I've been slightly obsessed with him for a couple of weeks or so. I read one of his stories, "The Distance of the Moon," in my writing class, and it was bizarre and wonderful -- a bunch of people in some no-time and no-place, back in the days when the moon was closer to the earth, climb on it and collect moon-milk...it starts at one point and just spins wilder and wilder. It's kind of magical realism-ish, but it's not even "real" enough to be magical realism. It's like a fairy tale. For some reason I was thinking of it the other day, and I was at the bookstore and I bought the book it comes from, Cosmicomics.
Man, it is GREAT. WEIRD, but great. And "The Distance of the Moon" is definitely the LEAST far-out of the stories. Basically some old guy, or "guy" -- his name is Qfxfq -- narrates all these stories about the old days, and they all have to do with space and evolution and the origins of the universe and such. In one, he and everyone he knows are compressed into a single point at the beginning of the universe, and all on top of each other. In another one, they're evolving from sea creatures to land creatures and the narrator is embarrassed to have an old uncle who won't come out of the sea and be modern. In another one, he and some lady and some guy are falling infinitely through space, and he dreams about being able to change the shape of space so he can mack on the lady. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? And in the one I'm reading now (I'm almost done with the book), he's looking through his telescope one day and he sees a sign on a distant galaxy that says "I SAW YOU." Because the galaxy is 100 million light years away or some such, he thinks back to what he did 200 million years ago, which apparently was something embarrassing. Now he's trying to figure out what to put on his own sign to send back that will strike the right note of posturing but not incriminate him. I LOVE THIS BOOK.
So, I was at the Coop today because I decided to buy it again, for my dad. And I was thinking that these are probably the only two copies of this book that have sold in the last ten years or something. And I got to the checkout and the guy was like, "Hey, Italo Calvino, he's great!" And I got all giggly and we bonded over his awesomeness. Apparently there is a SEQUEL (of sorts) to the Cosmicomics stories. So I'll be checking that out. But it just kind of made my day to be able to talk about Italo Calvino to some random Coop guy.
In other book news, P.D. James has a new book out, which I also bought for my dad. She is a like 900-year-old (OK, she's 88) British mystery writer that I adore. Once I saw her speak in Brookline and she was so great -- she's just this proper little British lady with a dry sense of humor. It's morbid, but I keep worrying that each book will be her last, and when she comes out with a new one I'm always relieved. I hope this one isn't her last either. Live forever, P.D.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
It feels like spring today
Which is sad, because it isn't spring, at all; in fact winter's barely begun (and we had an ice storm last week that knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people in the region). But it sure is nice out today -- not just warm, but somehow damp and breezy in a way that makes me FEEL like it's spring. So it's nice to have that, just for something different.
I remember once, after I was laid off from my old job with a magazine publisher -- which happened in January -- I went one day several months later to the Dunkin' Donuts near my old office to get some bagels. It was late fall but it was a day like this, only more so -- quite warm and VERY damp and breezy, almost tropical. I was getting in my car and I had this CRAZY wave of disorientation where I couldn't remember where I was, time-wise. I sort of felt like I was back at my old job, because I was at a place I used to go to all the time when I worked there and hadn't been to since, and the weather was so unseasonal that the usual grounding context of that was gone. I thought for a minute that I had to get back to work. It only lasted a second, but it was quite a weird feeling.
I wouldn't mind if winter only lasted a month. Truly, I wouldn't. Summer, too, at least the really hot part of the summer. Five months of fall, five months of spring. That sounds about right.
I don't really have much to say; I'm just trying to post when I have the impulse. I watched The Boys of Baraka this weekend and found it frustrating. There's a school in Kenya for at-risk Baltimore middle-school boys, and it's about that. The kids were charming and sweet, but the school is totally run by white Americans and there doesn't seem to be much interaction with the local people, so what is the point of having it in Kenya? It seemed like a pretty good program, but the point seemed to be to get them out into wilderness, not into Africa necessarily. They saw giraffes, etc., but if there was ANY interaction at all with Kenyans, the movie didn't show it. Also, the school was closed (due to political upheaval) halfway through the boys' two-year term there, and it was sad and left me feeling down about the whole thing -- not the movie's fault, certainly, but it made me depressed over the situation, and angry at nobody. So much to fix, and so few resources to fix it. But I wanted to say, "You know where there's a lot less political upheaval? Canada. And it's cheaper to get to. And they also have wilderness."
There might be a lot about the school I don't know -- I haven't Googled, and the movie doesn't say a lot about it except in the context of the boys' POV. Just wanted to mention that.
Also, poor Baltimore -- I feel like the only positive Baltimore-y thing out there right now is Ace of Cakes. It looked pretty much like a hellhole in this movie.
Then I watched the extras -- there was an illuminating six-minute rant from Bill Cosby, who seems to agree with me that the Africa bit of the equation isn't strictly necessary as long as you, and I quote, "put a BODY on them" -- that is, keep on them about the stuff they need to do -- and the commentary for the entire thing. I didn't really mean to, but I did. I wasn't quite ready to leave it yet.
Pretty cool, BTW, that this Kenyan name that they had for the school (it means "blessing," if my mainlining of news magazines of late is any indication) is now the name of the President of the United States. What a lovely thing that is, eh?
In unrelated news, it smells like dead mouse in my office. I can't find it anywhere, and I keep hoping I'm imagining it, but I keep smelling it. Eeeugh.
I remember once, after I was laid off from my old job with a magazine publisher -- which happened in January -- I went one day several months later to the Dunkin' Donuts near my old office to get some bagels. It was late fall but it was a day like this, only more so -- quite warm and VERY damp and breezy, almost tropical. I was getting in my car and I had this CRAZY wave of disorientation where I couldn't remember where I was, time-wise. I sort of felt like I was back at my old job, because I was at a place I used to go to all the time when I worked there and hadn't been to since, and the weather was so unseasonal that the usual grounding context of that was gone. I thought for a minute that I had to get back to work. It only lasted a second, but it was quite a weird feeling.
I wouldn't mind if winter only lasted a month. Truly, I wouldn't. Summer, too, at least the really hot part of the summer. Five months of fall, five months of spring. That sounds about right.
I don't really have much to say; I'm just trying to post when I have the impulse. I watched The Boys of Baraka this weekend and found it frustrating. There's a school in Kenya for at-risk Baltimore middle-school boys, and it's about that. The kids were charming and sweet, but the school is totally run by white Americans and there doesn't seem to be much interaction with the local people, so what is the point of having it in Kenya? It seemed like a pretty good program, but the point seemed to be to get them out into wilderness, not into Africa necessarily. They saw giraffes, etc., but if there was ANY interaction at all with Kenyans, the movie didn't show it. Also, the school was closed (due to political upheaval) halfway through the boys' two-year term there, and it was sad and left me feeling down about the whole thing -- not the movie's fault, certainly, but it made me depressed over the situation, and angry at nobody. So much to fix, and so few resources to fix it. But I wanted to say, "You know where there's a lot less political upheaval? Canada. And it's cheaper to get to. And they also have wilderness."
There might be a lot about the school I don't know -- I haven't Googled, and the movie doesn't say a lot about it except in the context of the boys' POV. Just wanted to mention that.
Also, poor Baltimore -- I feel like the only positive Baltimore-y thing out there right now is Ace of Cakes. It looked pretty much like a hellhole in this movie.
Then I watched the extras -- there was an illuminating six-minute rant from Bill Cosby, who seems to agree with me that the Africa bit of the equation isn't strictly necessary as long as you, and I quote, "put a BODY on them" -- that is, keep on them about the stuff they need to do -- and the commentary for the entire thing. I didn't really mean to, but I did. I wasn't quite ready to leave it yet.
Pretty cool, BTW, that this Kenyan name that they had for the school (it means "blessing," if my mainlining of news magazines of late is any indication) is now the name of the President of the United States. What a lovely thing that is, eh?
In unrelated news, it smells like dead mouse in my office. I can't find it anywhere, and I keep hoping I'm imagining it, but I keep smelling it. Eeeugh.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Think again
Sigh -- I haven't posted in forever again. I didn't even post about the election. Part of that is that I have nothing more to say about the election, because I was so frigging relieved and overjoyed and I celebrated and wanted to hug everybody I saw on the street and basically walked around all disbelieving and blissed out for a few days, but everybody and their hamster has been posting about the election and I haven't had anything more to add, really. Thank God, is what I would like to add, and that's about it. Except for Prop 8 and its ilk, which can bite my heterosexual ass, and that's another story, but that's for another time.
ANYWAY. Couldn't resist posting this: it's my old pal Boston.com.
WHERE did you get the idea that roads, skies will be less crowded over Thanksgiving? THINK AGAIN, PAL!
Happy ThanksG, everybody. And my oh my, am I thankful this year.
P.S. Spoiler alert: I'm up to late October in Newsweek and The New Yorker, and they are starting to be fairly confident that Obama is going to take this thing.
ANYWAY. Couldn't resist posting this: it's my old pal Boston.com.
WHERE did you get the idea that roads, skies will be less crowded over Thanksgiving? THINK AGAIN, PAL!
Happy ThanksG, everybody. And my oh my, am I thankful this year.
P.S. Spoiler alert: I'm up to late October in Newsweek and The New Yorker, and they are starting to be fairly confident that Obama is going to take this thing.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dear MBTA
(Man, this blog is like, 95 percent bitching. Hee. Sorry. I swear to God, I don't walk around in a constant state of grumpiness all the time.)
So this morning I got up as usual, and went out to the bus at the usual time. Guess who was there? My sister. This is unusual because my sister (who lives with me, if I hadn't mentioned that) has a half-hour ride to her work from Harvard, and therefore leaves a half hour earlier than I do. She was still at the bus stop. So were about 15 other people. My sister said that a total of four full buses had gone by without stopping while she'd been standing there, and that there had been a period of about 30 minutes during which zero buses went by (they're supposed to come about every five minutes at that time of day). Luckily, the fifth time was the charm (only the second one for me), and we got on a (very full) bus. I got to work close to on time, but she was something like 45 minutes late. She called the T to register a complaint (she's great like that -- I just complain on my blog), saying she'd been waiting 5o minutes for a bus (T lady: "Fifteen?" My sister "Five-zero." T lady: "FIFTY!?" My sister: "Yes."). She was told that there had been a breakdown and that this had contributed to the delay. So, OK, but it's still pretty irritating because it isn't as if this is an isolated incident: like, a delicate peony can fall in the path of an MBTA bus and it will screw up the schedule for the rest of rush hour. Know what causes slowdowns, without fail? Snow. It doesn't have to be a blizzard or anything -- just a moderate gentle snowfall generally sends the T into havoc. It's New England, BTW -- it snows a lot here. You know what else almost always causes at least a bit of a slowdown? Rain. YES, RAIN. RAIN FALLING FROM THE SKY MAKES THE BUSES SLOWER. Siiiiiiiigh.
So, anyway. Annoying, but whatever. This evening I get to the T station and there are like, fifty bazillion people waiting for the bus. This is also a common sight. I sigh and lean against the wall and take out my New Yorker. Several other buses go by, including at least two 78s. Again, I'm used to it -- it's annoying, but I pay $20 a month to commute (thank you, Harvard, for the generous subsidy) and it is what it is. It's the bus.
BUT THEN. While I'm standing there, my foot hurting, holding my bag and my gym bag and my coat and my scarf, constantly pulling my magazine closer to me so people can get by, the PA comes on. If this were a normal city, you might think that we'd hear someone announce that there had been a bus delay, or that the bus was coming, or that they were sorry for the inconvenience but to hang in there, or whatever. No. Know what it is? It's the voice of Dan Grabauskas, general manager, and it's their new thing where they tell everybody that if they're smoking on the T, it's not only breaking the law, but it's rude to their fellow passengers.
Five minutes later, when I'm still waiting and the crowd has gotten even bigger, the PA comes on again. This time it's Dan Grabauskas explaining the T's terrorism prevention policy, which can be summed up by their catchphrase: "See Something, Say Something." In other words, their terrorism prevention policy is basically: If you see a terrorist, tell somebody. In other other words, their terrorist prevention policy is to do nothing and to tell the passengers to keep an eye out for terrorists.
Guys, it's about tone. Tone-deafness, to be precise. Yes, it's annoying when people smoke in the T, theoretically at least, since I don't think I've actually ever experienced this. Yes, it's certainly great for people to be alert for suspicious activities, and it's nice to be reassured that if we see something suspicious and tell a bus driver we won't be screamed at and/or ignored, even though this is probably not true. I certainly agree that riders and baby strollers need to share space on the bus, and I don't in principle object to a reminder of this.
But it's when someone you know waited 50 minutes for a bus this morning, and now you're standing waiting in a huge crowd, and you know you're going to have to shove your way awkwardly to the front with all your crap when it gets to your stop, because the way the Harvard tunnel is built people can't enter by the driver's-side door, so they have to pay when they get off, so they can't exit the rear door when going outbound (despite the frequent PA announcements reminding people to exit via the rear door) (and the way the drivers deal with this, BTW, is by just ignoring people who yell "rear door" in increasingly frantic voices and waiting for passengers to take pity on the person and explain that they have to pay on the way out -- and also by yelling "SIR! YOU GOTTA PAY!" or "HEY! YOU GONNA PAY?" in a sarcastic voice at anyone who tries to go out the front door without paying, since it's a completely counterintuitive rule that's not stated anywhere that I'm aware of) -- and a reassuring voice of authority comes on, but instead of providing any kind of customer service or saying anything to mitigate your frustration, THEY TELL YOU TO NOT TO BE SUCH AN ASSHOLE BY SMOKING, WHICH YOU ARE NOT DOING, AND NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE. Then they tell that you'd better look out for terrorists, and if you don't stay vigilant and the bus gets blown up, it's your fault for being unobservant. I MEAN, COME ON. Just come on.
You know why everybody hates the T? It's not because of rude passengers or smokers or people not giving up their seats for pregnant people or people crowding by the door (which does happen and is, undeniably, annoying). It's because the T is always late, because the bus drivers are surly about 80 percent of the time, and because nobody at the T gives a shit. They will never admit any fault; if people complain they just complain back about how they have no money (which is true). It recently came out that they had literally NOT BEEN RUNNING BUSES at certain times, to save money. Like, a bus would be scheduled, and they would just not run it. Without telling anybody.
On the Fourth of July, we went to Kendall, about two miles away from Harvard Square, to see the fireworks -- about 500,000 people descend on Boston for this event -- walked back to Harvard Square, and waited about 40 minutes for a bus that finally showed up and opened its doors IN THE WRONG SPOT, so the people who had been waiting at the front of the line (for the longest amount of time -- that would be yours truly, who had just missed the previous one) were not able to get on, because the back of the crowd was closer to the doors and got on first. Did they add extra buses for this once-a-year event that was guaranteed to generate many times the amount of normal traffic after it ended? No, no they did not -- in fact, they SUBTRACTED buses, because on holidays they run on a Sunday schedule. So another bus was not scheduled for another 30 minutes. (I lost it at this point and made us go upstairs and take a cab. So it came to pass that, because I had been standing up for three hours, then walking for two miles, then standing up waiting for the bus for another 40 minutes, and I was not going to stand there for another however long, and I sure as hell was not going to walk home, I paid $14 to go the two miles from Harvard to my house. And it was worth it.)
It's this kind of stuff that makes everyone hate the T. They have zero, ZERO concept of public relations, and when everyone's pissed off and grumpy, coming on and saying "HEY GUYS, QUIT BEING SUCH ASSHOLES, YOU'RE MAKING THE RIDE UNPLEASANT!!" is not the way to defuse things.
I wasn't even mad about the late bus tonight until Grabauskas started with the goddamn "if you smoke, you are BREAKING THE LAW" lecturing. T, if you can't say anything useful, then just please shut the hell up.
This isn't even mentioning the time I was on the 66 and it caught fire. Sigh.
So this morning I got up as usual, and went out to the bus at the usual time. Guess who was there? My sister. This is unusual because my sister (who lives with me, if I hadn't mentioned that) has a half-hour ride to her work from Harvard, and therefore leaves a half hour earlier than I do. She was still at the bus stop. So were about 15 other people. My sister said that a total of four full buses had gone by without stopping while she'd been standing there, and that there had been a period of about 30 minutes during which zero buses went by (they're supposed to come about every five minutes at that time of day). Luckily, the fifth time was the charm (only the second one for me), and we got on a (very full) bus. I got to work close to on time, but she was something like 45 minutes late. She called the T to register a complaint (she's great like that -- I just complain on my blog), saying she'd been waiting 5o minutes for a bus (T lady: "Fifteen?" My sister "Five-zero." T lady: "FIFTY!?" My sister: "Yes."). She was told that there had been a breakdown and that this had contributed to the delay. So, OK, but it's still pretty irritating because it isn't as if this is an isolated incident: like, a delicate peony can fall in the path of an MBTA bus and it will screw up the schedule for the rest of rush hour. Know what causes slowdowns, without fail? Snow. It doesn't have to be a blizzard or anything -- just a moderate gentle snowfall generally sends the T into havoc. It's New England, BTW -- it snows a lot here. You know what else almost always causes at least a bit of a slowdown? Rain. YES, RAIN. RAIN FALLING FROM THE SKY MAKES THE BUSES SLOWER. Siiiiiiiigh.
So, anyway. Annoying, but whatever. This evening I get to the T station and there are like, fifty bazillion people waiting for the bus. This is also a common sight. I sigh and lean against the wall and take out my New Yorker. Several other buses go by, including at least two 78s. Again, I'm used to it -- it's annoying, but I pay $20 a month to commute (thank you, Harvard, for the generous subsidy) and it is what it is. It's the bus.
BUT THEN. While I'm standing there, my foot hurting, holding my bag and my gym bag and my coat and my scarf, constantly pulling my magazine closer to me so people can get by, the PA comes on. If this were a normal city, you might think that we'd hear someone announce that there had been a bus delay, or that the bus was coming, or that they were sorry for the inconvenience but to hang in there, or whatever. No. Know what it is? It's the voice of Dan Grabauskas, general manager, and it's their new thing where they tell everybody that if they're smoking on the T, it's not only breaking the law, but it's rude to their fellow passengers.
Five minutes later, when I'm still waiting and the crowd has gotten even bigger, the PA comes on again. This time it's Dan Grabauskas explaining the T's terrorism prevention policy, which can be summed up by their catchphrase: "See Something, Say Something." In other words, their terrorism prevention policy is basically: If you see a terrorist, tell somebody. In other other words, their terrorist prevention policy is to do nothing and to tell the passengers to keep an eye out for terrorists.
Guys, it's about tone. Tone-deafness, to be precise. Yes, it's annoying when people smoke in the T, theoretically at least, since I don't think I've actually ever experienced this. Yes, it's certainly great for people to be alert for suspicious activities, and it's nice to be reassured that if we see something suspicious and tell a bus driver we won't be screamed at and/or ignored, even though this is probably not true. I certainly agree that riders and baby strollers need to share space on the bus, and I don't in principle object to a reminder of this.
But it's when someone you know waited 50 minutes for a bus this morning, and now you're standing waiting in a huge crowd, and you know you're going to have to shove your way awkwardly to the front with all your crap when it gets to your stop, because the way the Harvard tunnel is built people can't enter by the driver's-side door, so they have to pay when they get off, so they can't exit the rear door when going outbound (despite the frequent PA announcements reminding people to exit via the rear door) (and the way the drivers deal with this, BTW, is by just ignoring people who yell "rear door" in increasingly frantic voices and waiting for passengers to take pity on the person and explain that they have to pay on the way out -- and also by yelling "SIR! YOU GOTTA PAY!" or "HEY! YOU GONNA PAY?" in a sarcastic voice at anyone who tries to go out the front door without paying, since it's a completely counterintuitive rule that's not stated anywhere that I'm aware of) -- and a reassuring voice of authority comes on, but instead of providing any kind of customer service or saying anything to mitigate your frustration, THEY TELL YOU TO NOT TO BE SUCH AN ASSHOLE BY SMOKING, WHICH YOU ARE NOT DOING, AND NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE. Then they tell that you'd better look out for terrorists, and if you don't stay vigilant and the bus gets blown up, it's your fault for being unobservant. I MEAN, COME ON. Just come on.
You know why everybody hates the T? It's not because of rude passengers or smokers or people not giving up their seats for pregnant people or people crowding by the door (which does happen and is, undeniably, annoying). It's because the T is always late, because the bus drivers are surly about 80 percent of the time, and because nobody at the T gives a shit. They will never admit any fault; if people complain they just complain back about how they have no money (which is true). It recently came out that they had literally NOT BEEN RUNNING BUSES at certain times, to save money. Like, a bus would be scheduled, and they would just not run it. Without telling anybody.
On the Fourth of July, we went to Kendall, about two miles away from Harvard Square, to see the fireworks -- about 500,000 people descend on Boston for this event -- walked back to Harvard Square, and waited about 40 minutes for a bus that finally showed up and opened its doors IN THE WRONG SPOT, so the people who had been waiting at the front of the line (for the longest amount of time -- that would be yours truly, who had just missed the previous one) were not able to get on, because the back of the crowd was closer to the doors and got on first. Did they add extra buses for this once-a-year event that was guaranteed to generate many times the amount of normal traffic after it ended? No, no they did not -- in fact, they SUBTRACTED buses, because on holidays they run on a Sunday schedule. So another bus was not scheduled for another 30 minutes. (I lost it at this point and made us go upstairs and take a cab. So it came to pass that, because I had been standing up for three hours, then walking for two miles, then standing up waiting for the bus for another 40 minutes, and I was not going to stand there for another however long, and I sure as hell was not going to walk home, I paid $14 to go the two miles from Harvard to my house. And it was worth it.)
It's this kind of stuff that makes everyone hate the T. They have zero, ZERO concept of public relations, and when everyone's pissed off and grumpy, coming on and saying "HEY GUYS, QUIT BEING SUCH ASSHOLES, YOU'RE MAKING THE RIDE UNPLEASANT!!" is not the way to defuse things.
I wasn't even mad about the late bus tonight until Grabauskas started with the goddamn "if you smoke, you are BREAKING THE LAW" lecturing. T, if you can't say anything useful, then just please shut the hell up.
This isn't even mentioning the time I was on the 66 and it caught fire. Sigh.
Shape of the Moon
I like to joke that my Netflix queue is dominated by three categories: Foreign, Documentary, and Foreign Documentary. (Though lately it's Foreign, Documentary, Foreign Documentary, and Law and Order: SVU. Man, I love that stupid, stupid show.) This weekend I was blessed with the elusive Foreign Documentary. I watched Shape of the Moon, a documentary about a family living in Indonesia. And...it kind of sucked.
(Keep in mind, by the way, that I have not been to film school and am not qualified to analyze a film in any kind of legitimate way. These are just my impressions, and my context is other movies I've watched and that's about it. So I don't know what I'm talking about, is what I'm saying. This movie was apparently at Sundance and won festival awards and stuff, so, make of that what you will.)
Thinking a movie like this sucks doesn't happen to me very often. Immerse me in any kind of world I'm not familiar with and I'm usually happy. This is why I like documentaries (immerse me in the world of inner-city high-school basketball, or the world of corrupt high finance, or the world of trying to make a movie of Don Quixote), and foreign films (immerse me in a story that takes place in rural China, or Iran, or among Inuits in Nunavut), and John McPhee articles (barges, coal trains, chalk caves).
Foreign documentary features two of these things: a group of people engaged in activities I'm not familiar with, set in a place I'm not familiar with. Usually this is a prescription for a movie that stays with me for a long time. Children Underground was indelible and horrible, Promises was heartbreaking, Born into Brothels was fascinating (and very reminiscent of Salaam Bombay! -- not actually a documentary, but filmed on location in Bombay slums with Bombay street kids as the actors and shot by a director, Mira Nair, who up until that point was mainly a documentary filmmaker -- watch that movie if you liked Born into Brothels, and watch the extras too, because the story of filming the movie is half the movie as far as I'm concerned). (And I just realized all those movies focused in kids, so...huh.) So I was pretty psyched to settle down with this one.
And about 20 minutes in I realized I was...bored. And I realized why, more or less. This movie is basically unadorned video of a family in Indonesia hanging around and going about their business, interspersed with artsy-ish camera angles. There's no narration, and no talking heads, and no explanatory material of any kind. There are subtitles, and apart from that you might well be watching someone's home videos.
And not much...happens. I am normally the LAST person to complain about movie in which nothing happens. See Totoro. And I get annoyed on reality shows when they whip up some "drama" that gets in the way of actually watching them design an outfit or *cough* model or whatever they're doing on whatever stupid reality show I'm watching. I'm always psyched when the "villain" finally gets voted off because maybe we can have some damn peace and quiet around here without all the shenanigans -- and then I'm always surprised and annoyed when another "villain" emerges. I hate shenanigans, I hate action, I like talking and slowness and meandering-ness and ponderous shots of a leaf floating on a lake or something.
But, seriously, nothing happens in this movie. Well, stuff happens, but not very much of it, and although I'm sure it's meaningful to the people experiencing it it's not framed in a very meaningful way. There's the grandmother, who is raising her young granddaughter, and she has two sons (the granddaughter's mother died -- it's not mentioned when or how), and they live in Jakarta. The family is Christian, which is sort of meant to be the thrust of the movie because the majority of people around them are Muslim. So you see the grandmother praying with her granddaughter, and one of the sons complaining about having to confess his sins to his elders, which is...apparently a Muslim thing. The grandmother is thinking about moving back to her native village. She bought a couch with money borrowed from a money-lending woman, who hits her up for payments while creepily smiling and eventually repossesses the couch. There is a fire at one point in the village, and everybody helps to put it out. About midway through the movie, one of the sons is revealed to have a Muslim girlfriend, whom he wants to marry, so he converts to Islam and marries her (and then we never see her again -- which is OK because we'd only briefly seen her once before). At the end they go visit the grandmother's native village and she decides to stay and she does. The granddaughter is sad. The end.
It's not only that nothing happens. I could be very happy watching a movie about the quiet dramas of people's lives. But...this movie is structured so weirdly. I think it's trying to be avant-garde, halfheartedly and intermittently, but it doesn't go anywhere. The opening shot is of a small bright shape turning around and getting closer and closer. When it gets close enough we see that it's the opening of a railroad tunnel, and we're in a train coming out of the tunnel. Except, the tunnel could not have been spinning around really, unless the train is a roller coaster, which it isn't, so having it spin and then resolve into a train tunnel just seems...pointlessly artsy. There are a lot of KA-RAAAAZY shots, like under a drum (that I think at one point is juxtaposed with the railroad tunnel), and then out from inside the drum and slowly up the drummer's body to his face. But like...an Indonesian guy is banging a drum, and some Dutch guy with a camera is crawling under there, filming inside the drum, and then pulling out and moving the camera to the guy's tummy for like five minutes, and then up to his face, and the guy never looks at the camera or stops what he's doing. This is (a) not that visually exciting (it looks like...a camera inside a drum), (b) kind of needy as far as lingering on everything forever and being like "LOOK AT MY COOL SHOT WITH THE DRUM AND LOOK AT THIS DUDE'S TUMMY, IT IS LIKE SO BIG AND STUFF AND IT TOTALLY MOVES IN RHYTHM TO THE DRUM-BEATING, OH INDONESIA AND YOUR CULTURE, YOU ARE JUST SO EXOTIC," and (c) clearly staged, because this unsullied innocent Indonesian guy WOULD be looking at the camera if he hadn't been specifically told not to, especially when it's INSIDE HIS DRUM and then in his face. So it's very self-conscious.
And there is a LOT of that in this movie, and it gets tiring. There's one shot of old women chewing leaves that goes on forever. There's a CRAZY bit where a guy is walking along a railroad bridge -- which is shown from far-off shots and is GORGEOUS with scenery and immenseness and all that -- and it looks like the camera guy must be hanging off the edge to get the shot. It's terrifying because the guy is just walking barefoot on the very edge of this bridge with a big shirt flopping around and the wind blowing and I'm scared of heights so I could barely watch it (and I've seen Stand By Me so I know what happens when you walk on a railroad bridge). And they kept intercutting it with shots of a train coming. Suspense building! And then they abandon that. Same track? Same day? No idea. Not that I was all "YEAH, THIS DUDE IS TOTALLY GONNA GET HIT BY A TRAIN, WOOOO," but it just -- ends, and doesn't seem to relate to anything else in the movie.
And my least favorite thing of this sort was: There's a fire, as I mentioned, and one of the sons is in with the rest of the neighborhood trying to put it out. It's hard to tell what the result is because I don't know what the building looked like before the fire, and they don't really show how it looks after, and they don't show the end of the fire being put out or if it just burned itself out or what, and they don't explain what the building is or how the fire started or anything else because THEY DON'T EXPLAIN ANYTHING IN THIS MOVIE. So later in the movie, the son is sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and the camera guy must be literally climbing on his mattress to get the camera to spin around him (again making me suspicious that it was staged because he doesn't wake up), and THEY FADE INTO A FLASHBACK OF THE FIRE. As if he's dreaming about the fire. COME ON, PEOPLE. It's like this movie vacillates between verité and gritty realism (so gritty and real that they don't feel it necessary to provide any context), and some kind of America's Next Top Model-esque cutesy story-editing.
And even without the flashback, the camera at awkward angles all around the guy's mattress is like the drum and (to a lesser extent) the bridge, because -- all I can think is "How are they getting this shot?", but not in an admiring way so much as a "What in the hell are they doing with the camera, and why are they bothering?" way. It must have been hard to get that shot, but -- who cares? I guess? Because it's kind of pointless. All I can see is the strain and effort of it. Some guy with a camera is climbing all over this guy's mattress and...that's about it. Whaddya want, a medal? (heh)
Despite the camera gymnastics, visually this movie is (to my untrained eyes) nothing special either. A lot of it is on video and it just looks like...video. The rural scenes are sort of flat, and the urban scenes are just...video-y, and though there are dutiful shots of rooftops and of cats walking down the street (one cat had poop hanging off its fur, which was one of the more indelible images of the movie for me, partly because my cat and I recently went through a situation to which I was able to relate this shot, ahem), you don't get a SENSE of Jakarta, or of the inside of the house, or anything. I got more of a sense of Delhi in Monsoon Wedding, and that took place mainly at an upper-middle-class family's home and barely showed the rest of Delhi. There's stuff on the walls, there's food being prepared, and it's hard to really get a sense of any of it. This is an exotic location, and it's interesting to watch for that reason. But the movie basically says "We're filming in Jakarta" and doesn't go beyond that.
I get that this movie didn't want to be a traditional documentary. But I feel like documentaries are structured the way they are for a reason, and if you're going to eschew conventions you're going to have to make up for them in other ways. Errol Morris doesn't do voiceover narration (at least in the Fred Leuchter documentary he didn't), and I found that a little hard to get used to, but he does COPIOUS talking heads -- in fact, his documentaries basically ARE talking heads plus archival footage and photos. So the filmmaker is not literally explaining what's going on, but he's showing you and allowing his subjects to explain.
This movie had no talking heads and no narration, and is full of things I didn't understand but would like to have understood. What are the leaves the women were chewing? Why do they do it? Where does Tari go to school -- is it a Christian school? Is there one nearby? Does she go to a Muslim school? How does everyone feel about that? How do they treat her? After the fire the mosque PA system broadcasts a request that the neighborhood women cook for the people displaced by the fire (how many people, for how long, displaced where -- no clue), and it shows the family cooking -- are they cooking for the fire victims as the mosque asked, even though they're Christian? Do they resent that the mosque is the one to do social organizing like that? When the village moves the house of the grandmother's family to a new foundation, why do they do that? They move it quite a distance -- what for? Was the location change for a reason? How do they make the new foundation? Does it cost money? How many people live in the house? What are their names? What relation are they to Rumidja (the grandmother)? Later Rumidja and her friend look for work in the fields and can't find any. What will they do if they can't find work? Will they not be able to eat? What are the socioeconomic reasons behind their not being able to find work? Is it because they're old? What does the family do for money in Jakarta, for that matter? Nobody is shown working.
And there's the whole matter of the son converting to Islam, which leads to one of the most bizarre scenes in the movie. He's buddying around with somebody (after converting), who asks if he's been circumcised. He says yes, and offers to prove it, and shows part of a penis-looking thing sticking out of his pants, which then turns out to be a fake penis. Or like a couple inches of one. They laugh and toss it around. What. The. Hell? Why do they have a fake circumcised penis? Is it really a root vegetable or something? Is the circumcision issue so important that these things are around to fake out the imams? You don't see it very clearly, and I can't tell what it's made of or what in the fuck is going on, in general. Is circumcision, in fact, a thing you do if you're Muslim? I didn't even know that, and maybe I'm ignorant but...I'm really not, and I don't think knowing Muslims are circumcised is something you can necessarily assume of your audience. Basically, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE. You get surface glimpses of it, but you never know what the subjects are thinking, because nobody ever asks them; they don't often change facial expression, which may be because cameras are on them all the time; and you don't have any kind of context for any of it because the movie doesn't give you any.
I find a certain kind of fun in trying to decipher clues and put things together and develop a picture of what's going on. I don't mind when a movie doesn't explain stuff to me right away. But this movie...never does. It felt unfinished, unedited even. I didn't get a good sense of the people, who remained remote and inaccessible throughout. I didn't get a good sense of either of the primary locations. I didn't get a good sense of the country or the culture -- I got snippets, with the Muslim/Christian thing, but snippets is all it was. I left this movie unsatisfied and feeling almost rejected, as if the movie and its subjects were impatient with me and didn't really want me around anyway.
I wonder on reflection if the point of the movie was that, in a living situation like the kind they had, there is no time for reflection or deeper meaning or anything other than matter-of-fact getting on with things -- the people go about their lives and take things at surface value and don't have the luxury of digging deeper. There's a fire, there's no work in the fields, your kid converts to Islam, you buy a couch and then lose it again, the call to prayer goes off seventy bazillion times, there are trains and people getting on them and walking on railroad bridges near them, and you just go on living your life day in and day out, and it can be a grind, but it's your life. So, what's up, Western viewers, what you see is what you get and we're not going to sit down and spell it out for you -- it's our life and it is what it is. But if that was what they were going for, it seems a long way to slog through a not particularly illuminating movie to get to that revelation.
Next up I had The Bear, which is...about a bear, but I didn't feel like it so I moved up My Neighbors The Yamadas, which is made by Isao Takahata, a pal and colleague of Miyazaki's. He also made Grave of the Fireflies, which was unbelievably depressing, but this one is a comedy and I've been wanting to see it for a while and, frankly, I need something to clear the palate.
(Keep in mind, by the way, that I have not been to film school and am not qualified to analyze a film in any kind of legitimate way. These are just my impressions, and my context is other movies I've watched and that's about it. So I don't know what I'm talking about, is what I'm saying. This movie was apparently at Sundance and won festival awards and stuff, so, make of that what you will.)
Thinking a movie like this sucks doesn't happen to me very often. Immerse me in any kind of world I'm not familiar with and I'm usually happy. This is why I like documentaries (immerse me in the world of inner-city high-school basketball, or the world of corrupt high finance, or the world of trying to make a movie of Don Quixote), and foreign films (immerse me in a story that takes place in rural China, or Iran, or among Inuits in Nunavut), and John McPhee articles (barges, coal trains, chalk caves).
Foreign documentary features two of these things: a group of people engaged in activities I'm not familiar with, set in a place I'm not familiar with. Usually this is a prescription for a movie that stays with me for a long time. Children Underground was indelible and horrible, Promises was heartbreaking, Born into Brothels was fascinating (and very reminiscent of Salaam Bombay! -- not actually a documentary, but filmed on location in Bombay slums with Bombay street kids as the actors and shot by a director, Mira Nair, who up until that point was mainly a documentary filmmaker -- watch that movie if you liked Born into Brothels, and watch the extras too, because the story of filming the movie is half the movie as far as I'm concerned). (And I just realized all those movies focused in kids, so...huh.) So I was pretty psyched to settle down with this one.
And about 20 minutes in I realized I was...bored. And I realized why, more or less. This movie is basically unadorned video of a family in Indonesia hanging around and going about their business, interspersed with artsy-ish camera angles. There's no narration, and no talking heads, and no explanatory material of any kind. There are subtitles, and apart from that you might well be watching someone's home videos.
And not much...happens. I am normally the LAST person to complain about movie in which nothing happens. See Totoro. And I get annoyed on reality shows when they whip up some "drama" that gets in the way of actually watching them design an outfit or *cough* model or whatever they're doing on whatever stupid reality show I'm watching. I'm always psyched when the "villain" finally gets voted off because maybe we can have some damn peace and quiet around here without all the shenanigans -- and then I'm always surprised and annoyed when another "villain" emerges. I hate shenanigans, I hate action, I like talking and slowness and meandering-ness and ponderous shots of a leaf floating on a lake or something.
But, seriously, nothing happens in this movie. Well, stuff happens, but not very much of it, and although I'm sure it's meaningful to the people experiencing it it's not framed in a very meaningful way. There's the grandmother, who is raising her young granddaughter, and she has two sons (the granddaughter's mother died -- it's not mentioned when or how), and they live in Jakarta. The family is Christian, which is sort of meant to be the thrust of the movie because the majority of people around them are Muslim. So you see the grandmother praying with her granddaughter, and one of the sons complaining about having to confess his sins to his elders, which is...apparently a Muslim thing. The grandmother is thinking about moving back to her native village. She bought a couch with money borrowed from a money-lending woman, who hits her up for payments while creepily smiling and eventually repossesses the couch. There is a fire at one point in the village, and everybody helps to put it out. About midway through the movie, one of the sons is revealed to have a Muslim girlfriend, whom he wants to marry, so he converts to Islam and marries her (and then we never see her again -- which is OK because we'd only briefly seen her once before). At the end they go visit the grandmother's native village and she decides to stay and she does. The granddaughter is sad. The end.
It's not only that nothing happens. I could be very happy watching a movie about the quiet dramas of people's lives. But...this movie is structured so weirdly. I think it's trying to be avant-garde, halfheartedly and intermittently, but it doesn't go anywhere. The opening shot is of a small bright shape turning around and getting closer and closer. When it gets close enough we see that it's the opening of a railroad tunnel, and we're in a train coming out of the tunnel. Except, the tunnel could not have been spinning around really, unless the train is a roller coaster, which it isn't, so having it spin and then resolve into a train tunnel just seems...pointlessly artsy. There are a lot of KA-RAAAAZY shots, like under a drum (that I think at one point is juxtaposed with the railroad tunnel), and then out from inside the drum and slowly up the drummer's body to his face. But like...an Indonesian guy is banging a drum, and some Dutch guy with a camera is crawling under there, filming inside the drum, and then pulling out and moving the camera to the guy's tummy for like five minutes, and then up to his face, and the guy never looks at the camera or stops what he's doing. This is (a) not that visually exciting (it looks like...a camera inside a drum), (b) kind of needy as far as lingering on everything forever and being like "LOOK AT MY COOL SHOT WITH THE DRUM AND LOOK AT THIS DUDE'S TUMMY, IT IS LIKE SO BIG AND STUFF AND IT TOTALLY MOVES IN RHYTHM TO THE DRUM-BEATING, OH INDONESIA AND YOUR CULTURE, YOU ARE JUST SO EXOTIC," and (c) clearly staged, because this unsullied innocent Indonesian guy WOULD be looking at the camera if he hadn't been specifically told not to, especially when it's INSIDE HIS DRUM and then in his face. So it's very self-conscious.
And there is a LOT of that in this movie, and it gets tiring. There's one shot of old women chewing leaves that goes on forever. There's a CRAZY bit where a guy is walking along a railroad bridge -- which is shown from far-off shots and is GORGEOUS with scenery and immenseness and all that -- and it looks like the camera guy must be hanging off the edge to get the shot. It's terrifying because the guy is just walking barefoot on the very edge of this bridge with a big shirt flopping around and the wind blowing and I'm scared of heights so I could barely watch it (and I've seen Stand By Me so I know what happens when you walk on a railroad bridge). And they kept intercutting it with shots of a train coming. Suspense building! And then they abandon that. Same track? Same day? No idea. Not that I was all "YEAH, THIS DUDE IS TOTALLY GONNA GET HIT BY A TRAIN, WOOOO," but it just -- ends, and doesn't seem to relate to anything else in the movie.
And my least favorite thing of this sort was: There's a fire, as I mentioned, and one of the sons is in with the rest of the neighborhood trying to put it out. It's hard to tell what the result is because I don't know what the building looked like before the fire, and they don't really show how it looks after, and they don't show the end of the fire being put out or if it just burned itself out or what, and they don't explain what the building is or how the fire started or anything else because THEY DON'T EXPLAIN ANYTHING IN THIS MOVIE. So later in the movie, the son is sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and the camera guy must be literally climbing on his mattress to get the camera to spin around him (again making me suspicious that it was staged because he doesn't wake up), and THEY FADE INTO A FLASHBACK OF THE FIRE. As if he's dreaming about the fire. COME ON, PEOPLE. It's like this movie vacillates between verité and gritty realism (so gritty and real that they don't feel it necessary to provide any context), and some kind of America's Next Top Model-esque cutesy story-editing.
And even without the flashback, the camera at awkward angles all around the guy's mattress is like the drum and (to a lesser extent) the bridge, because -- all I can think is "How are they getting this shot?", but not in an admiring way so much as a "What in the hell are they doing with the camera, and why are they bothering?" way. It must have been hard to get that shot, but -- who cares? I guess? Because it's kind of pointless. All I can see is the strain and effort of it. Some guy with a camera is climbing all over this guy's mattress and...that's about it. Whaddya want, a medal? (heh)
Despite the camera gymnastics, visually this movie is (to my untrained eyes) nothing special either. A lot of it is on video and it just looks like...video. The rural scenes are sort of flat, and the urban scenes are just...video-y, and though there are dutiful shots of rooftops and of cats walking down the street (one cat had poop hanging off its fur, which was one of the more indelible images of the movie for me, partly because my cat and I recently went through a situation to which I was able to relate this shot, ahem), you don't get a SENSE of Jakarta, or of the inside of the house, or anything. I got more of a sense of Delhi in Monsoon Wedding, and that took place mainly at an upper-middle-class family's home and barely showed the rest of Delhi. There's stuff on the walls, there's food being prepared, and it's hard to really get a sense of any of it. This is an exotic location, and it's interesting to watch for that reason. But the movie basically says "We're filming in Jakarta" and doesn't go beyond that.
I get that this movie didn't want to be a traditional documentary. But I feel like documentaries are structured the way they are for a reason, and if you're going to eschew conventions you're going to have to make up for them in other ways. Errol Morris doesn't do voiceover narration (at least in the Fred Leuchter documentary he didn't), and I found that a little hard to get used to, but he does COPIOUS talking heads -- in fact, his documentaries basically ARE talking heads plus archival footage and photos. So the filmmaker is not literally explaining what's going on, but he's showing you and allowing his subjects to explain.
This movie had no talking heads and no narration, and is full of things I didn't understand but would like to have understood. What are the leaves the women were chewing? Why do they do it? Where does Tari go to school -- is it a Christian school? Is there one nearby? Does she go to a Muslim school? How does everyone feel about that? How do they treat her? After the fire the mosque PA system broadcasts a request that the neighborhood women cook for the people displaced by the fire (how many people, for how long, displaced where -- no clue), and it shows the family cooking -- are they cooking for the fire victims as the mosque asked, even though they're Christian? Do they resent that the mosque is the one to do social organizing like that? When the village moves the house of the grandmother's family to a new foundation, why do they do that? They move it quite a distance -- what for? Was the location change for a reason? How do they make the new foundation? Does it cost money? How many people live in the house? What are their names? What relation are they to Rumidja (the grandmother)? Later Rumidja and her friend look for work in the fields and can't find any. What will they do if they can't find work? Will they not be able to eat? What are the socioeconomic reasons behind their not being able to find work? Is it because they're old? What does the family do for money in Jakarta, for that matter? Nobody is shown working.
And there's the whole matter of the son converting to Islam, which leads to one of the most bizarre scenes in the movie. He's buddying around with somebody (after converting), who asks if he's been circumcised. He says yes, and offers to prove it, and shows part of a penis-looking thing sticking out of his pants, which then turns out to be a fake penis. Or like a couple inches of one. They laugh and toss it around. What. The. Hell? Why do they have a fake circumcised penis? Is it really a root vegetable or something? Is the circumcision issue so important that these things are around to fake out the imams? You don't see it very clearly, and I can't tell what it's made of or what in the fuck is going on, in general. Is circumcision, in fact, a thing you do if you're Muslim? I didn't even know that, and maybe I'm ignorant but...I'm really not, and I don't think knowing Muslims are circumcised is something you can necessarily assume of your audience. Basically, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE. You get surface glimpses of it, but you never know what the subjects are thinking, because nobody ever asks them; they don't often change facial expression, which may be because cameras are on them all the time; and you don't have any kind of context for any of it because the movie doesn't give you any.
I find a certain kind of fun in trying to decipher clues and put things together and develop a picture of what's going on. I don't mind when a movie doesn't explain stuff to me right away. But this movie...never does. It felt unfinished, unedited even. I didn't get a good sense of the people, who remained remote and inaccessible throughout. I didn't get a good sense of either of the primary locations. I didn't get a good sense of the country or the culture -- I got snippets, with the Muslim/Christian thing, but snippets is all it was. I left this movie unsatisfied and feeling almost rejected, as if the movie and its subjects were impatient with me and didn't really want me around anyway.
I wonder on reflection if the point of the movie was that, in a living situation like the kind they had, there is no time for reflection or deeper meaning or anything other than matter-of-fact getting on with things -- the people go about their lives and take things at surface value and don't have the luxury of digging deeper. There's a fire, there's no work in the fields, your kid converts to Islam, you buy a couch and then lose it again, the call to prayer goes off seventy bazillion times, there are trains and people getting on them and walking on railroad bridges near them, and you just go on living your life day in and day out, and it can be a grind, but it's your life. So, what's up, Western viewers, what you see is what you get and we're not going to sit down and spell it out for you -- it's our life and it is what it is. But if that was what they were going for, it seems a long way to slog through a not particularly illuminating movie to get to that revelation.
Next up I had The Bear, which is...about a bear, but I didn't feel like it so I moved up My Neighbors The Yamadas, which is made by Isao Takahata, a pal and colleague of Miyazaki's. He also made Grave of the Fireflies, which was unbelievably depressing, but this one is a comedy and I've been wanting to see it for a while and, frankly, I need something to clear the palate.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Three things I did yesterday
1. AL GORE!
I love him. Sitting in the cold for an hour and a half was COMPLETELY worth it. Al, I -- no, there is too much. When I think about the world and how it might look if certain historical events had had a different outcome -- well, I don't like to think about it. So Al Gore makes me feel sad and helpless. But mostly I love him. Also, my dad went to high school with him, so if I chanced to meet him I was totally going to throw that out there. (My dad was a year or two older than he was though.) And there WAS a possibility I might run into him, since the office down the hall from ours receives many fancy dignitary types and it was not at all out of the question that Al Gore might be wandering down there at some point (though it is pretty much out of the question that I'd be allowed to be wandering down there at the same time, what with security and with Al Gore not randomly being left alone to hang out in the hallway and stuff -- but I can dream, OK?). But it was not to be. But he makes a great speech. Also: soup, apple crisp, and enviro-swag!
2. Cinderella!
I have not been to the ballet in a while. I've actually seen Cinderella once before, when I was quite little, and my (middle) sister was even littler (my other sister didn't exist). I remember being very bored, and I think my sister was even more bored. Heh. But last night I really enjoyed it, perhaps because I'm approximately 27 years older than I was the last time I saw it. We had FRIGGING KICKASS seats -- row D. The last time I was in row D at the Wang Center was when we saw Annie when I was eight. My mom had to go to the box office at Sears (unless I'm remembering this wrong, but my memory is that it was inside Sears) and talk to the ticket person for like half an hour (again, it seemed that way to me at least) and I think there was somehow wondrously a cancellation and we got amazing seats in Row D. I still remember exactly where I was sitting and exactly the view, and how we were almost condemned to Row V. It was a miracle. I was fully obsessed with Annie at the time and I wasn't disappointed.
Our seats for Cinderella were rather easy to get and freakishly cheap, which is probably because nobody wants to go to the ballet. Sad.
Oh, another thing -- there were some little kids there (at least one in a floor-length fancy Cinderella dress), and: THE WANG NOW PROVIDES BOOSTER SEATS. Do you KNOW how I would have KILLED for a booster seat each and every time I was at the Wang as a kid? (I'm starting to make myself sound like Eloise -- I went to quite a few theatrical productions growing up, because I was lucky enough that my dad is into that sort of thing and wanted to share it with us, but it's not like I was going every week or something. I guess we maybe went once or twice a year on average. And it was pretty much always the Wang, unless it was the Shubert. Or the Colonial, once or twice.) (It's called the Citi Performing Arts Center now, and I guess the theater itself is the Wang Theatre. What the hell ever.)
Anyway. I was a tiny child, I'm still a rather tiny adult, and I spent many cumulative hours trying to see around grownups and their stupid tall heads while at the Wang (which is also notorious for having basically no seats with decent views, largely because it was originally built as a movie theater). Sitting on my leg, sitting on my coat, sitting on my leg and my coat. Why didn't I have a booster seat? Kids today have it so easy. Damn you, universe!
At least I could see for Annie. That was the important one. Though still not perfectly, because, as I mentioned, the Wang is really a terrible theater.
3. Cold. Sooooo cooooooold.
I did a lot of sitting outside, as I mentioned, and a lot of walking downtown, and a lot of waiting for the bus. I know this is not strictly a thing I did yesterday, but it dominated my thoughts quite a bit. Brrrr. And it's not even that cold -- I think it got down to like 45 yesterday. My blood hasn't thickened up yet. That's what I like to tell myself. Boo, winter.
So, anyway. That was my Wednesday.
I love him. Sitting in the cold for an hour and a half was COMPLETELY worth it. Al, I -- no, there is too much. When I think about the world and how it might look if certain historical events had had a different outcome -- well, I don't like to think about it. So Al Gore makes me feel sad and helpless. But mostly I love him. Also, my dad went to high school with him, so if I chanced to meet him I was totally going to throw that out there. (My dad was a year or two older than he was though.) And there WAS a possibility I might run into him, since the office down the hall from ours receives many fancy dignitary types and it was not at all out of the question that Al Gore might be wandering down there at some point (though it is pretty much out of the question that I'd be allowed to be wandering down there at the same time, what with security and with Al Gore not randomly being left alone to hang out in the hallway and stuff -- but I can dream, OK?). But it was not to be. But he makes a great speech. Also: soup, apple crisp, and enviro-swag!
2. Cinderella!
I have not been to the ballet in a while. I've actually seen Cinderella once before, when I was quite little, and my (middle) sister was even littler (my other sister didn't exist). I remember being very bored, and I think my sister was even more bored. Heh. But last night I really enjoyed it, perhaps because I'm approximately 27 years older than I was the last time I saw it. We had FRIGGING KICKASS seats -- row D. The last time I was in row D at the Wang Center was when we saw Annie when I was eight. My mom had to go to the box office at Sears (unless I'm remembering this wrong, but my memory is that it was inside Sears) and talk to the ticket person for like half an hour (again, it seemed that way to me at least) and I think there was somehow wondrously a cancellation and we got amazing seats in Row D. I still remember exactly where I was sitting and exactly the view, and how we were almost condemned to Row V. It was a miracle. I was fully obsessed with Annie at the time and I wasn't disappointed.
Our seats for Cinderella were rather easy to get and freakishly cheap, which is probably because nobody wants to go to the ballet. Sad.
Oh, another thing -- there were some little kids there (at least one in a floor-length fancy Cinderella dress), and: THE WANG NOW PROVIDES BOOSTER SEATS. Do you KNOW how I would have KILLED for a booster seat each and every time I was at the Wang as a kid? (I'm starting to make myself sound like Eloise -- I went to quite a few theatrical productions growing up, because I was lucky enough that my dad is into that sort of thing and wanted to share it with us, but it's not like I was going every week or something. I guess we maybe went once or twice a year on average. And it was pretty much always the Wang, unless it was the Shubert. Or the Colonial, once or twice.) (It's called the Citi Performing Arts Center now, and I guess the theater itself is the Wang Theatre. What the hell ever.)
Anyway. I was a tiny child, I'm still a rather tiny adult, and I spent many cumulative hours trying to see around grownups and their stupid tall heads while at the Wang (which is also notorious for having basically no seats with decent views, largely because it was originally built as a movie theater). Sitting on my leg, sitting on my coat, sitting on my leg and my coat. Why didn't I have a booster seat? Kids today have it so easy. Damn you, universe!
At least I could see for Annie. That was the important one. Though still not perfectly, because, as I mentioned, the Wang is really a terrible theater.
3. Cold. Sooooo cooooooold.
I did a lot of sitting outside, as I mentioned, and a lot of walking downtown, and a lot of waiting for the bus. I know this is not strictly a thing I did yesterday, but it dominated my thoughts quite a bit. Brrrr. And it's not even that cold -- I think it got down to like 45 yesterday. My blood hasn't thickened up yet. That's what I like to tell myself. Boo, winter.
So, anyway. That was my Wednesday.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gym update
So after that incredibly long, complainy post and some grumpiness, I decided to try something different at the gym. The answer? Uphill walking. I would be lying if I said I didn't partly get this idea from Bob on The Biggest Loser. Yes, The Biggest Loser. Listen, Jillian is awesome, OK? And it's very satisfying to watch everybody get healthier. Even though it's one of the stupidest reality shows ever made with its insistence on being TWO HOURS LONG, EVERY WEEK and its habit of building up suspense for like 30 seconds before every commercial break and then repeating all that suspense after every commercial break. THANK GOD FOR DVR, is all I have to say. And it's full of hilarious product placement. Which I actually enjoy, especially if they make Jillian do it, because she so clearly detests it. The funniest thing of the season last year was when some of the Losers got back to the house and there was a basket of popcorn (some conspicuously branded popcorn, I'm sure, but I don't remember what brand it was -- HA ha), and a "note" from "Jillian" that said "Dear losers, enjoy this delicious Pop Secret [or whatever] popcorn. It only has 100 calories!!!1! It will make you healthy. Love, your qualified, smart trainer, Jillian Michaels." And you just KNOW that she refused to do it on camera and so they faked up this note from her and she was watching it at home and was like "AW FOR FUCK'S SAKE." Heeee. Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum, anyone? No? Subway then, perhaps? How about some Brita?
Uh, anyway. Some lady on The Biggest Loser was having problems with her knees or something, and in one of the few actually useful pieces of information ever presented on this show, Bob The Trainer Who Is Not Jillian suggested that if she did uphill walking instead of running it would also burn a lot of calories. So I was like, "Hmm." And my workout-buddy pal at work found me this. Which, to sum up, is: Increase the incline by 2 every 2 minutes, until you get to 15 -- go at 15 for one minute -- and then decrease it by 2 every 2 minutes.
So I did that. And, did I get a workout? YES, I WOULD SAY SO. I was really panting up there in the 12s and 14s. And sweating buckets. And bending over like a caveman, but form will come later, people. And according to the treadmill, I burned about 100 calories MORE than I was doing with my (sad) running intervals. And yet, though I was breathing heavily, I never got that feeling of being OUT of breath like I do when running. And therefore I don't dread it, because that's what I don't like about running -- being out of breath.
I should do the running too, because it's good for me (the parts of me that are not my knees, at least). But in the meantime, I'm actually kind of ENJOYING the hill climbing. Because, as I said, I can walk forever. I actually went to the gym on Friday -- because I was looking forward to doing the hills again. And I haven't gone on a Friday, or gone to the gym three times in one week, in a while.
I have a lot of room for growth with this routine, because I can walk faster at the higher inclines, plus I could spend less time on the lower ones and get to the higher ones faster and do them for longer. (I already skip the FIVE MINUTES of walking at 2.0 and .5 incline -- PLEASE. /Steve Martin voice)
So things are looking up at the gym. And it's all thanks to Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum! Now in Island Cooler!
Uh, anyway. Some lady on The Biggest Loser was having problems with her knees or something, and in one of the few actually useful pieces of information ever presented on this show, Bob The Trainer Who Is Not Jillian suggested that if she did uphill walking instead of running it would also burn a lot of calories. So I was like, "Hmm." And my workout-buddy pal at work found me this. Which, to sum up, is: Increase the incline by 2 every 2 minutes, until you get to 15 -- go at 15 for one minute -- and then decrease it by 2 every 2 minutes.
So I did that. And, did I get a workout? YES, I WOULD SAY SO. I was really panting up there in the 12s and 14s. And sweating buckets. And bending over like a caveman, but form will come later, people. And according to the treadmill, I burned about 100 calories MORE than I was doing with my (sad) running intervals. And yet, though I was breathing heavily, I never got that feeling of being OUT of breath like I do when running. And therefore I don't dread it, because that's what I don't like about running -- being out of breath.
I should do the running too, because it's good for me (the parts of me that are not my knees, at least). But in the meantime, I'm actually kind of ENJOYING the hill climbing. Because, as I said, I can walk forever. I actually went to the gym on Friday -- because I was looking forward to doing the hills again. And I haven't gone on a Friday, or gone to the gym three times in one week, in a while.
I have a lot of room for growth with this routine, because I can walk faster at the higher inclines, plus I could spend less time on the lower ones and get to the higher ones faster and do them for longer. (I already skip the FIVE MINUTES of walking at 2.0 and .5 incline -- PLEASE. /Steve Martin voice)
So things are looking up at the gym. And it's all thanks to Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum! Now in Island Cooler!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Stupid gym
So I go to the gym. I try to go three days a week but really I only go two days a week.
Luckily for me, Harvard lets us have super duper cheap gym access. This is the only reason I gave the gym a shot. I think I pay $20 a year or something -- so it basically seemed like a waste of money NOT to go to the gym. I go to the Law School gym, which is the awesome one, with TVs on the machines and a cleaner locker room and hordes of law students instead of hordes of undergrads.
At the gym I do weights first -- I like the machines, because I don't know what I'm doing and so I get on the machine and do whatever you're supposed to do on that machine for 12 to 15 reps at the heaviest weight I can do and then get off. A couple of them -- abs, inner/outer thigh thing, behind-the-leg lying-on-your-stomach-and-kicking thing -- I do twice. Other ones I do include a bunch of arm ones, the leg press, and the one where you sit on a stool and twist around (I hate that one). I do recall what many of them are called -- shoulder press, camber curl, triceps extension -- but damned if I can remember which machine is called which. I have it all written down. Also, who cares.
After weights I do the treadmill. I did the elliptical for a while, but it gave me gigantic muscley thighs. This is not something I'm looking to achieve particularly. One thing I am looking to achieve is better endurance. I basically pant for like five minutes if I have to run after the bus, and that ain't good. I can walk forever, but running I'm not good at. I figured that being able to run for longer than 30 seconds without feeling like I'm going to die is probably a good thing. So I decided to go for the treadmill.
After getting past the initial roadblocks (one, having confidence that I would not fall off the treadmill; two, getting used to feeling completely seasick and almost falling over after getting off the treadmill), I'm on a slow but steady path of improvement. At first, I just walked. I walked fast, but I walked. Then I started running a little bit. And I do mean a little bit. First I was running for a total of six minutes -- two minutes at a time. At a speed of around 4.7, whatever that means -- 4.7 mph? I have no idea. The machine says 4.7. (It's all relative -- I'm not trying to get somewhere in a particular amount of time, so I don't care how fast I'm going except in relation to how fast I was going last time.) Yes, that is very very slow, but keep in mind that I have short legs.
Then over the summer I ran a bit with my sister -- who, with an injured knee that made her have to do basically nothing, was slow enough to slum it with me if I really pushed myself -- and she pointed out that I didn't have to run FAST (again -- for me), that I could basically go at a crawl and still be going up and down and still get the cardio going but be able to keep it up for longer. So I did that while we were on vacation, and one time I ran (or "ran") for 17 minutes and was pretty proud of myself. I decided that I could run for a lot longer on the treadmill if I did it a little slower. So when I got back I slowed down and lengthened the times I was running -- I was doing 12 minutes for a while (three sets of four minutes, with walking in between) and now I'm doing a total of 14 minutes, five and then five and then four. (I skipped 13. Yes, it IS a superstitious thing, thanks very much.) And I've gotten faster -- speedwise, I'm about up to where I was when I was doing six minutes. I start at 4.8 and usually go down a little during each five minutes -- the slowest I went today was 4.4.
What do I want out of this? Well, mostly I'm doing it because it's good for me. I used to get more exercise in my daily life -- when I was in college I schlepped around all over the place, and for two years I lived in an apartment where I had a half-mile-plus walk to the bus every morning (and the same walk back, of course). It was actually when I moved that I thought, now that I get zero exercise it's time to actually make an effort. So I want to be able to say "yes" when my doctor asks if I exercise regularly. I want to get my heart rate going and all that. I want to improve my endurance, as I mentioned. I want to have some muscle definition -- I don't want to be Madonna or anything, but I'd like to not be flabby. (My doctor actually complimented me on my strong stomach muscles. While I was getting a pelvic. Awkward! But nice to hear.) So I'm doing all this -- strength training is giving me some muscles, and the treadmill is upping my heart rate and all that. I am getting better at endurance, clearly -- I wouldn't have been able to run for a straight five minutes a few months ago. But there's one thing that's not going as planned.
I was always one of those kids who could eat whatever they wanted and not gain weight. I weighed 95 pounds (I'm 5'0") from about age 13 through college. Then, after college, the ol' post-college metabolism slowdown kicked in. I very quickly went up to 105 and stayed there, pretty much, for the next few years. I didn't give blood on Sept. 11 because you have to weigh more than 110 to give blood.
These days that would not be a problem. I weighed myself at the gym when I first started and I was 114. So, you know, that's still not overweight. I have no need to be super skinny. I wouldn't mind losing ten pounds, because I feel like a fireplug sometimes with the being short and all, but weight loss wasn't why I started the gym. And I don't eat that well -- I try to eat vegetables and all that, and not eat complete crap, and I don't do stuff like eat a bag of doughnuts or four Whoppers or whatever, and I don't drink soda at all, but I could eat a lot better. Mostly I eat processed crap because I can't cook, and I eat a lot of white flour (and I DETEST brown rice with every fiber of my being, because IT IS NOT RICE, it's something else that tastes completely different, and if I have to not eat rice I DON'T WANT TO GO ON). And I snack and I eat bagels and all that. If I were serious about losing weight I'd have to start addressing all that stuff in a serious way, and not just eating half the box of macaroni and cheese instead of the entire box, which was my solution back when I started gaining weight after college. (Oh, entire box of macaroni and cheese, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS.)
Here's the problem. In the 15 months or so that I've been going to the gym, I have not lost any weight. I went from basically no physical activity to doing the weights and the elliptical (first) and the treadmill (now). I have, as I said, gotten better on the treadmill. True, when I ditched the elliptical for the treadmill I was, according to the treadmill calorie counter (which I'm not convinced is a hundred percent accurate), burning fewer calories, probably because I wasn't running. I'm still burning fewer calories than I was on the elliptical, but I'm getting back up there. And I'm certainly getting more exercise than I WAS.
And I know, muscle weighs more than fat, and all that. I'm not fatter than I was -- I think I fit most of my clothes less flabbily than I used to. But I'm not only not losing weight, I KEEP GAINING WEIGHT. I was 116 for a long time (I don't have a scale at home but I weigh myself at the gym once a week or so). Lately it's been creeping up to 118. Then I weighed myself today and it was more like 120. I HAVE NEVER WEIGHED 120 IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Unless I was holding my cat. It's...dismaying, to say the least. Again, it's not that I think I'm fat -- but I'm doing all this exercise, and I feel that, at SOME point, I should be done with the gaining-muscle stage and start the CALORIE-BURNING stage. And have muscles AND lose weight. Or at least STAY AT THE SAME WEIGHT. It can't be that I'm going to get musclier and musclier (that is so not a word) and keep on gaining weight forever. One reason I quit the elliptical was that I wanted the rest of my legs to get some exercise and not just my thighs -- and I wanted to work more on endurance, and I couldn't get out of breath on the elliptical before my legs were hurting to the point that I didn't want to go any harder. I did play with the settings, quite a bit, but the elliptical wasn't doing what I wanted it to. So I've actually lost some muscle in my legs since I switched to the treadmill, though maybe I've gained some in my calves. I don't know! Apparently I need to pinch and measure every part of myself to be able to determine whether I'm wasting my time or not.
Again, I know that if I want to lose weight, I'm making a poor effort, and that I COULD take steps to cause that to happen. It's not that I feel I can't lose weight. It's that I used to not exercise at all, and now I've been going to the gym twice or three times a week for over a year, while making half-assed attempts to eat more healthily (read: not eating any worse than I was, at the very least), and I have gained six pounds.
I know my metabolism will keep slowing down as I get older, but it seems a little mean that it would happen just when I was finally trying to be healthier.
In conclusion: Stupid gym. Also, anyone who says running makes you feel good is full of shit. It makes me feel good that I did it and that I'm not a lazy slug, but that's about it. Runner's high? Haven't seen it. Endorphins? When I get to go home and I don't have to go to the gym for another couple of days, yes. During the running? No. I also recently realized that I like having a slow, wall-of-sound-y song playing while I run, preferably with no beat, because it better enables me to space out and get through it by hypnotizing myself into a coma. If I have a fast, get-psyched song playing it usually just annoys me and stresses me out. I like having that while I'm WALKING -- I will get excited to go faster if I have a song that I like with a faster beat -- but while I'm running I just want to drool on myself (not literally) and not notice that I'm out of breath (I really, really hate being out of breath) and wake up when the five minutes are over.
In conclusion again: I am a natural couch potato. Gillian Anderson was once on Letterman and had recently quit smoking and was waxing nostalgic about her smoking days. "I was GREAT at it," she said mournfully (this is from memory and therefore paraphrased). "I was a GREAT smoker." I don't smoke, but I am a great lounger. Man, I can sit still for hours and not do anything but read, watch TV and noodle around on the computer. I am so fucking great at that. This moving fast thing, not so much. It's good for me and I'll do it, but it's never going to be fun for me (again, I quite like walking -- but anything beyond that). Maybe I need to pick a new form of exercise, but I don't know what that would be and while I'm figuring it out I'll probably gain another six pounds. Sigh.
Luckily for me, Harvard lets us have super duper cheap gym access. This is the only reason I gave the gym a shot. I think I pay $20 a year or something -- so it basically seemed like a waste of money NOT to go to the gym. I go to the Law School gym, which is the awesome one, with TVs on the machines and a cleaner locker room and hordes of law students instead of hordes of undergrads.
At the gym I do weights first -- I like the machines, because I don't know what I'm doing and so I get on the machine and do whatever you're supposed to do on that machine for 12 to 15 reps at the heaviest weight I can do and then get off. A couple of them -- abs, inner/outer thigh thing, behind-the-leg lying-on-your-stomach-and-kicking thing -- I do twice. Other ones I do include a bunch of arm ones, the leg press, and the one where you sit on a stool and twist around (I hate that one). I do recall what many of them are called -- shoulder press, camber curl, triceps extension -- but damned if I can remember which machine is called which. I have it all written down. Also, who cares.
After weights I do the treadmill. I did the elliptical for a while, but it gave me gigantic muscley thighs. This is not something I'm looking to achieve particularly. One thing I am looking to achieve is better endurance. I basically pant for like five minutes if I have to run after the bus, and that ain't good. I can walk forever, but running I'm not good at. I figured that being able to run for longer than 30 seconds without feeling like I'm going to die is probably a good thing. So I decided to go for the treadmill.
After getting past the initial roadblocks (one, having confidence that I would not fall off the treadmill; two, getting used to feeling completely seasick and almost falling over after getting off the treadmill), I'm on a slow but steady path of improvement. At first, I just walked. I walked fast, but I walked. Then I started running a little bit. And I do mean a little bit. First I was running for a total of six minutes -- two minutes at a time. At a speed of around 4.7, whatever that means -- 4.7 mph? I have no idea. The machine says 4.7. (It's all relative -- I'm not trying to get somewhere in a particular amount of time, so I don't care how fast I'm going except in relation to how fast I was going last time.) Yes, that is very very slow, but keep in mind that I have short legs.
Then over the summer I ran a bit with my sister -- who, with an injured knee that made her have to do basically nothing, was slow enough to slum it with me if I really pushed myself -- and she pointed out that I didn't have to run FAST (again -- for me), that I could basically go at a crawl and still be going up and down and still get the cardio going but be able to keep it up for longer. So I did that while we were on vacation, and one time I ran (or "ran") for 17 minutes and was pretty proud of myself. I decided that I could run for a lot longer on the treadmill if I did it a little slower. So when I got back I slowed down and lengthened the times I was running -- I was doing 12 minutes for a while (three sets of four minutes, with walking in between) and now I'm doing a total of 14 minutes, five and then five and then four. (I skipped 13. Yes, it IS a superstitious thing, thanks very much.) And I've gotten faster -- speedwise, I'm about up to where I was when I was doing six minutes. I start at 4.8 and usually go down a little during each five minutes -- the slowest I went today was 4.4.
What do I want out of this? Well, mostly I'm doing it because it's good for me. I used to get more exercise in my daily life -- when I was in college I schlepped around all over the place, and for two years I lived in an apartment where I had a half-mile-plus walk to the bus every morning (and the same walk back, of course). It was actually when I moved that I thought, now that I get zero exercise it's time to actually make an effort. So I want to be able to say "yes" when my doctor asks if I exercise regularly. I want to get my heart rate going and all that. I want to improve my endurance, as I mentioned. I want to have some muscle definition -- I don't want to be Madonna or anything, but I'd like to not be flabby. (My doctor actually complimented me on my strong stomach muscles. While I was getting a pelvic. Awkward! But nice to hear.) So I'm doing all this -- strength training is giving me some muscles, and the treadmill is upping my heart rate and all that. I am getting better at endurance, clearly -- I wouldn't have been able to run for a straight five minutes a few months ago. But there's one thing that's not going as planned.
I was always one of those kids who could eat whatever they wanted and not gain weight. I weighed 95 pounds (I'm 5'0") from about age 13 through college. Then, after college, the ol' post-college metabolism slowdown kicked in. I very quickly went up to 105 and stayed there, pretty much, for the next few years. I didn't give blood on Sept. 11 because you have to weigh more than 110 to give blood.
These days that would not be a problem. I weighed myself at the gym when I first started and I was 114. So, you know, that's still not overweight. I have no need to be super skinny. I wouldn't mind losing ten pounds, because I feel like a fireplug sometimes with the being short and all, but weight loss wasn't why I started the gym. And I don't eat that well -- I try to eat vegetables and all that, and not eat complete crap, and I don't do stuff like eat a bag of doughnuts or four Whoppers or whatever, and I don't drink soda at all, but I could eat a lot better. Mostly I eat processed crap because I can't cook, and I eat a lot of white flour (and I DETEST brown rice with every fiber of my being, because IT IS NOT RICE, it's something else that tastes completely different, and if I have to not eat rice I DON'T WANT TO GO ON). And I snack and I eat bagels and all that. If I were serious about losing weight I'd have to start addressing all that stuff in a serious way, and not just eating half the box of macaroni and cheese instead of the entire box, which was my solution back when I started gaining weight after college. (Oh, entire box of macaroni and cheese, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS.)
Here's the problem. In the 15 months or so that I've been going to the gym, I have not lost any weight. I went from basically no physical activity to doing the weights and the elliptical (first) and the treadmill (now). I have, as I said, gotten better on the treadmill. True, when I ditched the elliptical for the treadmill I was, according to the treadmill calorie counter (which I'm not convinced is a hundred percent accurate), burning fewer calories, probably because I wasn't running. I'm still burning fewer calories than I was on the elliptical, but I'm getting back up there. And I'm certainly getting more exercise than I WAS.
And I know, muscle weighs more than fat, and all that. I'm not fatter than I was -- I think I fit most of my clothes less flabbily than I used to. But I'm not only not losing weight, I KEEP GAINING WEIGHT. I was 116 for a long time (I don't have a scale at home but I weigh myself at the gym once a week or so). Lately it's been creeping up to 118. Then I weighed myself today and it was more like 120. I HAVE NEVER WEIGHED 120 IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Unless I was holding my cat. It's...dismaying, to say the least. Again, it's not that I think I'm fat -- but I'm doing all this exercise, and I feel that, at SOME point, I should be done with the gaining-muscle stage and start the CALORIE-BURNING stage. And have muscles AND lose weight. Or at least STAY AT THE SAME WEIGHT. It can't be that I'm going to get musclier and musclier (that is so not a word) and keep on gaining weight forever. One reason I quit the elliptical was that I wanted the rest of my legs to get some exercise and not just my thighs -- and I wanted to work more on endurance, and I couldn't get out of breath on the elliptical before my legs were hurting to the point that I didn't want to go any harder. I did play with the settings, quite a bit, but the elliptical wasn't doing what I wanted it to. So I've actually lost some muscle in my legs since I switched to the treadmill, though maybe I've gained some in my calves. I don't know! Apparently I need to pinch and measure every part of myself to be able to determine whether I'm wasting my time or not.
Again, I know that if I want to lose weight, I'm making a poor effort, and that I COULD take steps to cause that to happen. It's not that I feel I can't lose weight. It's that I used to not exercise at all, and now I've been going to the gym twice or three times a week for over a year, while making half-assed attempts to eat more healthily (read: not eating any worse than I was, at the very least), and I have gained six pounds.
I know my metabolism will keep slowing down as I get older, but it seems a little mean that it would happen just when I was finally trying to be healthier.
In conclusion: Stupid gym. Also, anyone who says running makes you feel good is full of shit. It makes me feel good that I did it and that I'm not a lazy slug, but that's about it. Runner's high? Haven't seen it. Endorphins? When I get to go home and I don't have to go to the gym for another couple of days, yes. During the running? No. I also recently realized that I like having a slow, wall-of-sound-y song playing while I run, preferably with no beat, because it better enables me to space out and get through it by hypnotizing myself into a coma. If I have a fast, get-psyched song playing it usually just annoys me and stresses me out. I like having that while I'm WALKING -- I will get excited to go faster if I have a song that I like with a faster beat -- but while I'm running I just want to drool on myself (not literally) and not notice that I'm out of breath (I really, really hate being out of breath) and wake up when the five minutes are over.
In conclusion again: I am a natural couch potato. Gillian Anderson was once on Letterman and had recently quit smoking and was waxing nostalgic about her smoking days. "I was GREAT at it," she said mournfully (this is from memory and therefore paraphrased). "I was a GREAT smoker." I don't smoke, but I am a great lounger. Man, I can sit still for hours and not do anything but read, watch TV and noodle around on the computer. I am so fucking great at that. This moving fast thing, not so much. It's good for me and I'll do it, but it's never going to be fun for me (again, I quite like walking -- but anything beyond that). Maybe I need to pick a new form of exercise, but I don't know what that would be and while I'm figuring it out I'll probably gain another six pounds. Sigh.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Infinity?
Really?
Then again, I guess "always" does more or less mean "infinity." So...good job, marketing? I guess.
Then again, I guess "always" does more or less mean "infinity." So...good job, marketing? I guess.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Some musings
There is a quote from I THINK Toni Morrison where someone asked her where she writes and she said "I type at my desk. I write all over the house."
I'm thinking about that in relation to this blog, because while I don't post to it much I compose posts to it all the time in my head. Most often this seems to happen while I'm walking to or from the gym, probably because that's the longest regular walk I have these days (now that I live approximately 1,000 feet from the bus stop, WOOOOO). Then I get home and never post, because I get distracted by, usually, the following:
I'm thinking about that in relation to this blog, because while I don't post to it much I compose posts to it all the time in my head. Most often this seems to happen while I'm walking to or from the gym, probably because that's the longest regular walk I have these days (now that I live approximately 1,000 feet from the bus stop, WOOOOO). Then I get home and never post, because I get distracted by, usually, the following:
- getting the mail;
- seeing if there are any unsettling mortgage-related things in the mail I need to worry about;
- feeding the cat;
- searching for and then cleaning up any messes the cat has made during the day (she's on a diet and, well, she's been having some tummy trouble, I'll leave it at that);
- being frigging balls-ass hot (at least today, and often if I've just gotten home from the gym -- I usually cool off a little on the bus but then warm up again walking home and up to the third floor);
- being starving (again, if I've gotten home from the gym usually) and deciding whether I will suck it up and eat a salad;
- taking out my contacts as fast as humanly possible;
- checking my e-mail and seeing if anybody has written me back about whatever thing is currently going on with my bathroom renovation, or alternatively, freaking out because I have to write somebody back about my bathroom renovation;
- wondering what's on TV; and
- generally, getting into my pajamas (particularly if No. 5 is especially prominent).
- (oh, Ordered List, you are a delight) The Law School area smells like fish today. I wonder if it can have anything to do with the gigantic dumpster that's been out behind Littauer for about the last six months. I'm not sure what they're doing in there, but every day is a new and delightful scent.
- It's chestnut season in Harvard Yard. I'm a bit obsessed with the chestnuts -- what I love the most is to find an unopened seed pod and open it and there are SHINY LOVELY CHESTNUTS inside that are UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS. So this year I picked up a few pods a couple weeks ago, but it was after a stormy weekend and they clearly weren't actually ready to come down, because I could BARELY get them open and the chestnuts inside were white in parts. Actually it was fascinating -- I'd never seen them "undeveloped" before. They were much less woody, and the part that's different-colored is the part that attaches to the pod -- like the bellybutton. As I kept them on my desk for a few days the white parts turned brown. They shriveled more quickly than the ripe ones do, though. Anyway, today I went walking behind Lehmann Hall to see if I could find some intact pods -- because there are TONS of pod pieces on the ground now, and tons of chestnuts -- but I couldn't find a single one. Bummer -- but tomorrow's another day of chestnut-hunting. Why I like them so much, I'm not sure -- they're smooth and shiny and nice and it's so nifty to open up a pod and there they are. It's like a treasure. I love them.
Please note, by the way, that I only pick up chestnut pods from the Yard, not from the street. There usually aren't any on the street, but even if there were I wouldn't pick them up. Because I am gross, but not that gross. I thought of this because I passed some pod-y looking thing today by the T and I thought, "Nooooo." Though I did pick up a brochure about female Marines the other day from the street. But it looked clean, and I washed my hands afterwards. I was just curious to see what it said. It seemed pretty much the same as a brochure about male Marines would be, except all the pictures were of women and all the quotes about how awesome the Marines are were from women. (Funny story, BTW. When I took my PSATs my junior year of high school, I started getting college brochures. I didn't know that getting your PSAT scores is basically the signal for colleges to send you assloads of brochures, and I didn't know I was about to get about five trillion of them. The first one I got was from West Point. I was flattered that they might be interested in me, and I read the whole brochure, and for a few minutes I really thought, a little bit, that maybe West Point was the school for me. This...probably would not really be the case. Plus, I don't think I'd be allowed in the military because I'm five feet tall. And then I realized that EVERY college has a slickly produced brochure that kind of makes me want to go to their college. But, way to get in there early, West Point. I thought about it. I did.) - I'm reading a COOOOOOL New Yorker article about giant machines that dig tunnels. I have been fascinated by giant tunnel-digging machines ever since I watched some documentary (probably on PBS) about the digging of the Chunnel. They used four of these machines, which are absolutely humongous -- I guess two for the eastbound side of the tunnel (they start at the ends and meet in the middle) and two for the westbound side. These machines were insanely expensive and fancy (and likely made by the company I'm reading about in this article) and basically the only thing they were good for was digging the Chunnel. Once the Chunnel was dug, they became completely useless. My favorite part of this show or whatever it was was what became of the digging machines. I think one of them was given to some other project, one of them is in a museum or something, one of them they just sort of let rust forever on the side of the road, and one of them fell into a lake and they left it there. Hee! I just find that amusing (and possibly apocryphal since it was a while ago and I may be remembering it wrong). Poor suddenly useless giant insanely expensive Chunnel-digging machines. So, anyhoo. This article is neat. I [heart] The New Yorker.
- Pizza is SO DELICIOUS. (I had it for lunch.) We now have, by my calculations, a total of SEVEN pizza places in the Square: Pinocchio's (old-school, the original, the granddaddy, super delicious and cheap); Crazy Dough's (meh, I have never liked this place -- I think mostly tourists go here, because it's in the Garage); Cambridge 1 (I looooooooove their pizza but you can't really get it to go, plus it ain't cheap -- regardless, it's probably my favorite pizza place in the Square, or anywhere); Uno's (it's Uno's...I sure do love that deep-dish pepperoni, though, which is the lunch special on Thursdays BTW, and also my sister and I went to the bar downstairs at the Harry Potter midnight release thing and had butterbeer, which was...beer with something called ButterShots in it, and was gross); Bertucci's (it's Bertucci's -- I am partial to the Florentine, which was prosciutto and plum tomatoes and mozzarella and which THEY DON'T HAVE ANYMORE, though they used to make it if I asked); Oggi (which is inside Holyoke Center and is nice and all, but their pizza has a very specific FLAVOR!! and sometimes I'm not in the mood for it -- but the guys who work there are nice and once they made a steak-and-beans-and-rice dish for a special and it was SO DELICIOUS and I WISH they would make it again -- I mentioned it to them and they said they would but I kept going back and they never had it); and now Upper Crust, on Brattle Street. I went there today to check it out. I got a slice of cheese and a slice of pepperoni (I am a pizza traditionalist, y'all), and it was pretty delicious, and HUGE. Like, one piece was approximately one quarter of a pizza. I showed some restraint for once and ate half of each piece and saved the rest for tomorrow. So, I did like it, but I have heard that this is like the fanciest, upscaley-est pizza place around, and it seemed like a pretty standard pizza joint to me. And it wasn't cheap -- $6.30 for two slices; at Noke's you can get two Sicilian slices for $3.95 and they're better, frankly. Maybe not as huge, area-wise, but mass-wise they're probably pretty comparable. So, Upper Crust wasn't anything super spectacular, but it IS pizza, and I love pizza, so I loved it. Mmmmm, pizza. Pizza is one of those foods that I'm always hungry for, no matter what. I would be pretty content to live on pizza.
Friday, September 26, 2008
This is straight-up evil.
Call me a Communist if you must.
This is a print ad for Morgan Stanley from the Sept. 15 issue of The New Yorker (BTW, check me out: it's Sept. 26 and I'm reading the Sept. 15 issue. Getting there). I couldn't find a great picture of it online, but here it is for visual reference.
Of course, at first glance I thought it was an Absolut ad (part of the idea, I would assume). Next I see that it's a giant building inside a water bottle. Dubai? Likely, or in any case it's a blank slate of a location where Free Enterprise is flourishing. The top says "World Wise" (this is Morgan Stanley's little catchphrase of the moment, I guess). I'm thinking, "Oh, it's one of those ads where the giant corporation explains how, paradoxically, even though it's an oil company, it's actually helping the environment in some unspecified way." Like the Phillip Morris ads where they talk about how much smoking is terrible and evil (except those were mandatory). A sop to the liberals who read The New Yorker to make them feel less guilty about being millionaires. You know.
The text under the big header begins:
So I'm assuming the next lines will be some shit like "Here at Morgan Stanley, we're using our global reach to bring water to the people who need it, so we can all move forward together" blah blah blah. Not that I would necessarily believe that a giant investment bank or whatever the hell Morgan Stanley is (not something I especially need to know, since I don't have assloads of money that I have to figure out what to do with) was actually doing any of that, but I sure would believe they were spending money on PR people to make it look like they were doing stuff like that.
But I got a surprise. Instead of that kind of thing, the next lines read:
So, essentially, this ad is saying: "Dear rich people: Are you running out of ways to be rich? Well, check this out. The desperately poor are going to start running out of water pretty soon. As you know, humans need water to survive. Luckily, we control a ton of infrastructure that these losers are going to depend on to get their water. Man, are we going to make a shitload of cash off of that! Woo-hoo! We can totally get you in on the ground floor of that shit. Are you psyched?"
I mean -- they're not even TRYING to appear not to be terrifying, world-controlling psychos. There's not any kind of stuff about microloans or local entrepreneurship or bringing up the poor by teaching them bullshit about home equity. They are literally like, "We're about to make a ton of money off the poor. We can give you a cut."
It's this kind of stuff that makes me want to move to a tiny stone cottage in Connemara and raise sheep for a living.
This is a print ad for Morgan Stanley from the Sept. 15 issue of The New Yorker (BTW, check me out: it's Sept. 26 and I'm reading the Sept. 15 issue. Getting there). I couldn't find a great picture of it online, but here it is for visual reference.
Of course, at first glance I thought it was an Absolut ad (part of the idea, I would assume). Next I see that it's a giant building inside a water bottle. Dubai? Likely, or in any case it's a blank slate of a location where Free Enterprise is flourishing. The top says "World Wise" (this is Morgan Stanley's little catchphrase of the moment, I guess). I'm thinking, "Oh, it's one of those ads where the giant corporation explains how, paradoxically, even though it's an oil company, it's actually helping the environment in some unspecified way." Like the Phillip Morris ads where they talk about how much smoking is terrible and evil (except those were mandatory). A sop to the liberals who read The New Yorker to make them feel less guilty about being millionaires. You know.
The text under the big header begins:
Demand for water is growing twice as fast as the population. New methods of sourcing, purifying and transporting water will be essential to meet these demands.
So I'm assuming the next lines will be some shit like "Here at Morgan Stanley, we're using our global reach to bring water to the people who need it, so we can all move forward together" blah blah blah. Not that I would necessarily believe that a giant investment bank or whatever the hell Morgan Stanley is (not something I especially need to know, since I don't have assloads of money that I have to figure out what to do with) was actually doing any of that, but I sure would believe they were spending money on PR people to make it look like they were doing stuff like that.
But I got a surprise. Instead of that kind of thing, the next lines read:
But what could these innovations mean for you? Speak to your Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor about where potential opportunities may lie. To find the smart investments today, you need to be world wise.
So, essentially, this ad is saying: "Dear rich people: Are you running out of ways to be rich? Well, check this out. The desperately poor are going to start running out of water pretty soon. As you know, humans need water to survive. Luckily, we control a ton of infrastructure that these losers are going to depend on to get their water. Man, are we going to make a shitload of cash off of that! Woo-hoo! We can totally get you in on the ground floor of that shit. Are you psyched?"
I mean -- they're not even TRYING to appear not to be terrifying, world-controlling psychos. There's not any kind of stuff about microloans or local entrepreneurship or bringing up the poor by teaching them bullshit about home equity. They are literally like, "We're about to make a ton of money off the poor. We can give you a cut."
It's this kind of stuff that makes me want to move to a tiny stone cottage in Connemara and raise sheep for a living.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Boring update of grown-uppery
So, part (not all, but part) of the reason I haven't posted in a while is that I've been preoccupied with the twin projects of refinancing my home loan and renovating my bathroom. Basically one or both of those has been constantly on my mind for pretty much the whole summer (and a good deal before that, but not as intensely), and I hate posting about stuff that's IN PROGRESS, because of...some neurosis that I probably have, and I've basically been in one of those ruts where if I stop thinking about it, I start thinking about how I stopped thinking about it, and then think about it again.
I am very terrible with logistical crapola, and there's been a lot of it to deal with and it makes me tired and I come home and just want to do something stupid like play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes. Anyway, you wouldn't believe that something like this could stress me out this much, but this is why I would be a horrible, horrible event planner.
And, I mean, it's not like I CANNOT POST AT ALL because of this stuff, but it's like, I think "I should do a blog post" and then I think "What should I post about? Let's see, what's going on in my...ARGH BATHROOM ARGH REFINANCE ARGH I HAVE TO GET THAT THING SIGNED ARGH HOW AM I GOING TO PAY FOR THIS ARGH I HAVE TO CALL THAT GUY ARGH WINDOWPANES ARGH" and then I go play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes and try not to think about it. I am a champion avoider.
The quick basics on the renovation are: My soapdish fell out of my wall in the shower, which led to the realization that my whole shower/bathtub wall area is totally rotted. The nine billion ants that also cluster horror-movie-like in my bathtub in the spring are another good hint about this. I also live in one of those old houses with a window in the shower. This window currently has a wooden frame, covered in paint that really should not be getting wet every day. Nowadays, it is not considered good building practice to put a window in a shower with a wooden frame, lead paint (probably), wooden everything else except the glass, and glass that's easily shatterable. So I'm getting a new window and new shower walls, and while I'm at it I'm taking down the hideous pink tile that covers most of my bathroom. Then I will paint the non-tiled walls whatever color I want. It might be white. It might be purple. We shall see.
One part of this that's actually been fun (if time-consuming and expensive -- though nowhere near as expensive as the actual bathroom renovation) has been buying new towel racks, a new light fixture (mine will be too wide because the shower wall needs to be moved out a teense), a new cabinet that will hide all my cough syrup and mouthwash and other unattractive bathroom necessities (I have a pedestal sink), and a new shelf for above the sink in lieu of the toothbrush holder that the toothbrushes of today no longer fit into, and the soapdish that just serves as a precarious resting place for my liquid soap dispenser. Slightly less fun has been buying tile (white! I know, it's a little crazy) (the tile is only for inside the shower, BTW) and grout. I've pretty much been carrying up a box of tile or grout out of the trunk of my car every time I go upstairs (if I think of it). There is one last (hopefully) obstacle, which involves the look of the window and the approval of other members of the condo association, which will hopefully be resolved soon. This is the thing that's currently causing me the most stress. But it's on hold for the moment, and I am so fine with that I can't even tell you.
The B plot of this saga (or, really, maybe the A plot) has been the refinance. That sort of thing does tend to require a lot of paperwork, so that's been the focus of most of my stress lately. However, things are finally marching on, because I finally closed on that last week. (In addition to getting me out of the interest-only loan I initially bought the house with -- but on which I've been paying extra principal every month so as...not to have an interest-only loan, which is a bad thing -- this is to allow me to have enough cash to pay for the bathroom reno.) Sure, the first time didn't take because the loan amount was wrong (that was Friday) so I had to come back Monday. Then, rates dropped drastically overnight so I asked if there was any way I could redo it at a slightly lower rate. There was, with a lot of scrambling, which we did, and I closed again on Tuesday. Woo-hoo! Despite my having to go three times, it all went very smoothly, and I actually have a SLIGHTLY lower monthly payment than what I've been paying (which included the extra I was tossing at the principal -- but I did that every month, at least partly to train myself to pay that much in the future when I got a 30-year fixed), which is excellent.
So someday I'll have a new bathroom, hopefully, and that will be nice, and hopefully there won't be too much more of the asking people for favors and the calling of various people and companies and the filling out of forms and the hunting down of forms I filled out long ago and the organizing of finances and the budget analysis and all the other stuff that make owning a home so much fun. I suck at being a grown-up sometimes. So! That's that, and once the actual renovation starts I'm sure I won't be all, "Woo, I'm NOT AT ALL stressed!", but, at least the planning/logistics part will be over, and an end will be in sight. (Next up: Electrical. Groan. My house is old, yo.)
This weekend I went to a yoga workshop that was almost literally called Yoga For Total Idiots Who Have Never Heard Of Yoga. Because I'd really like to do yoga, I think. And I don't know what I'm doing. I found out that I can't tell without the mirror whether my back is straight or not. That's the biggest thing I have to work on, form-wise. But anyway, after we were mostly done she made us all lie on the floor and sort of relax and stuff, and she was talking about being in the moment and how right now, we're here in class and we should enjoy it and let go of all the stuff we're always stressing about, etc., because we don't have to worry about it for a few minutes. And one thing she said was "you don't have to answer any questions...you don't have to worry about wording something properly..." and I promptly teared up. Because...I do a lot of that. In my job, but also in general in my life, I worry A LOT about how I word something, how I present anything I say, and...it's stressful. I think this is partly because I'm an oldest child, because I see myself as the family peacekeeper/fixer of problems, partly because I tend to be insecure/defensive and want to be quintuple sure I can own whatever I'm saying in case I get questioned on it, partly because I'm a perfectionist who fears regretting a decision (and therefore has a hard time making decisions, even a small decision like about how to word something)...who knows. Anyway, I've been doing an extra lot of it lately because I've had to talk to a whole bunch of people about the loan, the reno, about getting forms signed by other people who have to vouch for me or whatever, about the condo association biz, about my insurance, etc. etc. etc., and man, it makes me tired. Very little makes me as tired as having to ask people for favors over and over again, even if the favor is something as small as "look at this and tell me what to do." So...it was really nice to lie on my back in a yoga class and not have to figure out how to say something to somebody without sounding pushy or overly wussy or hesitant or strident or unsuitable in some way or not fully committed or whatever else. So thank you, universe, for bringing me that yoga class precisely on that Saturday -- it was nice to have.
And then it was nice to have one weekend, the first in a while, where I didn't have to do any loan paperwork or have the contractor come by for some reason or another or have an electrician come by (that one is still in the pre-planning stages -- I just wanted cost estimates) or go to Home Depot or Target (well, I did go to Target, but not to the towel-rack section), or call my neighbors and ask them to do something or look at something or answer something. Instead, I installed OS 10.5, played a bunch of stupid demo games from Macgamestore.com, watched The Dog Whisperer and Saturday Night Live and a Nickelodeon movie starring Chris Meloni as a gym teacher (WHICH WAS AWESOME -- that man can attain OLYMPIC levels of sustained mugging, and Amy Sedaris was in it too), and evolved from a cell to a tribal civilization in Spore. It was a niiiiiiiice weekend. The least stressful I've had in a while.
I'm not done, not by a long shot, but it was nice to have a respite. And, like the yoga lady said, I'm trying to be in the moment.
In this moment, a freshman-y-looking kid is sitting outside my window smoking a pipe. Oh, Harvard.
I am very terrible with logistical crapola, and there's been a lot of it to deal with and it makes me tired and I come home and just want to do something stupid like play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes. Anyway, you wouldn't believe that something like this could stress me out this much, but this is why I would be a horrible, horrible event planner.
And, I mean, it's not like I CANNOT POST AT ALL because of this stuff, but it's like, I think "I should do a blog post" and then I think "What should I post about? Let's see, what's going on in my...ARGH BATHROOM ARGH REFINANCE ARGH I HAVE TO GET THAT THING SIGNED ARGH HOW AM I GOING TO PAY FOR THIS ARGH I HAVE TO CALL THAT GUY ARGH WINDOWPANES ARGH" and then I go play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes and try not to think about it. I am a champion avoider.
The quick basics on the renovation are: My soapdish fell out of my wall in the shower, which led to the realization that my whole shower/bathtub wall area is totally rotted. The nine billion ants that also cluster horror-movie-like in my bathtub in the spring are another good hint about this. I also live in one of those old houses with a window in the shower. This window currently has a wooden frame, covered in paint that really should not be getting wet every day. Nowadays, it is not considered good building practice to put a window in a shower with a wooden frame, lead paint (probably), wooden everything else except the glass, and glass that's easily shatterable. So I'm getting a new window and new shower walls, and while I'm at it I'm taking down the hideous pink tile that covers most of my bathroom. Then I will paint the non-tiled walls whatever color I want. It might be white. It might be purple. We shall see.
One part of this that's actually been fun (if time-consuming and expensive -- though nowhere near as expensive as the actual bathroom renovation) has been buying new towel racks, a new light fixture (mine will be too wide because the shower wall needs to be moved out a teense), a new cabinet that will hide all my cough syrup and mouthwash and other unattractive bathroom necessities (I have a pedestal sink), and a new shelf for above the sink in lieu of the toothbrush holder that the toothbrushes of today no longer fit into, and the soapdish that just serves as a precarious resting place for my liquid soap dispenser. Slightly less fun has been buying tile (white! I know, it's a little crazy) (the tile is only for inside the shower, BTW) and grout. I've pretty much been carrying up a box of tile or grout out of the trunk of my car every time I go upstairs (if I think of it). There is one last (hopefully) obstacle, which involves the look of the window and the approval of other members of the condo association, which will hopefully be resolved soon. This is the thing that's currently causing me the most stress. But it's on hold for the moment, and I am so fine with that I can't even tell you.
The B plot of this saga (or, really, maybe the A plot) has been the refinance. That sort of thing does tend to require a lot of paperwork, so that's been the focus of most of my stress lately. However, things are finally marching on, because I finally closed on that last week. (In addition to getting me out of the interest-only loan I initially bought the house with -- but on which I've been paying extra principal every month so as...not to have an interest-only loan, which is a bad thing -- this is to allow me to have enough cash to pay for the bathroom reno.) Sure, the first time didn't take because the loan amount was wrong (that was Friday) so I had to come back Monday. Then, rates dropped drastically overnight so I asked if there was any way I could redo it at a slightly lower rate. There was, with a lot of scrambling, which we did, and I closed again on Tuesday. Woo-hoo! Despite my having to go three times, it all went very smoothly, and I actually have a SLIGHTLY lower monthly payment than what I've been paying (which included the extra I was tossing at the principal -- but I did that every month, at least partly to train myself to pay that much in the future when I got a 30-year fixed), which is excellent.
So someday I'll have a new bathroom, hopefully, and that will be nice, and hopefully there won't be too much more of the asking people for favors and the calling of various people and companies and the filling out of forms and the hunting down of forms I filled out long ago and the organizing of finances and the budget analysis and all the other stuff that make owning a home so much fun. I suck at being a grown-up sometimes. So! That's that, and once the actual renovation starts I'm sure I won't be all, "Woo, I'm NOT AT ALL stressed!", but, at least the planning/logistics part will be over, and an end will be in sight. (Next up: Electrical. Groan. My house is old, yo.)
This weekend I went to a yoga workshop that was almost literally called Yoga For Total Idiots Who Have Never Heard Of Yoga. Because I'd really like to do yoga, I think. And I don't know what I'm doing. I found out that I can't tell without the mirror whether my back is straight or not. That's the biggest thing I have to work on, form-wise. But anyway, after we were mostly done she made us all lie on the floor and sort of relax and stuff, and she was talking about being in the moment and how right now, we're here in class and we should enjoy it and let go of all the stuff we're always stressing about, etc., because we don't have to worry about it for a few minutes. And one thing she said was "you don't have to answer any questions...you don't have to worry about wording something properly..." and I promptly teared up. Because...I do a lot of that. In my job, but also in general in my life, I worry A LOT about how I word something, how I present anything I say, and...it's stressful. I think this is partly because I'm an oldest child, because I see myself as the family peacekeeper/fixer of problems, partly because I tend to be insecure/defensive and want to be quintuple sure I can own whatever I'm saying in case I get questioned on it, partly because I'm a perfectionist who fears regretting a decision (and therefore has a hard time making decisions, even a small decision like about how to word something)...who knows. Anyway, I've been doing an extra lot of it lately because I've had to talk to a whole bunch of people about the loan, the reno, about getting forms signed by other people who have to vouch for me or whatever, about the condo association biz, about my insurance, etc. etc. etc., and man, it makes me tired. Very little makes me as tired as having to ask people for favors over and over again, even if the favor is something as small as "look at this and tell me what to do." So...it was really nice to lie on my back in a yoga class and not have to figure out how to say something to somebody without sounding pushy or overly wussy or hesitant or strident or unsuitable in some way or not fully committed or whatever else. So thank you, universe, for bringing me that yoga class precisely on that Saturday -- it was nice to have.
And then it was nice to have one weekend, the first in a while, where I didn't have to do any loan paperwork or have the contractor come by for some reason or another or have an electrician come by (that one is still in the pre-planning stages -- I just wanted cost estimates) or go to Home Depot or Target (well, I did go to Target, but not to the towel-rack section), or call my neighbors and ask them to do something or look at something or answer something. Instead, I installed OS 10.5, played a bunch of stupid demo games from Macgamestore.com, watched The Dog Whisperer and Saturday Night Live and a Nickelodeon movie starring Chris Meloni as a gym teacher (WHICH WAS AWESOME -- that man can attain OLYMPIC levels of sustained mugging, and Amy Sedaris was in it too), and evolved from a cell to a tribal civilization in Spore. It was a niiiiiiiice weekend. The least stressful I've had in a while.
I'm not done, not by a long shot, but it was nice to have a respite. And, like the yoga lady said, I'm trying to be in the moment.
In this moment, a freshman-y-looking kid is sitting outside my window smoking a pipe. Oh, Harvard.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Things I bought at Target today
(oh, and also: *blows dust off of blog*)
1. anti-wrinkle moisturizer
2. Dr. Scholl's insoles
3. a teapot
4. SPORE!!!
I just find that to be an amusing shopping list. Ah, Target.
I will totally, like, post again sometime and stuff. It's been kind of a crazy summer.
Meanwhile, I can't wait to stay up all night and play Spore.
1. anti-wrinkle moisturizer
2. Dr. Scholl's insoles
3. a teapot
4. SPORE!!!
I just find that to be an amusing shopping list. Ah, Target.
I will totally, like, post again sometime and stuff. It's been kind of a crazy summer.
Meanwhile, I can't wait to stay up all night and play Spore.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Lonely Toilet
I'm always threatening to write children's books called "The Lonely [Something]." "Toilet" is a good one. You can also use something like "Hamster" or "Fork" or "Baboon" or "Encyclopedia." Or "Pie." That kind of thing. Or you could go with "The Lonely Executive" or "The Lonely Driveway" and get kind of existential and novel-y. Or you could go, like, "The Lonely Asshole" and people could wonder if it was about an actual asshole and you were being smarmy and suggestive, or just some guy who was an asshole, and if it was going to redeem him in the end, or what. Again, these last few are not children's books, obviously.
Anyway, I thought of "The Lonely Toilet" because there's a toilet sitting out for the trash across the street from me. And it looks lonely. And perhaps I would like to write a children's book about it. Although, probably not.
P.S. Wall-E was absolutely fantastic. I adored it. Maybe I'll post more about it later. The thing I liked most, though, and I'll try and say this without spoiling anything, is that despite its anger at humanity for being shitty, lazy fuckups, it badly wants to forgive humanity, and allow it to redeem itself, and it ultimately does. It's a beautiful movie. The end credits are the best part.
Anyway, I thought of "The Lonely Toilet" because there's a toilet sitting out for the trash across the street from me. And it looks lonely. And perhaps I would like to write a children's book about it. Although, probably not.
P.S. Wall-E was absolutely fantastic. I adored it. Maybe I'll post more about it later. The thing I liked most, though, and I'll try and say this without spoiling anything, is that despite its anger at humanity for being shitty, lazy fuckups, it badly wants to forgive humanity, and allow it to redeem itself, and it ultimately does. It's a beautiful movie. The end credits are the best part.
Friday, June 27, 2008
My most anticipated movie of the year
...is, OK, probably still The X-Files. Yeah yeah. Mulder, Scully, I can't wait and I [heart] them and all that. I've been hunting down spoilers, clasping my hands delightedly at new pictures, etc. But the whole X-Files thing is, in a way, at this point almost more like when your kids are in the school play. Of COURSE you can't wait to see them, and your eyes are going to be fixed on them every moment they're up there, and you love them and whatever they do you're going to be convinced on some level that it's the greatest thing ever, and you can't wait to hug them when it's over and pinch their cheeks and tell everybody, "Those two? MINE" (please note: metaphorical; I'm not going to be stalking people so I can hug them and pinch their cheeks). And then, quite separately from that, you're going to go see, I don't know, Hamlet.
My Hamlet this year? WALL-E. I have been waiting for this movie forever. I have teared up literally every time I've watched the trailer. It's no coincidence that half of my blog is named after robots. There's something ABOUT robots that not only fascinates me but MOVES me. I have no idea why -- well, I do have some theories, but I'm not going to get into my frequent habit of psychologically analyzing myself, and I really think the crux of it is, I like when things that aren't human try to be human. (Except for Data. I never got into Data. Yawn.) I have done a LOT of thinking about this whole thing. I'm one of the few people on earth who unabashedly LOVED A.I., not to mention wept through most of that too (his love is real...but he is not. COME ON, people, I'm not made of stone). I love going to the MIT Museum to see Kismet. I badly want this dude to call my own. Half the reason I love The Sims is that they're basically funny little robots (Sims 1 more than 2). I have babbled to anyone who will listen about the uncanny valley. (You know what gives me the uncanny valley more than anything else, certainly more than any robot I've ever seen? POODLES. Fucking poodles. The big ones, and really when they have a normal haircut, not the crazy-ass poodle haircut. There's something about their proportions that's weirdly human and it creeps me out. And I love dogs, but, poodles. Eeeg.)
I also love Pixar. I've basically loved every movie Pixar has ever made, even Cars. I've been fascinated by computer animation ever since I bought some weird VHS thing from the PBS store in 1989 or something that was basically computer-animated shapes running around to New Age music and these days is pretty much something a six-year-old could make in 30 seconds on a cell phone. I went to see the Final Fantasy movie in the theater largely because I heard they did a really good job on the hair. Computer animation is taken for granted these days, the line between "animation" and "FX" is blurring more by the day, half of conventionally animated stuff is also computer-animated and just made to LOOK hand-drawn (Futurama, for one), and there are Saturday-morning computer-animated cartoons now and kids' movies coming out of every studio. But, well, here's how it is. I remember being at a movie (I think it was The Incredibles, actually), and the previews for it were basically computer-animated movie after computer-animated movie. I remember thinking, "Gosh, these all look great. I guess the other studios have finally caught up to Pixar. Not really surprising," and all that. Then the preview for Cars came up. And my eyes pretty much popped out of my head. Pixar is just in a league of its own.
So I love Pixar. I love robots. I love space, and I love movies where a character looks up into the sky and yearns. And anything about the far future chokes me right up. I am, as an aside, helplessly furious about what's happening to the planet, to the point where I don't even like to talk about it because it depresses me too much. (See also "International credibility of U.S., systematic and gleeful destruction of in name of pointless macho-bullshit bluster.") So, this movie already had me written all over it.
This morning I read Ty Burr's Globe review. It opens:
And the pièce de résistance:
So it's official. This movie went in my brain, looked around, figured out what I would like in a movie, and made those things into a movie. And I cannot. effing. wait to see it.
Oh, don't cry, X-Files. I still love you the most. *gentle head pat* No, I'd LOVE to see your new set pictures. Yes, you told me about your new friend Billy Connelly. He sounds very nice! Oh, yes, I'm sure it's VERY scary. You can bet I'll be covering my eyes at the...what did you say happens in that part? Oh yeah. That sounds super scary, all right! You guys are so cute in your costumes. *cheek pinch* Who wants apple-juice popsicles?
My Hamlet this year? WALL-E. I have been waiting for this movie forever. I have teared up literally every time I've watched the trailer. It's no coincidence that half of my blog is named after robots. There's something ABOUT robots that not only fascinates me but MOVES me. I have no idea why -- well, I do have some theories, but I'm not going to get into my frequent habit of psychologically analyzing myself, and I really think the crux of it is, I like when things that aren't human try to be human. (Except for Data. I never got into Data. Yawn.) I have done a LOT of thinking about this whole thing. I'm one of the few people on earth who unabashedly LOVED A.I., not to mention wept through most of that too (his love is real...but he is not. COME ON, people, I'm not made of stone). I love going to the MIT Museum to see Kismet. I badly want this dude to call my own. Half the reason I love The Sims is that they're basically funny little robots (Sims 1 more than 2). I have babbled to anyone who will listen about the uncanny valley. (You know what gives me the uncanny valley more than anything else, certainly more than any robot I've ever seen? POODLES. Fucking poodles. The big ones, and really when they have a normal haircut, not the crazy-ass poodle haircut. There's something about their proportions that's weirdly human and it creeps me out. And I love dogs, but, poodles. Eeeg.)
I also love Pixar. I've basically loved every movie Pixar has ever made, even Cars. I've been fascinated by computer animation ever since I bought some weird VHS thing from the PBS store in 1989 or something that was basically computer-animated shapes running around to New Age music and these days is pretty much something a six-year-old could make in 30 seconds on a cell phone. I went to see the Final Fantasy movie in the theater largely because I heard they did a really good job on the hair. Computer animation is taken for granted these days, the line between "animation" and "FX" is blurring more by the day, half of conventionally animated stuff is also computer-animated and just made to LOOK hand-drawn (Futurama, for one), and there are Saturday-morning computer-animated cartoons now and kids' movies coming out of every studio. But, well, here's how it is. I remember being at a movie (I think it was The Incredibles, actually), and the previews for it were basically computer-animated movie after computer-animated movie. I remember thinking, "Gosh, these all look great. I guess the other studios have finally caught up to Pixar. Not really surprising," and all that. Then the preview for Cars came up. And my eyes pretty much popped out of my head. Pixar is just in a league of its own.
So I love Pixar. I love robots. I love space, and I love movies where a character looks up into the sky and yearns. And anything about the far future chokes me right up. I am, as an aside, helplessly furious about what's happening to the planet, to the point where I don't even like to talk about it because it depresses me too much. (See also "International credibility of U.S., systematic and gleeful destruction of in name of pointless macho-bullshit bluster.") So, this movie already had me written all over it.
This morning I read Ty Burr's Globe review. It opens:
With "WALL-E,"It continues:Pixar at last takes the great leap forward many of us knew the company had in it. A "family movie" in name and MPAA rating only, it's a major visionary work, a sci-fi parable of astonishing scope and depth that is anchored by an adorable bucket of bolts and yoked to a sensibility that is - there's no other word for it - furious. It's also, by a substantial margin, the best American film of the year to date.
These scenes are stunning in their wide-screen attention to detail and their refusal to let us off the hook. [...] The first act of "WALL-E" is, daringly, a post-apocalyptic silent movie that picks up where the last act of "AI: Artificial Intelligence" left off.A.I.-esque? Check. Post-apocalyptic silent movie? CHECK-A-RAMA. See my love of Metropolis and all it spawned. Except for Blade Runner. Boo, Blade Runner.
So this is what Pixar is asking us to buy into: a romance between two robots.Awesomeness. And check.
If anything, this is more frightening than the scenes back on Earth, a goofy but ferocious attack on a consumer culture that turns leisure into religion and humans into overfed sheep.Checkity checkity chizzzzeck. Personal bugaboo, anyone?
And the pièce de résistance:
Stanton and company appear to have been studying the work of Japanese animation guru Hayao Miyazaki; while his spiritual dimension is missing, the eco-despair that galvanizes his films "Princess Mononoke" and "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" is even more keenly felt here.Miyazaki? Can it be that I have not, in this blog, yet waxed poetic about my obsessive love for all things Miyazaki? My helpless lack of resistance to kawaii-ness + reverence of nature + total lack of villains and conflict-for-the-sake-of-conflict/embrace of gentleness + crazy incomprehensible and cliché-avoiding storylines = , well, my obsessive love for all things Miyazaki. Check, check, muthafuggin' CHEEEEEEECCCCCCKKKKKK.
So it's official. This movie went in my brain, looked around, figured out what I would like in a movie, and made those things into a movie. And I cannot. effing. wait to see it.
Oh, don't cry, X-Files. I still love you the most. *gentle head pat* No, I'd LOVE to see your new set pictures. Yes, you told me about your new friend Billy Connelly. He sounds very nice! Oh, yes, I'm sure it's VERY scary. You can bet I'll be covering my eyes at the...what did you say happens in that part? Oh yeah. That sounds super scary, all right! You guys are so cute in your costumes. *cheek pinch* Who wants apple-juice popsicles?
Friday, June 20, 2008
MEMENTO
is the most awesome movie in the world. It is second in awesomeness perhaps only to Mulholland Drive, which is also insanely awesome, once you have the key to what the hell is going on and you can start piecing it all together. Goddamn, Naomi Watts. You are a talented lady. Don't drink all the Coke! But anyway, this isn't about Mulholland Drive, it's about Memento, which I finally rewatched because my sister/roommate finally consented to watching it. And it hasn't gotten any less awesome with time. In fact, I think it's MORE awesome because I now know what's going on a little more than I did the first time I saw it (in the theater, back in '00 or whenever it came out).
Anyway. I just love Memento. I think I'm too scattered right now to do any kind of intelligent analysis of it, but it is a fucking great movie. One of my favorites of all time. It's just beautifully constructed, and I'm jealous of anyone who can put something together that skillfully.
I'm rambling a bit because I'm a teeny bit tipsy on...what is it called? Duvel. Belgian Golden Ale. Good stuff. Not that I would really know if it were shitty, heh. It gets the job done.
Anyway, I keep not posting because, I don't know. I feel I should have something profound to say, and I usually don't, or if I do it's something that I don't want to put in a blog. But, yeah. Memento. If you haven't seen it, DO. And give it a chance. If you pay attention it's not confusing. It really isn't. Just awesome.
Remember when Carrie-Anne Moss was all famous and stuff? Remember The Matrix? I really liked that movie. The first one, anyway. The second two I kind of slept through a little bit. That was because I went to see them at midnight and there was too much action. Too much action = I fall asleep. I don't know, I think it's like I get overloaded or something. All I remember is, the people were shooting at some like, crawling robots or something, and I fell asleep for what seemed like a long time, and when I woke up they were still shooting at the same robots. And it seemed very little had happened while I was asleep. This also happened during the first Star Trek movie, which I saw when I was 13 or so, and I remember they were in some kind of wormhole or some shit and I left the room and played with the cats for like, 45 minutes, and when I came back the exact same thing was still going on. So, yeah. Not the greatest movie.
Speaking of Star Trek, how effing awesome is it that George Takei finally got to marry his sweet baboo? And it's also sort of amusing that everyone was invited but William Shatner. Poor annoying William Shatner. Who reminds me of Galaxy Quest, which is ALSO the best movie in the world.
The other thing, of course, that Carrie-Anne Moss makes me think of is Models Inc. Which was, IIRC, a spinoff of Melrose Place, which of course was a spinoff of 90210. (Which is coming back? With Jennie Garth as a guidance counselor? WTF?) Anyway, Carrie-Anne Moss and a bunch of these other beeyotches were models on Models Inc. and it was literally the most insipid show ever made, and it was even too dumb for the general public, and it got cancelled. But the thing I remember best about it is this thing on Letterman where Dave inserted himself into a (typically insipid and catty) scene of Models Inc. where it kept cutting to Linda Gray or whoever being catty and insipid and saying shit like "You talk a good game" and other 90210-y dialogue, and then it would cut to Dave, pretending to be in the scene, and he kept going "ALL I EVER WANTED WAS TO BE A PRETTY MODEL." And he was wearing glasses and a baseball cap. Good lord, but I love Dave Letterman. And Aaron Spelling dialogue. I always like to say that Jason Priestly on 90210 would go around clapping people on the shoulder and saying "Them's the breaks, my man." He probably only said that once, or maybe even never, but that was the KIND of shit they were always saying on those shows. Like, stuff that sounds good to John Q. 38-Year-Old Teen Soap Writer as he's typing it out on his Quadra or whatever computer they had in those days, but is actually bullshit that nobody would ever say. God, there was some bad dialogue on those shows. I'm actually not so much the kind of person who enjoys watching something trashy just to delight in the trashiness -- I get tired of that pretty easily. But I watched 90210 for a good long while. Remember how ever since then there has been an endless stream of over-the-top/pretentiously written yet still brain-cell-killing/sexy-teenager-featuring nighttime soaps? All of which I have avoided? Yep. So there was that. Teenagers, I hate you. I don't believe that will ever change.
My sister told me as we were watching Memento tonight that when she first saw The Matrix, she thought for the first like, half of the movie that the hero's name was Neil. Hee hee heeeee. Neil. Well, them's the breaks, my man. *shoulder clap*
Aaaaaanyhoo. I should probably go to bed. Free-associatingest post ever!
P.S. Also: Callum Keith Rennie is in it!! He's a Cylon. SPOILER! He's in the X-Files movie too, apparently. Not that I care about a single soul in that movie or plot point it might or might not contain except for Mulder and Scully and what happens to them. Sorry, Carter and Spotnitz. I have never cared about your scary stories, and I never will. I actually feel bad about that, because I know you work hard on them. But, seriously. I do not care. Don't punish me by having Mulder and Scully be barely on the screen together for the entire movie. Plz? Thx.
Anyway. I just love Memento. I think I'm too scattered right now to do any kind of intelligent analysis of it, but it is a fucking great movie. One of my favorites of all time. It's just beautifully constructed, and I'm jealous of anyone who can put something together that skillfully.
I'm rambling a bit because I'm a teeny bit tipsy on...what is it called? Duvel. Belgian Golden Ale. Good stuff. Not that I would really know if it were shitty, heh. It gets the job done.
Anyway, I keep not posting because, I don't know. I feel I should have something profound to say, and I usually don't, or if I do it's something that I don't want to put in a blog. But, yeah. Memento. If you haven't seen it, DO. And give it a chance. If you pay attention it's not confusing. It really isn't. Just awesome.
Remember when Carrie-Anne Moss was all famous and stuff? Remember The Matrix? I really liked that movie. The first one, anyway. The second two I kind of slept through a little bit. That was because I went to see them at midnight and there was too much action. Too much action = I fall asleep. I don't know, I think it's like I get overloaded or something. All I remember is, the people were shooting at some like, crawling robots or something, and I fell asleep for what seemed like a long time, and when I woke up they were still shooting at the same robots. And it seemed very little had happened while I was asleep. This also happened during the first Star Trek movie, which I saw when I was 13 or so, and I remember they were in some kind of wormhole or some shit and I left the room and played with the cats for like, 45 minutes, and when I came back the exact same thing was still going on. So, yeah. Not the greatest movie.
Speaking of Star Trek, how effing awesome is it that George Takei finally got to marry his sweet baboo? And it's also sort of amusing that everyone was invited but William Shatner. Poor annoying William Shatner. Who reminds me of Galaxy Quest, which is ALSO the best movie in the world.
The other thing, of course, that Carrie-Anne Moss makes me think of is Models Inc. Which was, IIRC, a spinoff of Melrose Place, which of course was a spinoff of 90210. (Which is coming back? With Jennie Garth as a guidance counselor? WTF?) Anyway, Carrie-Anne Moss and a bunch of these other beeyotches were models on Models Inc. and it was literally the most insipid show ever made, and it was even too dumb for the general public, and it got cancelled. But the thing I remember best about it is this thing on Letterman where Dave inserted himself into a (typically insipid and catty) scene of Models Inc. where it kept cutting to Linda Gray or whoever being catty and insipid and saying shit like "You talk a good game" and other 90210-y dialogue, and then it would cut to Dave, pretending to be in the scene, and he kept going "ALL I EVER WANTED WAS TO BE A PRETTY MODEL." And he was wearing glasses and a baseball cap. Good lord, but I love Dave Letterman. And Aaron Spelling dialogue. I always like to say that Jason Priestly on 90210 would go around clapping people on the shoulder and saying "Them's the breaks, my man." He probably only said that once, or maybe even never, but that was the KIND of shit they were always saying on those shows. Like, stuff that sounds good to John Q. 38-Year-Old Teen Soap Writer as he's typing it out on his Quadra or whatever computer they had in those days, but is actually bullshit that nobody would ever say. God, there was some bad dialogue on those shows. I'm actually not so much the kind of person who enjoys watching something trashy just to delight in the trashiness -- I get tired of that pretty easily. But I watched 90210 for a good long while. Remember how ever since then there has been an endless stream of over-the-top/pretentiously written yet still brain-cell-killing/sexy-teenager-featuring nighttime soaps? All of which I have avoided? Yep. So there was that. Teenagers, I hate you. I don't believe that will ever change.
My sister told me as we were watching Memento tonight that when she first saw The Matrix, she thought for the first like, half of the movie that the hero's name was Neil. Hee hee heeeee. Neil. Well, them's the breaks, my man. *shoulder clap*
Aaaaaanyhoo. I should probably go to bed. Free-associatingest post ever!
P.S. Also: Callum Keith Rennie is in it!! He's a Cylon. SPOILER! He's in the X-Files movie too, apparently. Not that I care about a single soul in that movie or plot point it might or might not contain except for Mulder and Scully and what happens to them. Sorry, Carter and Spotnitz. I have never cared about your scary stories, and I never will. I actually feel bad about that, because I know you work hard on them. But, seriously. I do not care. Don't punish me by having Mulder and Scully be barely on the screen together for the entire movie. Plz? Thx.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Very enterprising
In CVS:
closer:
You...probably won't be able to get that book autographed, considering you probably won't be able to get into Commencement, and even if you can, you probably won't get within 500 feet of JKR. But I still like this sign. It's so polite and hopeful, and it had a really good idea. You don't want to say no to it because it will feel let down.
The reason I was in CVS was to buy some Visine. Dude, my eye. Wearing contacts was not a good idea for today. Also, it turns out that I am NOT good at putting in eyedrops. What a shocker -- it goes right along with my near-inability to swallow pills. So, if you were ever wondering what Visine tasted like: It's kind of bitter. It doesn't taste like tears, as you might subconsciously expect. It seems to work, though, sorta, once you get it in the eye area. Yay Visine, I guess.
closer:
You...probably won't be able to get that book autographed, considering you probably won't be able to get into Commencement, and even if you can, you probably won't get within 500 feet of JKR. But I still like this sign. It's so polite and hopeful, and it had a really good idea. You don't want to say no to it because it will feel let down.
The reason I was in CVS was to buy some Visine. Dude, my eye. Wearing contacts was not a good idea for today. Also, it turns out that I am NOT good at putting in eyedrops. What a shocker -- it goes right along with my near-inability to swallow pills. So, if you were ever wondering what Visine tasted like: It's kind of bitter. It doesn't taste like tears, as you might subconsciously expect. It seems to work, though, sorta, once you get it in the eye area. Yay Visine, I guess.
Nature's hangover
I'm having that watery-eye thing again, which I've had since yesterday. I got my contacts in, but barely. And since my desk at home faces a window, I'm literally sitting here at my computer wearing sunglasses. I feel like an Overlord. (Uh, because Earth's light is too bright for them so when they're hanging around outside they wear sunglasses everywhere. That reference would have worked better if I'd actually mentioned that in my Childhood's End post.)
Unfortunately it's hard not to suspect that it doesn't have something to do with this. D'oh. Pretty flowers, why you hurt me so bad?
I was about to say that at least I'd been spared the sneezing fit so far, but: there it goes. Time to take a Claritin, I guess.
I still love spring. So there.
I just linked to THREE of my own blog posts. How egomaniacal am I? Hee. I should throw in a Wikipedia link for good measure. Here -- you should go here every day. There. (Really, you should.)
Unfortunately it's hard not to suspect that it doesn't have something to do with this. D'oh. Pretty flowers, why you hurt me so bad?
I was about to say that at least I'd been spared the sneezing fit so far, but: there it goes. Time to take a Claritin, I guess.
I still love spring. So there.
I just linked to THREE of my own blog posts. How egomaniacal am I? Hee. I should throw in a Wikipedia link for good measure. Here -- you should go here every day. There. (Really, you should.)
Monday, June 2, 2008
It's that time of year again
That is, this time of year:
This tree is outside my window. I'm not sure what it's called. I've had one very close to my house in the last three places I've lived. All I know about it is, it looks like this when it blooms, and it smells UNREAL. It smells like...grapes, sort of. It's sweet and very very strong. These are all over Boston, and I'll be walking down the street at this time of year and suddenly the smell hits me and I look around and there it is.
I think it bloomed a little later this year than last year, for whatever reason, and I was sort of resigned that maybe it wouldn't bloom at all (not possible, you say? Well, I will trump you with THIS fact: I am a total moron about plants. So, you're probably right). But this weekend it started up, and now it's blossoming all over the place and my house is completely suffused with the smell, especially with the back windows open. Particularly yesterday when it was breezy I kept getting CLOUDS of it.
I'm just happy I live somewhere where this tree is practically brushing against my nostrils. I love spring.
This tree is outside my window. I'm not sure what it's called. I've had one very close to my house in the last three places I've lived. All I know about it is, it looks like this when it blooms, and it smells UNREAL. It smells like...grapes, sort of. It's sweet and very very strong. These are all over Boston, and I'll be walking down the street at this time of year and suddenly the smell hits me and I look around and there it is.
I think it bloomed a little later this year than last year, for whatever reason, and I was sort of resigned that maybe it wouldn't bloom at all (not possible, you say? Well, I will trump you with THIS fact: I am a total moron about plants. So, you're probably right). But this weekend it started up, and now it's blossoming all over the place and my house is completely suffused with the smell, especially with the back windows open. Particularly yesterday when it was breezy I kept getting CLOUDS of it.
I'm just happy I live somewhere where this tree is practically brushing against my nostrils. I love spring.
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