causes? He contributed to the world - he was a teacher and a writer, he inspired his students, family and friends, he gave unselfishly of himself...and now he's dead. Cancer. I can't think of any other thing to say than "It's not fair." A four-year-old's response, to be sure, but the truest one I've had.
I didn't know him well. He was a year ahead of me in high school. We were loose friends in college - we were in the same chemistry class one semester, so since we knew each other from high school we sat together and made snarky comments about the other students, the teacher, everything. And we formed a little study group. And once that semester was over, we would wave when we passed by on campus or out and about in Laramie...but that was about it.
He was one of those people that I would idly wonder about periodically through the years. I always knew he'd be successful in the traditional sense of the word - he knew what he wanted to do with his life and he had a plan for how he was going to get there (unlike me and 90% of college students, I think.) So I didn't really wonder about him like I wonder about some of my other Wyoming compatriots (E-Mul and Dru and Rose and Broc, you know I'm not talking about you here), whom I suspected might end up dead from unnatural causes, or in jail, or divorced with four kids by age 30.
No such worries with Chet. I never did get in touch with him again, never did try to find out what was going on in his life. I only know he died because the Rawlins, Wyoming grapevine is short and news travels fast along it. His life, as short as it was, had meaning and purpose. You should read his blog. And his "This I Believe" statement. And think about what you'd want to do if your life were going to end soon. Because it could, even though it's not fair.
Thanks for reading.
This man, this smart, witty, kind, caring, gentle man...is dead.
But how does someone who's only 34 just...die? Of natural causes? He contributed to the world - he was a teacher and a writer, he inspired his students, family and friends, he gave unselfishly of himself...and now he's dead. Cancer. I can't think of any other thing to say than "It's not fair." A four-year-old's response, to be sure, but the truest one I've had.
I didn't know him well. He was a year ahead of me in high school. We were loose friends in college - we were in the same chemistry class one semester, so since we knew each other from high school we sat together and made snarky comments about the other students, the teacher, everything. And we formed a little study group. And once that semester was over, we would wave when we passed by on campus or out and about in Laramie...but that was about it.
He was one of those people that I would idly wonder about periodically through the years. I always knew he'd be successful in the traditional sense of the word - he knew what he wanted to do with his life and he had a plan for how he was going to get there (unlike me and 90% of college students, I think.) So I didn't really wonder about him like I wonder about some of my other Wyoming compatriots (E-Mul and Dru and Rose and Broc, you know I'm not talking about you here), whom I suspected might end up dead from unnatural causes, or in jail, or divorced with four kids by age 30.
No such worries with Chet. I never did get in touch with him again, never did try to find out what was going on in his life. I only know he died because the Rawlins, Wyoming grapevine is short and news travels fast along it. His life, as short as it was, had meaning and purpose. You should read his blog. And his "This I Believe" statement. And think about what you'd want to do if your life were going to end soon. Because it could, even though it's not fair.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
We will get by
Introducing Nolan and Spencer as The Two Goofy Guys in..."World's Shortest Jam Session"!
(Clearly, the presence of the paparazzi made them uncomfortable.)
And here you see Nolan and Spencer discovering the harmonica. What talent! What natural musical genius! (Yes, that's the favorite Pink Shirt Nolan is wearing.)
Thanks for reading.
(Clearly, the presence of the paparazzi made them uncomfortable.)
And here you see Nolan and Spencer discovering the harmonica. What talent! What natural musical genius! (Yes, that's the favorite Pink Shirt Nolan is wearing.)
Thanks for reading.
Monday, March 10, 2008
I got something that'll sho nuff set yo' stuff on fire
We were on vacation last week. KB had taken a week off because we thought there was going to be an opportunity to see Alan and Kathleen, but that didn't work out. So instead, we stayed close to home and just did a couple little day trips.We went to the aquarium in Camden on Tuesday afternoon, which turned out to be the perfect time to go - it was practically deserted, so Nolan had lots of running around room, plus the animals seemed very active; when Nolan and my mom and I went last summer, the hippos in the African River exhibit just sat there (not that I blame them, considering the weight they have to heft around) doing nothing, but this time they got out of the water, walked around, splashed back in, swam past the glass, etc. It was great! Alas, we forgot our actual camera, so instead we have several grainy cameraphone pictures.
We got to touch sharks (Spotted Bamboo sharks), jelly fish, sting rays (little baby ones, with the stingers removed), lobsters and shrimp. I refrained from touching the jellyfish, lobsters, and shrimp. Tempting, but no. Nolan was waaaaay into the touch tanks. Literally. We tried to roll his sleeves up, but that doesn't do much good when he's got his arm in the water up to his shoulder. KB swears Nolan had his face in the shrimp tank. (Of course, we took off his wet shirt and stuck it in a plastic bag in the diaper bag, where I forgot it until Sunday when we did laundry. Mmmmmm, stinky fermented shrimp water shirt.) The other good thing about the place being deserted was that when Nolan had his standard No Nap Today Late Afternoon Freakout, there weren't that many witnesses around. We like to have some privacy when we beat the boy.
Then I got to have some Me Time! I took the car, all by myself, and went up to Windham Mountain to snowboard for a day! Huzzah!
The Windham Mountain experience was a wee bit on the lame side, I have to say. I mean, the jones to snowboard was satisfied, so just on that alone I would say it was a good trip, but the place itself was kind of "eh." I drove up Wednesday afternoon (I got to fulfill my desire to play Vampire Weekend on a road trip! Woo-hoo!) and got to the mountain around 5, only to be told there was no night skiing on Wednesdays (something not mentioned on the web site). Waaahh! I wanted to maximize my ski-time to drive-time ratio! So I drove to my hotel thinking I would check in, get dinner, read my book and chill out. I checked in and was told that the hotel restaurant was closed on Wednesdays (also not mentioned on the website, or by the person who took my reservation over the phone). Argh. So I drove up and down the "main street" of the town of Windham looking for a restaurant that was open, and ended up in a (read "the only") diner. Which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it was just...not what I was imagining. Then I went back to the hotel, took a bath and watched two episodes of "Ghost Hunters." (I love that show.)
I woke up at 6:30, thinking the mountain opened at 8, went down to the lobby to get my free Continental breakfast and check the conditions, only to be informed by the sign that the mountain didn't open until 9. 9 a.m.! What kind of mountain doesn't open until 9?!?! Sigh. But eventually, I got there, and then things were better.
[I don't have any pictures of myself from that day, because while I am a competent snowboarder, I am not skilled enough to take a self-portrait whilst riding, especially with my crappy cell phone camera (see above photos) or our chunky little Kodak EasyShare, which I did not bring since it would have gotten crushed the first time I fell. So instead please take this random screengrab of a dude (or possibly dudette) catching some air, and pretend it's me even though I have never gone that big in my life. Thanks.]
The conditions weren't great - mostly crunchy corduroy with occasional icy patches in the morning followed by tracked-out slush in the afternoon as the day got warmer - but I didn't really care. I was riding agin! Yay! There was hardly anybody there, so there were no lift lines to speak of. I rode the whole morning (about 9 - 12:30) with wrist guards (for falls) and without my iPod (to hear other people), just to be on the safe side. Had lunch (seven dollars for a tuna salad sandwich, eep) and mused over the lift operator (identified by his name tag as Javier from Santiago, Chile - why anyone from Chile would be working a tiny, crappy Eastern US mountain is beyond me) who asked me out of the blue, "Are you Alec's mum?" To which I said, "Uhhhh...no?" He said, "Oh, sorry sorry." And I was like, "No problem." but internally I was going, "Damn. I guess I still look like someone's mom (or mum), even while shredding."
After lunch I got my iPod out of the locker, and prepared to mellow out. One of the main reasons I love snowboarding is that it really forces you to focus on your body and what it's doing. You look down the mountain, you see the hills and the curves of the terrain and you have to simultaneously plan ahead - where to turn, what to avoid, how fast to go - but also to react quickly as things change and don't go exactly according to your plan. It's a very "in the moment" activity, and if I can hit my stride, really start carving and flying and I've got some good music playing...it's beautiful. That nagging voice in my head that's constantly got some yammering commentary finally shuts up for a while. There's no time for it, really, you're just focussing on your legs, your feet, the board, the snow...it's so peaceful. Or it can be.
But then, speaking of plans going awry, my iPod betrayed me. Big time. I hit "Shuffle Songs," which is pretty much my SOP - just give me something random, because everything that's on the iPod I put on there, so it should be good, right? Right. I forget sometimes that the iPod takes EVERYTHING that's on my iTunes when I sync it, no matter if I actually want to listen to the song or it was some random thing I downloaded (like...oh...say...giraffe sounds. Lots of them. Each one or two seconds long. To show Nolan that giraffes actually DO make noises*) eight months ago for some obscure reason. And damn if Binkley (that's my iPod) didn't keep throwing out the WORST possible songs at the worst possible times.
For instance: I'm getting on the lift when the lift operator decides he wants to talk to me about something concerning my lift ticket. I have to take off my headphones to converse with him. What does Binkley serve up? Amy Grant's "Baby Baby." Oh yes. Because, see, I was in charge of games at my stepsister's baby shower, and I made up a game that was basically just "Name That Song" that had 'baby' in the title. So I had to download a bunch of 'baby' songs to burn the CD for the shower. That's the only reason that was on there! I swear! I never once thought nostalgically about my high school boyfriend and his prediliction for singing that to me! Never! But there's no way to explain that to random lift operator boy. Nor would I want to - I'd come off like I have Tourette's, I'm sure.
And then, of course, as soon as I'm on the lift and swinging up over the trees and into my 7-minute ride up the mountain, what comes on? Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," which is still cool despite being used for Carnival Cruise Line commercials**. I want to point the headphones back at the lift operator and crank the volume.
Next ride down the mountain, Binkley goes on a Muppet Show jag, and I get three Muppet-related tracks in a row, the final one being Kermit's nephew Robin singing "I'm Five." Now, I love the Muppet Show, but that's just not one of the better songs - what about "Mahna Mahna," Binkley?
Now, I hear you saying, "What the fuck, Athena? Just change the stupid song if you don't like it!" and I agree with you...except. Except there are bad songs that are just lame and can't even be enjoyed in an ironic this-is-so-horrible-it's-kind-of-good way, and then there are songs that are sort of mediocre and can be tolerated for a brief while. And you have to decide - Is this really that terrible a song that I need to 1) take my glove off, making sure not to drop it off the lift 2) unzip my jacket 3) open my interior pocket and 4) fumble with cold-benumbed fingers to press the scrollwheel and change the song? And then re-fasten all those unfastened items? Or do I just suffer though it and hope that something better comes up next? And I, being a "let's just stick with the status quo unless things get drastic" kind of girl, usually just suffer.
But it was like Binkley was onto me, and kept fucking with me on purpose. Going up by myself on the lift, where I can't actually ride or move or do anything? "Grey Cell Green," by Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Woo-hoo! Righteous! Righteouuuuuus!
Going down the last part of the run to the lift where other people may hear what's leaking out of the headphones? "Bananaphone," by Raffi. Sigh.
But, in the end, Binkley redeemed himself. The lifts closed at 4 (4pm! What kind of a mountain, etc.) and as I got on the lift at 3:50, I knew this would be my last run. So as I skated off at the top and made sure my step-in binding clicked, I asked Binkley to be kind and give me something good for my last run. I start carving, and what comes on? Chaka Khan. "Tell Me Something Good." Sweet. Peace at last.
Oof. I've got more Nolan pictures and more events to relate, but it is 11pm and I started this post at 9:30 this morning. I'm spent.
Thanks for reading.
*It's kind of a snorty/hiccupy kind of noise, in case you're wondering
**Which makes it #2 on my list of "Best (Presumably) Unintentional Heroin References" in commercial product marketing, #1 being UPS's "What can 'Brown' do for you?" campaign.
Monday, March 03, 2008
My friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair
So here's a stupid quesiton:
(Or, at least, I'm assuming it's stupid. It may, in fact, be a wicked smart question, but I'm defaulting to my life-long habit of just presuming everyone else in the entire world to be smarter, cooler, and more competent than me. It saves time.)
What do I have to do to be "safe" with my computer when I go to a public wi-fi spot? Now that we have a babysitter coming on a regular basis (3 days a week, woo-hoo! For a couple hours, anyway.*) I would like to take my laptop to...say...a coffee shop (gasp!) and actually, you know, do stuff on the computer for a while. By myself. In public. With a latte.
What should I be doing so that I don't have some crazy Princeton student/hacker/mad genius stealing all my private info? I have FileVault. Is that enough? Am I safe-ish (from viruses, anyway) because I have a Mac and not a PC? I'm not going to be going crazy with the online shoe-shopping or anything (not in public, that is), but if I wanted to buy a book from Amazon, would it be a very very bad idea to do it on a public wi-fi hookup? Is there some way you can encrypt your transmissions?
I never use my computer in public because I'm so freaked out about not having performed the correct prophylactic procedure on it. I would like to take it out and about more (it is a friggin' laptop, after all), but I don't want to risk getting our identity stolen. Am I just being paranoid? Do all those people typing away in Panera know something I don't? Or are they taking foolish risks?
I need someone to just walk me through it, step by step.
I've tried searching on a couple different online forums for help with this, but most of the discussions are either waaaay over my head (mostly on the Mac users forums), or directed specifically at PC users.
As Nolan would say, "Need help!"
*I have to say, despite her absolute wonderfulness, I have mixed feelings about having Kathy (that's the babysitter's name) here three days a week. Even though it's only 9-12, I somehow feel like I'm cheating by having someone else take care of my child during regular working hours. Nolan is my job right now, right? So how many people have a pinch-hitter at their regular nine-to-five job? (Of course, to be fair to myself, I have to say Nolan is more than a nine-to-five job. I don't get a lunch break. Or vacation. I'm on call 24-7. So I do need some time to do other things, like mail packages and buy groceries.) There. I've just justified myself to myself.
Thanks for reading.
(Or, at least, I'm assuming it's stupid. It may, in fact, be a wicked smart question, but I'm defaulting to my life-long habit of just presuming everyone else in the entire world to be smarter, cooler, and more competent than me. It saves time.)
What do I have to do to be "safe" with my computer when I go to a public wi-fi spot? Now that we have a babysitter coming on a regular basis (3 days a week, woo-hoo! For a couple hours, anyway.*) I would like to take my laptop to...say...a coffee shop (gasp!) and actually, you know, do stuff on the computer for a while. By myself. In public. With a latte.
What should I be doing so that I don't have some crazy Princeton student/hacker/mad genius stealing all my private info? I have FileVault. Is that enough? Am I safe-ish (from viruses, anyway) because I have a Mac and not a PC? I'm not going to be going crazy with the online shoe-shopping or anything (not in public, that is), but if I wanted to buy a book from Amazon, would it be a very very bad idea to do it on a public wi-fi hookup? Is there some way you can encrypt your transmissions?
I never use my computer in public because I'm so freaked out about not having performed the correct prophylactic procedure on it. I would like to take it out and about more (it is a friggin' laptop, after all), but I don't want to risk getting our identity stolen. Am I just being paranoid? Do all those people typing away in Panera know something I don't? Or are they taking foolish risks?
I need someone to just walk me through it, step by step.
I've tried searching on a couple different online forums for help with this, but most of the discussions are either waaaay over my head (mostly on the Mac users forums), or directed specifically at PC users.
As Nolan would say, "Need help!"
*I have to say, despite her absolute wonderfulness, I have mixed feelings about having Kathy (that's the babysitter's name) here three days a week. Even though it's only 9-12, I somehow feel like I'm cheating by having someone else take care of my child during regular working hours. Nolan is my job right now, right? So how many people have a pinch-hitter at their regular nine-to-five job? (Of course, to be fair to myself, I have to say Nolan is more than a nine-to-five job. I don't get a lunch break. Or vacation. I'm on call 24-7. So I do need some time to do other things, like mail packages and buy groceries.) There. I've just justified myself to myself.
Thanks for reading.
Monday, February 25, 2008
At last, my love has come along
Nolan was finally able to consummate his relationship with Jake...
I think Jake probably just got tired of running, poor kitty. Nolan's jazzed, though. All he wants to do is follow Jake around and wait for him to stop so he can pet him. I told Nolan he wasn't allowed to bother Jake when he's eating or using the litter box, but considering how much "privacy" he gives me when I poop, I'm gonna have to keep a close eye.
Yay! Now we gotta work on Lola...
Thanks for reading.
I think Jake probably just got tired of running, poor kitty. Nolan's jazzed, though. All he wants to do is follow Jake around and wait for him to stop so he can pet him. I told Nolan he wasn't allowed to bother Jake when he's eating or using the litter box, but considering how much "privacy" he gives me when I poop, I'm gonna have to keep a close eye.
Yay! Now we gotta work on Lola...
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!
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!
Friday, February 22, 2008
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 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.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner
C'mon, y'all! The Oscars are six days away and I have exactly ONE returned ballot! Get on the stick, people!
Monday, February 11, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
Inspired by this thread on Fark. (WARNING: Don't read the thread unless you are prepared to spend about an hour giving yourself lots of new things to be afraid of and a massive case of the heebie-jeebies.)
Things I am irrationally afraid of:
-Spiders and roaches and silverfish, oh my! Anything with lots of wiggly legs and a tendency toward fast, jerky, unpredictable movement. Mice, fine. Lizards, great. Snakes, cool. I have no problem with any of them. Flying 3-inch roach skittering up the wall in my bathroom? Kill me now. *shudder*
-Those cans of biscuits/pizza dough that you peel the paper off of and they POP open. I hate those! The suspense! The weird, doughy, sploot noise! The worst is when they don't pop even when you've peeled off all the paper and then you have to go find a spoon to "press at seam" to MAKE it pop. *shiver* I usually make someone else do it for me, and even then I have to leave the room or cower in fear with my hands over my ears.
-Injury to my eyes, specifically having a paper cut on my eyeball or having someone (who? who would do this? I don't know, that's why it's irrational) pull out my eyelid and use a hole punch on it. I distinctly remember the first time I thought of this - it was in Mr. Smith's literature class in high school and we were reading 1984. There was the whole thing with Winston's worst fear being having his head stuck into a cage full of rats, and that made me ponder what it would take for me to confess to the government torturer things I hadn't done, and the dark recesses of my brain came up with Hole Punch In The Eyelid. *flaps hands around and whimpers*
-I also, since seeing 28 Days Later, have a horrible fear of being unable to protect my defenseless son from zombies or any other huge natural-disaster type occurrence where humanity's dark side is revealed, people go feral and run amok, and you can't trust anybody. I am seriously thinking about training to use a gun and taking a wilderness survival kind of course in an attempt to allay those fears. This one doesn't strike me as irrational (well, maybe the zombies part) so much as Highly Unlikely But Still Definitely Possible And You Should Cover Your Ass Just To Be On The Safe Side.
Brrrrrrrr. I have to go hug Nolan now.
Thanks for reading.
Things I am irrationally afraid of:
-Spiders and roaches and silverfish, oh my! Anything with lots of wiggly legs and a tendency toward fast, jerky, unpredictable movement. Mice, fine. Lizards, great. Snakes, cool. I have no problem with any of them. Flying 3-inch roach skittering up the wall in my bathroom? Kill me now. *shudder*
-Those cans of biscuits/pizza dough that you peel the paper off of and they POP open. I hate those! The suspense! The weird, doughy, sploot noise! The worst is when they don't pop even when you've peeled off all the paper and then you have to go find a spoon to "press at seam" to MAKE it pop. *shiver* I usually make someone else do it for me, and even then I have to leave the room or cower in fear with my hands over my ears.
-Injury to my eyes, specifically having a paper cut on my eyeball or having someone (who? who would do this? I don't know, that's why it's irrational) pull out my eyelid and use a hole punch on it. I distinctly remember the first time I thought of this - it was in Mr. Smith's literature class in high school and we were reading 1984. There was the whole thing with Winston's worst fear being having his head stuck into a cage full of rats, and that made me ponder what it would take for me to confess to the government torturer things I hadn't done, and the dark recesses of my brain came up with Hole Punch In The Eyelid. *flaps hands around and whimpers*
-I also, since seeing 28 Days Later, have a horrible fear of being unable to protect my defenseless son from zombies or any other huge natural-disaster type occurrence where humanity's dark side is revealed, people go feral and run amok, and you can't trust anybody. I am seriously thinking about training to use a gun and taking a wilderness survival kind of course in an attempt to allay those fears. This one doesn't strike me as irrational (well, maybe the zombies part) so much as Highly Unlikely But Still Definitely Possible And You Should Cover Your Ass Just To Be On The Safe Side.
Brrrrrrrr. I have to go hug Nolan now.
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Got no flowers for your gun
Also, who knows if there will be a ceremony, but in any case, here's the Official 2008 Thptpth Oscar Pool. Vote early! Vote often! Just do your patriotic duty and vote!
Winner gets ... ummm ... winner gets ... I dunno. I'll think of something.
Thanks for reading.
Winner gets ... ummm ... winner gets ... I dunno. I'll think of something.
Thanks for reading.
And I'm right on time, and the girl keeps singing
I am finally back online, after weeks, weeks! without internet. So painful, the internet-less-ness. Nolan would go down for quiet time, and I would think, "A-ha! Now I can...hm. Now I can unpack another box, I guess."
For yea, verily, it is true! We have moved. Again. Finally. For what I now decree shall be the last time in a very, very, very long time. So sayeth I.
And the moving, it was a saga. Perhaps not quite a biblical-length saga, but a saga nonetheless. There were tears, and sickness; there was freezing cold and carbon monoxide; broken possessions and non-working telephones; ugly hotel rooms, pilfering moving men, cranky landlords, you name it. Someday (soon) I will post the unedited version of those events. When I've had a chance to recover.
But in the mean time, I just wanted to say we're back!
Thanks for reading.
For yea, verily, it is true! We have moved. Again. Finally. For what I now decree shall be the last time in a very, very, very long time. So sayeth I.
And the moving, it was a saga. Perhaps not quite a biblical-length saga, but a saga nonetheless. There were tears, and sickness; there was freezing cold and carbon monoxide; broken possessions and non-working telephones; ugly hotel rooms, pilfering moving men, cranky landlords, you name it. Someday (soon) I will post the unedited version of those events. When I've had a chance to recover.
But in the mean time, I just wanted to say we're back!
Thanks for reading.
Monday, January 14, 2008
She blinded me with science
I usually don't give too much credence to those random little factoids you get on some multi-pack foodstuffs these days (e.g., Nolan's instant breakfast oatmeal packets have "Dino-Info" on them, my Splenda packets have stupid little Splenda-focused phrases on them) but at lunch today, on my Snapple lid, I got one that was interesting. (You would think these kinds of things would be manna from heaven for me, Useless Trivia Girl, but I find most of them redundant and boring - "Oh really, Snapple? A panda bear's diet is 99% bamboo? I never would have guessed that, thanks!")
My lid today said, "The motto on the first U.S. penny was 'Mind Your Own Business.'" This seemed just bizarre enough to be true, and I deemed it worthy of investigation. Of course, "investigation" in today's modern world (speaking of redundant, Caroline - "today's modern world?" Jeesh.) mostly consists of Google and Wikipedia, and sure enough, there it is.
Of course, Snapple got a couple little facets of their trivia wrong - namely, the United States Mint has never produced a "penny." The official name for the one-cent coin is "cent." And the actual motto on the coin was "Mind Your Business," which is a little more open for interpretation than "Mind Your Own Business."
But still. How often do you pick up a Jeopardy-worthy tidbit from a Snapple lid?
I also like noting the fact that "In God We Trust" was not made the official national motto until 1956 - take that, fundamentalist Christian blowhards!
Thanks for reading.
My lid today said, "The motto on the first U.S. penny was 'Mind Your Own Business.'" This seemed just bizarre enough to be true, and I deemed it worthy of investigation. Of course, "investigation" in today's modern world (speaking of redundant, Caroline - "today's modern world?" Jeesh.) mostly consists of Google and Wikipedia, and sure enough, there it is.
Of course, Snapple got a couple little facets of their trivia wrong - namely, the United States Mint has never produced a "penny." The official name for the one-cent coin is "cent." And the actual motto on the coin was "Mind Your Business," which is a little more open for interpretation than "Mind Your Own Business."
But still. How often do you pick up a Jeopardy-worthy tidbit from a Snapple lid?
I also like noting the fact that "In God We Trust" was not made the official national motto until 1956 - take that, fundamentalist Christian blowhards!
Thanks for reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)