Coffee: made
Notes: typed
Agent's number: memorized
Teeth: cleaned
Lunch: eaten
Bookcase: stocked
DVDs: moved
Chart: typed
Mug: washed
Desk: changed
Work: done
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Brave New World
I'm having a great, but very strange week.
1. After six months of sitting on my counter, the Costco vats o' vitamins were finally cracked open last night, as I realized that I have to do everything in my power to stay healthy.
2. Forty-five minutes into my third morning commute, I started calculating exactly how early I'd have to go to bed in order to start for work @ 7 a.m. instead of 8. Yeah, I'm actually contemplating getting up earlier. (Man, I frickin' hate traffic.)
3. I am three for three with healthy, low fat, low carb lunches. (Today, salmon. Yesterday and Monday, salad with chicken.) I can't risk a blood sugar crash any more than a head cold. Also, I'm hoping the Omega-3s in the salmon will keep my neurons nice 'n speedy.
4. After months of car rides with Trashy Audio Books and bedtime solitaire, I am temporarily happy to ride in complete silence, to fall into bed without an iPod nano. Even in my traffic-y commute, I'm not bored or frustrated. Nor do I lie awake at night, unable to sleep. I am content.
Jeez oh pete. I'm happy.
1. After six months of sitting on my counter, the Costco vats o' vitamins were finally cracked open last night, as I realized that I have to do everything in my power to stay healthy.
2. Forty-five minutes into my third morning commute, I started calculating exactly how early I'd have to go to bed in order to start for work @ 7 a.m. instead of 8. Yeah, I'm actually contemplating getting up earlier. (Man, I frickin' hate traffic.)
3. I am three for three with healthy, low fat, low carb lunches. (Today, salmon. Yesterday and Monday, salad with chicken.) I can't risk a blood sugar crash any more than a head cold. Also, I'm hoping the Omega-3s in the salmon will keep my neurons nice 'n speedy.
4. After months of car rides with Trashy Audio Books and bedtime solitaire, I am temporarily happy to ride in complete silence, to fall into bed without an iPod nano. Even in my traffic-y commute, I'm not bored or frustrated. Nor do I lie awake at night, unable to sleep. I am content.
Jeez oh pete. I'm happy.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
So Tired...
But so happy.
Two days down, 20 hours worked, 14 hours slept, two bagels eaten.
Eight months to go.
Awesome.
Sleep now.
Two days down, 20 hours worked, 14 hours slept, two bagels eaten.
Eight months to go.
Awesome.
Sleep now.
Monday, January 28, 2008
There, I Said It!
I don't like to waste this blog on pointless rants, but I gotta say something about Consumerist. Yeah, I'm referring to this post, submitted by Dave G:
And this one:
Last week, I went into my local Gap to return a t-shirt I'd gotten as a birthday present. It was brand new, unworn, tags attached and I had the gift receipt. No problem, right?Pretty disturbing stuff, right? Okay, agreed. But here's the thing that really disturbs me -- check out the comments:
I walked up to the cash register and indicated I wanted to make a return. Out of nowhere, the Sales Assistant takes out a machete and cuts my left arm at the shoulder. Blood everywhere, obviously. Also, it really hurt.
At this point, I asked to speak to the Manager so I could complete my return. While we waited for her, I realized my pants were going to need dry cleaning to remove the blood stains from my gushing wound. (Apparently there's a major artery in your shoulder, and it spurts like a mo-fo when cut. Who knew?)
So when the Manager finally shows up, I indicate that I'm trying to make a return, and point out that the Gap might want to compensate me for my dry cleaning, considering that the Sales Assistant created this whole problem when he cut my arm off.
The Manager looks over at the Sales Assistant (who, btw, is still holding the machete) and asks him "Is this true?"
That's when the Sales Assistant starts insisting I didn't have a receipt -- a total lie! So I reach over with my right arm, intending to fish the receipt out of my left pocket. Which would already be pretty awkward under the regular circumstances, never mind the part where I am completely covered in my own blood.
At this point, the Manager sees me go for the receipt, takes the machete from the Sales Assistant and stabs me in the eye, killing me instantly. Well, almost instantly. First it hurt like a son of a bitch. Then I died.
So, I'm writing this from heaven. My hope is that the Gap Corporation will see their way clear to letting my mom complete the return, even if the receipt is a little hard to read.
BY STINKINGBOB AT 02:22 PM What an asshole. Wah-wah-wah, I tried to make a return and paid for it with my life. What do you expect?
And this one:
BY KROVE AT 04:57 PM I think we should get the other side of this story. I mean, the Sales Assistant chopped off his arm for NO REASON? I don't buy it.Okay, maybe he has a point. But then, read this:
BY RHYMESWIMOOD AT 07:13 AM Here's my question: Why the hell wasn't he wearing a chain mail tunic? I mean, c'mon, you're going to make a return without body armor? People like this piss me off -- one tiny thing goes wrong and it's the end of the world. And he still expects the Gap to accept his return. (What, like it's not as stained as these pants he won't shut up about?) Entitled dickweed. Some people never learn.Seriously, Consumerist readers can blame the victim for almost anything -- a recent comment suggested that a deaf woman was a blatant troublemaker because she couldn't use a Steak 'n Shake drive-thru speaker. But this? This is going too far.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Yeah, I Really Like Ice Blendeds. So?
My first day at USC, the writing division's assistant director stood up in front of the newly-minted class of 32 first year students and urged us in the strongest possible terms to Never, Never, Never Blog About School No Matter How Much We Might Want To.
This was excellent advice. In fact, we didn't know it then, but the class ahead of us had fallen into Harriet-the-Spy-type recriminations and hullabaloo precisely because of overly explicit blog coverage. And so I have drawn the curtain of discretion over my experiences at USC, with the unfortunate side effect that I posted about six entries the entire time I was in school.
However, I am serious about wanting this to be the kind the of blog I so desperately needed before I moved out here, so now that I am out of the program, I think it is time to answer the question...
Should I Go to Film School at USC?
Maybe.
First, I don't recommend the undergrad program. Mainly because I am secretly a 97-year-old biddy and don't like to see young people have fun. And because college should be a time of wandering, screw ups and false starts, none of which fits with locking yourself into a BFA program.
I went to the University of Wisconsin with every intention of getting a B.A. in journalism. This turned out to be a profoundly bad idea, and in time, I managed to figure out a better path. But if I had been trapped in the J-School from day one, it might have taken me much, much longer to pull the plug. Bottom line: I don't think anyone should be locked into the decisions they make at 18.
Also, in all honesty, very few people under 21 have the life experience -- and sufficient distance from said life experience -- to craft engaging stories. Instead, such writers (myself very much included) tend to delve into the fantastical and arch, which is fun to write, exhausting to read and impossible to produce. Better to bide your time, break up with your fiance, nurture unrequited crushes, throw up on the Bedford platform of the L, drive across the Rockies at 3 in the morning, smuggle a cat into a Best Western, buy and discard several apartments worth of Ikea, and then one day realize: You want to write for television.
That was my path. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'm pretty happy with how it worked out, so feel free to borrow it if you're so inclined. (Although, sometimes in the middle of the night, I wish I'd gone to Wesleyan, because every alum I've ever met is so smart and engaged and doing what they love. I don't know if it's something in the drinking water or what. But I digress.)
Second, I can't speak to the production MFA program. People seem to get a lot out of it and go onto successful careers in the industry, but I have no idea what it's actually like as a program.
Third, I don't know what it's like to go through the USC screenwriting program with the intention of writing for film. That was never my interest, and although I paid attention to those classes and did my best, my heart always belonged to hour long television. This may also explain why I got dinged at NYU, Columbia and UCLA, none of which have much in the way of a TV track. (I met a UCLA alum once who warmly described how much he enjoyed the TV class. The class. As in, one.)
All that said, if you want to write for television and you haven't been able to break in with a Disney fellowship or the like, then yes, I would definitely recommend USC's MFA screenwriting program.
Despite the Great Blog Incident of 2005, the program is full of great folks -- all gifted writers, generous classmates and good friends. Graduate school is not "The Real World." Everyone in the program managed to leap USC's various hurdles, i.e. assembling an application, and horrifyingly, taking the GRE. Eff! That's three months of my life I'll never get back. So there's a basic threshold of sanity/real life competence that is refreshingly different from the first week in the freshman dorm, when your roommate broke your turntable and then had sex with a UW running back WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.
Where was I? Oh, yes, the other candidates. It is a huge help to look around and realize that of the other 31 people in the program, not one of them writes the way or the kind of thing that you write. At that moment, it becomes very clear that you're not in competition with these people -- you're all on your own path. That's an important piece of information to absorb.
And then, of course, there's the actual education.
In two years, I took classes from successful sitcom and hour-long writers; sat through 15 weeks of visiting writers in Television Symposium; wrote a spec for "My Name is Earl" and "Grey's Anatomy," plus an original pilot; met a ton of working writers, from Josh Schwartz's visit to Industry Seminar to Ron Moore's appearance in hour-long drama and visited the set of "According to Jim" and "Ugly Betty."
I know, I know, big whoop, I got to visit the set. But both of those field trips taught me invaluable lessons about the industry. At "Ugly Betty," I learned the importance of keeping your head down and your eyes open -- both skills that served me well as an intern at "Mad Men." And at "According to Jim," I learned that producers sometimes hire Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf trucks to come in and make Ice Blendeds for the entire cast and crew (and any other folks who might be on set that day.)
I love good television and I love my job and I'm psyched to go back to work, but nothing, NOTHING has ever filled me with as much excitement for my chosen career as that free Ice Blended. In that moment, I knew I was on the right path.
This was excellent advice. In fact, we didn't know it then, but the class ahead of us had fallen into Harriet-the-Spy-type recriminations and hullabaloo precisely because of overly explicit blog coverage. And so I have drawn the curtain of discretion over my experiences at USC, with the unfortunate side effect that I posted about six entries the entire time I was in school.
However, I am serious about wanting this to be the kind the of blog I so desperately needed before I moved out here, so now that I am out of the program, I think it is time to answer the question...
Should I Go to Film School at USC?
Maybe.
First, I don't recommend the undergrad program. Mainly because I am secretly a 97-year-old biddy and don't like to see young people have fun. And because college should be a time of wandering, screw ups and false starts, none of which fits with locking yourself into a BFA program.
I went to the University of Wisconsin with every intention of getting a B.A. in journalism. This turned out to be a profoundly bad idea, and in time, I managed to figure out a better path. But if I had been trapped in the J-School from day one, it might have taken me much, much longer to pull the plug. Bottom line: I don't think anyone should be locked into the decisions they make at 18.
Also, in all honesty, very few people under 21 have the life experience -- and sufficient distance from said life experience -- to craft engaging stories. Instead, such writers (myself very much included) tend to delve into the fantastical and arch, which is fun to write, exhausting to read and impossible to produce. Better to bide your time, break up with your fiance, nurture unrequited crushes, throw up on the Bedford platform of the L, drive across the Rockies at 3 in the morning, smuggle a cat into a Best Western, buy and discard several apartments worth of Ikea, and then one day realize: You want to write for television.
That was my path. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'm pretty happy with how it worked out, so feel free to borrow it if you're so inclined. (Although, sometimes in the middle of the night, I wish I'd gone to Wesleyan, because every alum I've ever met is so smart and engaged and doing what they love. I don't know if it's something in the drinking water or what. But I digress.)
Second, I can't speak to the production MFA program. People seem to get a lot out of it and go onto successful careers in the industry, but I have no idea what it's actually like as a program.
Third, I don't know what it's like to go through the USC screenwriting program with the intention of writing for film. That was never my interest, and although I paid attention to those classes and did my best, my heart always belonged to hour long television. This may also explain why I got dinged at NYU, Columbia and UCLA, none of which have much in the way of a TV track. (I met a UCLA alum once who warmly described how much he enjoyed the TV class. The class. As in, one.)
All that said, if you want to write for television and you haven't been able to break in with a Disney fellowship or the like, then yes, I would definitely recommend USC's MFA screenwriting program.
Despite the Great Blog Incident of 2005, the program is full of great folks -- all gifted writers, generous classmates and good friends. Graduate school is not "The Real World." Everyone in the program managed to leap USC's various hurdles, i.e. assembling an application, and horrifyingly, taking the GRE. Eff! That's three months of my life I'll never get back. So there's a basic threshold of sanity/real life competence that is refreshingly different from the first week in the freshman dorm, when your roommate broke your turntable and then had sex with a UW running back WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.
Where was I? Oh, yes, the other candidates. It is a huge help to look around and realize that of the other 31 people in the program, not one of them writes the way or the kind of thing that you write. At that moment, it becomes very clear that you're not in competition with these people -- you're all on your own path. That's an important piece of information to absorb.
And then, of course, there's the actual education.
In two years, I took classes from successful sitcom and hour-long writers; sat through 15 weeks of visiting writers in Television Symposium; wrote a spec for "My Name is Earl" and "Grey's Anatomy," plus an original pilot; met a ton of working writers, from Josh Schwartz's visit to Industry Seminar to Ron Moore's appearance in hour-long drama and visited the set of "According to Jim" and "Ugly Betty."
I know, I know, big whoop, I got to visit the set. But both of those field trips taught me invaluable lessons about the industry. At "Ugly Betty," I learned the importance of keeping your head down and your eyes open -- both skills that served me well as an intern at "Mad Men." And at "According to Jim," I learned that producers sometimes hire Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf trucks to come in and make Ice Blendeds for the entire cast and crew (and any other folks who might be on set that day.)
I love good television and I love my job and I'm psyched to go back to work, but nothing, NOTHING has ever filled me with as much excitement for my chosen career as that free Ice Blended. In that moment, I knew I was on the right path.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Aeron Chair Is the Social Worker's Jail Tatt
Gah! James Wolcott linked to my "Breaking Bad" post -- specifically my overheated metaphor involving smoking hot Argentinians and Bryn Mawr sophomores.
For people who don't read Vanity Fair cover to cover and/or didn't obsessively track coverage of "Mad Men" last spring, this is like the Coen brothers spotting your vintage "La Dolce Vita" poster and knocking on your door to see if they can borrow it for their next film. On the one hand, it's hugely flattering, and on the other hand, you immediately realize -- as you shove that copy of "The Simpson's Movie" under an issue of Blueprint -- that everything else in your apartment betrays your complete lack of taste/discernment.
If you're coming from Mr. Wolcott's blog, welcome. Although you'll quickly discover exactly what a pointless backwater you've entered, let me spell it out: This is the blog I wish I could have read before moving out to L.A. -- what it's like to relocate from a very different urban environment (Chicago), the pros and cons of earning an MFA @ USC, the struggle to land an internship and, most recently, the brain-frying good fortune of being hired on as the "Mad Men" writers' assistant. Because I am a decent, if somewhat compulsive human being, there's no catty gossip and way, way too much metaphor-heavy ranting.
By curious coincidence, the remainder of this entry touches on the only other thing (besides my fervent hopes for a fair, timely settlement from the AMPTP) that gets me through the day: Celebrity Rehab. Jesus, that's the stuff. It takes us forever to get through a single episode, there's so much pausing the 'Vo to discuss this or that dysfunctional slight of hand.
My heart thrills to the sight of resident tech Shelly Sprague, coolly regarding the braggart Ricco Rodriguez over her glasses while he flounders for some glimmer of recognition or approval. Ms. Sprague is nowhere to be found on CR's IMDB page or the VH-1's website, yet she provides a vitally important and delicious counterpart to Dr. Drew's own centered calm. As Conway goes off the grid for what seems like the sixth time in three episodes, we cut to her in the next room, telling Dr. Drew "Jeff is being extremely... non-compliant." No drama, no overt judgment, just a measured appraisal of the situation.
I used to joke with some LCSW friends that I thought the government should staff up an elite squad of Navy Seal-grade social workers, to be deployed into stressful situations in order to take things down a notch. Not just to post-Katrina New Orleans or 9/11 NYC, but college dorms where things have taken a "Lord of the Flies" turn or dysfunctional offices where the employees actually think their workplace is a family.
But honestly, I don't think those assignments -- all good, valuable and necessary -- can approach the challenge of working with addicts. It's the mental health equivalent of the sauna fight in "Eastern Promises." High stakes, no holds barred, balls out conflict -- and it takes some kind of unkillable inner strength to get through it alive.
I couldn't do it. MG will tell you, I can't get through two minutes of the show without yelling at the young girls that they're being pulled into the codependent gravitational pull coming off Jeff Conway. He's like a dysfunctional Jupiter, attracting smaller, equally effed up moons from distant galaxies and/or suburbs of Los Angeles.
His addled girlfriend is so strung out on their relationship that she panicked at the prospect of killing two hours in Pasadena, waiting for the start of visiting hours. Hell, I know people who drive out to Pasadena just to walk around aimlessly for an entire day.
Apparently, dating Jeff Conway strips you of any interest in The Container Store. If there's a more horrific consequence to drug addiction, I don't want to know.
For people who don't read Vanity Fair cover to cover and/or didn't obsessively track coverage of "Mad Men" last spring, this is like the Coen brothers spotting your vintage "La Dolce Vita" poster and knocking on your door to see if they can borrow it for their next film. On the one hand, it's hugely flattering, and on the other hand, you immediately realize -- as you shove that copy of "The Simpson's Movie" under an issue of Blueprint -- that everything else in your apartment betrays your complete lack of taste/discernment.
If you're coming from Mr. Wolcott's blog, welcome. Although you'll quickly discover exactly what a pointless backwater you've entered, let me spell it out: This is the blog I wish I could have read before moving out to L.A. -- what it's like to relocate from a very different urban environment (Chicago), the pros and cons of earning an MFA @ USC, the struggle to land an internship and, most recently, the brain-frying good fortune of being hired on as the "Mad Men" writers' assistant. Because I am a decent, if somewhat compulsive human being, there's no catty gossip and way, way too much metaphor-heavy ranting.
By curious coincidence, the remainder of this entry touches on the only other thing (besides my fervent hopes for a fair, timely settlement from the AMPTP) that gets me through the day: Celebrity Rehab. Jesus, that's the stuff. It takes us forever to get through a single episode, there's so much pausing the 'Vo to discuss this or that dysfunctional slight of hand.
My heart thrills to the sight of resident tech Shelly Sprague, coolly regarding the braggart Ricco Rodriguez over her glasses while he flounders for some glimmer of recognition or approval. Ms. Sprague is nowhere to be found on CR's IMDB page or the VH-1's website, yet she provides a vitally important and delicious counterpart to Dr. Drew's own centered calm. As Conway goes off the grid for what seems like the sixth time in three episodes, we cut to her in the next room, telling Dr. Drew "Jeff is being extremely... non-compliant." No drama, no overt judgment, just a measured appraisal of the situation.
I used to joke with some LCSW friends that I thought the government should staff up an elite squad of Navy Seal-grade social workers, to be deployed into stressful situations in order to take things down a notch. Not just to post-Katrina New Orleans or 9/11 NYC, but college dorms where things have taken a "Lord of the Flies" turn or dysfunctional offices where the employees actually think their workplace is a family.
But honestly, I don't think those assignments -- all good, valuable and necessary -- can approach the challenge of working with addicts. It's the mental health equivalent of the sauna fight in "Eastern Promises." High stakes, no holds barred, balls out conflict -- and it takes some kind of unkillable inner strength to get through it alive.
I couldn't do it. MG will tell you, I can't get through two minutes of the show without yelling at the young girls that they're being pulled into the codependent gravitational pull coming off Jeff Conway. He's like a dysfunctional Jupiter, attracting smaller, equally effed up moons from distant galaxies and/or suburbs of Los Angeles.
His addled girlfriend is so strung out on their relationship that she panicked at the prospect of killing two hours in Pasadena, waiting for the start of visiting hours. Hell, I know people who drive out to Pasadena just to walk around aimlessly for an entire day.
Apparently, dating Jeff Conway strips you of any interest in The Container Store. If there's a more horrific consequence to drug addiction, I don't want to know.
Friday, January 25, 2008
It begins...
I start on Monday.
An interim deal has been signed, sealed in an airless canister and fired into space so it can never be rescinded or altered in anyway, until it accidentally collides with the imprisoned remains of General Zod in the Phantom Zone and he comes to the "Mad Men" writers' room to claim us as his loyal slaves.
I am almost consumed by the guilt of going back to work -- yes, legally, legitimately, and even possibly serving as yet another wedge to force the AMPTP to reach a deal -- while most of the WGA is still on strike.
Why yes, I have both Irish Catholic AND Eastern European grandparents. Why do you ask?
Even so, I am extremely, extremely, extremely excited.
P.S. Can I get you anything? Coffee? An extra fork for that salad?
An interim deal has been signed, sealed in an airless canister and fired into space so it can never be rescinded or altered in anyway, until it accidentally collides with the imprisoned remains of General Zod in the Phantom Zone and he comes to the "Mad Men" writers' room to claim us as his loyal slaves.
I am almost consumed by the guilt of going back to work -- yes, legally, legitimately, and even possibly serving as yet another wedge to force the AMPTP to reach a deal -- while most of the WGA is still on strike.
Why yes, I have both Irish Catholic AND Eastern European grandparents. Why do you ask?
Even so, I am extremely, extremely, extremely excited.
P.S. Can I get you anything? Coffee? An extra fork for that salad?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
This Just In
Variety is reporting rumors of an interim WGA deal with Lionsgate.
As in, Lionsgate, the company that makes "Mad Men."
Will this happen? I don't know.
If it does happen, does it mean I'm going back to work? I don't know.
How do I feel about this? Excited and uncertain and torn.
Must not get my hopes up.
Ironically, am already allowing myself to feel guilty about going back to work before the strike is settled.
Because it's always a good time to suffer.
As in, Lionsgate, the company that makes "Mad Men."
Will this happen? I don't know.
If it does happen, does it mean I'm going back to work? I don't know.
How do I feel about this? Excited and uncertain and torn.
Must not get my hopes up.
Ironically, am already allowing myself to feel guilty about going back to work before the strike is settled.
Because it's always a good time to suffer.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Get Up On, Vol. 1
"Breaking Bad" on AMC. Holy crap, you are an awesome show. I can love you with the pure, untainted love of someone who has not seen your next seven episodes beaten out on white boards. "Breaking Bad" is like the smoking hot Argentinian who hooks up with your on-again-off-again Significant Other when the S.O. studies abroad for a semester. You'll get back together when the S.O. comes back next September, but in the meantime, it is very flattering to realize your Significant Other has such awesome taste -- and is also so personally attractive that the S.O. can attract the attention of smoking hot Argentinians.
(In this metaphor, "Breaking Bad" is the smoking hot Argentinian; "Mad Men" is the sophomore at Bryn Mawr; AMC is the junior at Yale you met last summer when you interned at HBO; I am the roommate who buys bottles of Ballatore with my older sister's ID and happily sits up all night discussing whether AMC looks more like Kyle McLaughlin or Scott Bakula.)
"The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on Fox. If I were a Titaness, I would eat this show to hide it from my angry Titan spouse until one day it will spring, full grown, from my brow and be the most beloved of all my children. Wait, I think I'm combining Athena and Zeus. Never mind. Two bad ass ladies! One kinda mom aged! One kinda teen aged! Both frickin' bad ass! Both brunette! Awesome! (Also, if you notice, really deft structuring of the show so that we always have at least two ongoing threads -- John in high school, Sarah investigating SkyNet, plus an overarching ethical question. Love!)
The New Orthotics in My Shoes. The old orthotics were pretty good. I haven't wracked up my knees since I got them. (Except for that two mile walk on a beach full of pebbles in Ireland, but no orthotic was going to protect me from that.) The new orthotics are like sex on my feet. I put them in my shoes and suddenly there is the most delicious support underneath my arches, like wee brownies are carrying me through my day's errands. Also, these orthotics are made from hard plastic with purple felt lining, and probably won't fall apart in two years like my previous vinyl 'n foam 'n fiberglass pair.
(Anyone who tells you that nobody walks in L.A. is a liar. Because I did not wear a pair of orthotics to shit in 29 months by sitting behind the wheel of a car. )
Taking the 10 to the 405 to Sunset. I am pretty embarrassed I did not think of this sooner. But thanks to an invite to some joint @ La Cienega and Sunset, I decided to mix it up, and what do you know? Fast, easy shortcut to the mid-west side. Huzzah.
Almost Being Done with "Eclipse." I don't know when I've been more bored by a young adult novel. As of this morning, I've skipped over three hours with no regrets. Most lame development ever: Irresistible Bella wants to get it on with her sexy vampire Edward, but he's holding out UNTIL THEY'RE MARRIED. And I'm not talking about the dark gift. I'm talking about the sweaty, moan-y gift. Although Edward is also hoarding the dark gift until after the Big Day. Basically, nothing awesome can happen until they're married. P.S. The author is a Mormon. Coincidence? I think not.
(P.P.S. I have nothing against Mormons, except that apparently they write horrifically tedious young adult novels. I feel like I bought a ticket to "Cloverfield" and got tricked into watching "Pilgrim's Progress." But then I feel the same way about C.S. Lewis, so there you go.)
(P.P.P.S. Sorry for the excessive metaphoring. I promise, my next post will be completely literal.)
(In this metaphor, "Breaking Bad" is the smoking hot Argentinian; "Mad Men" is the sophomore at Bryn Mawr; AMC is the junior at Yale you met last summer when you interned at HBO; I am the roommate who buys bottles of Ballatore with my older sister's ID and happily sits up all night discussing whether AMC looks more like Kyle McLaughlin or Scott Bakula.)
"The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on Fox. If I were a Titaness, I would eat this show to hide it from my angry Titan spouse until one day it will spring, full grown, from my brow and be the most beloved of all my children. Wait, I think I'm combining Athena and Zeus. Never mind. Two bad ass ladies! One kinda mom aged! One kinda teen aged! Both frickin' bad ass! Both brunette! Awesome! (Also, if you notice, really deft structuring of the show so that we always have at least two ongoing threads -- John in high school, Sarah investigating SkyNet, plus an overarching ethical question. Love!)
The New Orthotics in My Shoes. The old orthotics were pretty good. I haven't wracked up my knees since I got them. (Except for that two mile walk on a beach full of pebbles in Ireland, but no orthotic was going to protect me from that.) The new orthotics are like sex on my feet. I put them in my shoes and suddenly there is the most delicious support underneath my arches, like wee brownies are carrying me through my day's errands. Also, these orthotics are made from hard plastic with purple felt lining, and probably won't fall apart in two years like my previous vinyl 'n foam 'n fiberglass pair.
(Anyone who tells you that nobody walks in L.A. is a liar. Because I did not wear a pair of orthotics to shit in 29 months by sitting behind the wheel of a car. )
Taking the 10 to the 405 to Sunset. I am pretty embarrassed I did not think of this sooner. But thanks to an invite to some joint @ La Cienega and Sunset, I decided to mix it up, and what do you know? Fast, easy shortcut to the mid-west side. Huzzah.
Almost Being Done with "Eclipse." I don't know when I've been more bored by a young adult novel. As of this morning, I've skipped over three hours with no regrets. Most lame development ever: Irresistible Bella wants to get it on with her sexy vampire Edward, but he's holding out UNTIL THEY'RE MARRIED. And I'm not talking about the dark gift. I'm talking about the sweaty, moan-y gift. Although Edward is also hoarding the dark gift until after the Big Day. Basically, nothing awesome can happen until they're married. P.S. The author is a Mormon. Coincidence? I think not.
(P.P.S. I have nothing against Mormons, except that apparently they write horrifically tedious young adult novels. I feel like I bought a ticket to "Cloverfield" and got tricked into watching "Pilgrim's Progress." But then I feel the same way about C.S. Lewis, so there you go.)
(P.P.P.S. Sorry for the excessive metaphoring. I promise, my next post will be completely literal.)
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
And Now For Something Completely Tedious
I know very little about either football or economics. Nonetheless, I root for USC every September, because I dropped a crapton of cash on tuition there, and because they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of burly 20-year-olds who can slip between looming tackles like a wet watermelon seed.
In economics, I am a fan of the theory that inadequate consumer income brought on the Great Depression. I first touched upon it here -- particularly the way in which the lower and middle classes overextended themselves on credit in order to maintain the fiction that their standard of living was keeping pace with the top 5%. (Because, of course, it totally wasn't keeping pace with the top 5%. Largely because said top 5% were redirecting all their free capital into further stock market speculation, rather than increased wages or the like.)
Like a belated Christmas present, the New York Times has introduced me to a recent study which found that from 1980 to 2005, the national economy more than doubled. (The dears, they even adjusted for inflation! I love it when people adjust for inflation. If there were a single economic skill I long for, it is the ability to adjust for inflation. Is there anything more annoying that movie studios that trumpet their film as the "biggest grossing picture of all time" without adjusting their gross for inflation? No, there is not. But I digress.)
In that same window of time, the average income for the bottom 90% of America has dropped like a stone. In 1973, the bottom 90% made an average of $33,001 (adjusted for inflation, natch.) Today, the average income is nearly $4000 less.
Less? Yes, less. In 34 years, the average American has since his or her income drop $4000.
But of course, nobody says to themselves, "Adjusted for inflation, I make almost $4000 less per year than my parents, so I'd better be a little thriftier with my dollar." People see that their parents could buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs, and assume (wrongly?) that they should be able to buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs.
And that's how you wedge our economy so far up the ass of the subprime crisis that our dollar bills are starting to smell like flopsweat. Yes, some people knowingly took on mortgages they couldn't afford. Yes, some people openly defrauded the system. But many, many, many people just thought they were following in their parents' footsteps, and their parents before them.
(Note to Oslo: Feel free to send my Nobel Prize for Economics to our place in Santa Monica. Better use Fed Ex; our building has really small mail slots.)
In economics, I am a fan of the theory that inadequate consumer income brought on the Great Depression. I first touched upon it here -- particularly the way in which the lower and middle classes overextended themselves on credit in order to maintain the fiction that their standard of living was keeping pace with the top 5%. (Because, of course, it totally wasn't keeping pace with the top 5%. Largely because said top 5% were redirecting all their free capital into further stock market speculation, rather than increased wages or the like.)
Like a belated Christmas present, the New York Times has introduced me to a recent study which found that from 1980 to 2005, the national economy more than doubled. (The dears, they even adjusted for inflation! I love it when people adjust for inflation. If there were a single economic skill I long for, it is the ability to adjust for inflation. Is there anything more annoying that movie studios that trumpet their film as the "biggest grossing picture of all time" without adjusting their gross for inflation? No, there is not. But I digress.)
In that same window of time, the average income for the bottom 90% of America has dropped like a stone. In 1973, the bottom 90% made an average of $33,001 (adjusted for inflation, natch.) Today, the average income is nearly $4000 less.
Less? Yes, less. In 34 years, the average American has since his or her income drop $4000.
But of course, nobody says to themselves, "Adjusted for inflation, I make almost $4000 less per year than my parents, so I'd better be a little thriftier with my dollar." People see that their parents could buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs, and assume (wrongly?) that they should be able to buy a three bedroom home in the suburbs.
And that's how you wedge our economy so far up the ass of the subprime crisis that our dollar bills are starting to smell like flopsweat. Yes, some people knowingly took on mortgages they couldn't afford. Yes, some people openly defrauded the system. But many, many, many people just thought they were following in their parents' footsteps, and their parents before them.
(Note to Oslo: Feel free to send my Nobel Prize for Economics to our place in Santa Monica. Better use Fed Ex; our building has really small mail slots.)
Monday, January 21, 2008
A Day That Will Live in Annoyance
Annoying Piece of News The First: Some asshat smuggled a camera into a screening of "Cloverfield" and posted it on the Internet. No, I won't give you the link. Yes, I'm pretty sure Bad Robot is on the case.
Did I turn 63 over night or are people attaining all new levels of assholish behavior?
This isn't like pirating "Cloverfield" to sell black market DVDs. Although obviously illegal, at least there's a rational incentive: profit.
And it's not like torrenting "Cloverfield," which has a time/irritation threshold that would drive almost anyone to the theater and/or DVD store. (Full disclosure: I torrented the first two seasons of "Dr. Who," but only because I could not wait the 9 or more months until the Sci Fi Channel acquired and aired the BBC series. I subsequently bought both seasons on DVD, and watched season three when it aired, just a few weeks after it had finished running on the BBC.)
But to put up an hour and thirteen minutes of a pirated movie on a click-and-play website? That's just bald I-broke-the-law-and-no-one-can-stop-me vandalism. And it makes me want to punch someone.
Annoying Piece of News the Second: My beloved Kerastase Elasto-Curl Rinse Out Conditioner ($31 for 6.8 oz) has been discontinued. Near as I can figure, it has been replaced with another product that costs $58 and does not even have the word "curl" in the name.
This is grievous news indeed.
You may judge me harshly for spending $31 on a 6.8 oz tube of conditioner. But the curly-headed individual lives in a wretched no man's land of very few grooming choices. Many, many, many women with curly hair will actually blow dry it straight rather than bother with the hassle. (Every time you see a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, hair hanging pin-straight down her back -- that's a professionally administered blow out.)
I think it's a giant waste of time. The one time I let someone do it, the resulting hair was disturbingly unKatelike, as if I had traded hair with Barbie's brown-haired best friend Midge. Alas, I am in the minority. The purchase and maintenance of blow-outs in sundry high end salons is a frequent topic in every glossy ladies magazine, and there is seemingly always some new tool or trick to discuss, like ionic hair dryers or ceramic flat-irons.
Getting back to my original point: Having curly hair is like having profound lactose intolerance of the scalp. You are constantly ignoring or inverting conventional wisdom. For example: I haven't brushed my hair since 1989. I don't even own a brush. (My last brush was awesome, with an olive wood handle that smelled fantastic. But from my 13th birthday onwards, every time I used it, the result was, ah, horrific.)
I don't own a comb either, but I get a thorough combing every time I get my haircut. Oddly, there are never any world-class snarls or tangles, although as a child, I used to acquire both on an almost hourly basis.
If I could get away with it, I would wash my hair once a week. It never looks worse than when it's perfectly clean. But even though every shampoo-less day makes my hair curlier and curlier, eventually it gets to be more than I can handle, with crazy spirally tufts sticking out in all directions. And that's when I have to show my hair who's boss, usually three days after my last shampoo.
Anyway, the point is, I am okay with spending $31 on conditioner, because at the rate I use it, a tube can last me almost a year. And because I only do three things to my hair (wash it, condition it, and fingercomb some goop through it), I need each of those things to work EXTREMELY WELL.
There are no second chances with curly hair. If it all goes to hell, I am utterly boned. I can't comb it out, I can't blow dry it straight. I can't even wash it again and start over, because washing my hair twice in one day makes it frizzy and ridiculous, no matter how much conditioner I use.
Finally, after years of searching, I had the trifecta: a shampoo, a conditioner and a goop that all worked perfectly. Then Kerastase goes and discontinues the lynch pin of my whole system. Bastards.
Oh, God. Just the thought of wandering out into the wilds of various salons and Walgreens, looking for a replacement for my Elasto-Curl weighs on me... scrutinizing the label, trying to decide if this stuff has too much silicone or not enough, worrying that I'll hate the smell, wondering if it's worth the price. It's like my hair is about to be audited by the IRS.
Did I turn 63 over night or are people attaining all new levels of assholish behavior?
This isn't like pirating "Cloverfield" to sell black market DVDs. Although obviously illegal, at least there's a rational incentive: profit.
And it's not like torrenting "Cloverfield," which has a time/irritation threshold that would drive almost anyone to the theater and/or DVD store. (Full disclosure: I torrented the first two seasons of "Dr. Who," but only because I could not wait the 9 or more months until the Sci Fi Channel acquired and aired the BBC series. I subsequently bought both seasons on DVD, and watched season three when it aired, just a few weeks after it had finished running on the BBC.)
But to put up an hour and thirteen minutes of a pirated movie on a click-and-play website? That's just bald I-broke-the-law-and-no-one-can-stop-me vandalism. And it makes me want to punch someone.
Annoying Piece of News the Second: My beloved Kerastase Elasto-Curl Rinse Out Conditioner ($31 for 6.8 oz) has been discontinued. Near as I can figure, it has been replaced with another product that costs $58 and does not even have the word "curl" in the name.
This is grievous news indeed.
You may judge me harshly for spending $31 on a 6.8 oz tube of conditioner. But the curly-headed individual lives in a wretched no man's land of very few grooming choices. Many, many, many women with curly hair will actually blow dry it straight rather than bother with the hassle. (Every time you see a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, hair hanging pin-straight down her back -- that's a professionally administered blow out.)
I think it's a giant waste of time. The one time I let someone do it, the resulting hair was disturbingly unKatelike, as if I had traded hair with Barbie's brown-haired best friend Midge. Alas, I am in the minority. The purchase and maintenance of blow-outs in sundry high end salons is a frequent topic in every glossy ladies magazine, and there is seemingly always some new tool or trick to discuss, like ionic hair dryers or ceramic flat-irons.
Getting back to my original point: Having curly hair is like having profound lactose intolerance of the scalp. You are constantly ignoring or inverting conventional wisdom. For example: I haven't brushed my hair since 1989. I don't even own a brush. (My last brush was awesome, with an olive wood handle that smelled fantastic. But from my 13th birthday onwards, every time I used it, the result was, ah, horrific.)
I don't own a comb either, but I get a thorough combing every time I get my haircut. Oddly, there are never any world-class snarls or tangles, although as a child, I used to acquire both on an almost hourly basis.
If I could get away with it, I would wash my hair once a week. It never looks worse than when it's perfectly clean. But even though every shampoo-less day makes my hair curlier and curlier, eventually it gets to be more than I can handle, with crazy spirally tufts sticking out in all directions. And that's when I have to show my hair who's boss, usually three days after my last shampoo.
Anyway, the point is, I am okay with spending $31 on conditioner, because at the rate I use it, a tube can last me almost a year. And because I only do three things to my hair (wash it, condition it, and fingercomb some goop through it), I need each of those things to work EXTREMELY WELL.
There are no second chances with curly hair. If it all goes to hell, I am utterly boned. I can't comb it out, I can't blow dry it straight. I can't even wash it again and start over, because washing my hair twice in one day makes it frizzy and ridiculous, no matter how much conditioner I use.
Finally, after years of searching, I had the trifecta: a shampoo, a conditioner and a goop that all worked perfectly. Then Kerastase goes and discontinues the lynch pin of my whole system. Bastards.
Oh, God. Just the thought of wandering out into the wilds of various salons and Walgreens, looking for a replacement for my Elasto-Curl weighs on me... scrutinizing the label, trying to decide if this stuff has too much silicone or not enough, worrying that I'll hate the smell, wondering if it's worth the price. It's like my hair is about to be audited by the IRS.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Miscellany
Pernod, the French anise-flavored liquor, is a fantastic addition to any kind of mussel/shrimp/scallop dish. I've already steamed up some mussels with good results, and I have high hopes for its next use. However, I have yet to find a way to consume the stuff in a glass without wanting to shave my tongue afterwards. My first taste was, hmm, very reminiscent of Triaminic brand children's cough syrup.
And now, a long overdue follow up on my conversations with various relatives w/r/t to what exactly is the deal with this writers' strike.
In these conversations, I have frequently explained the concept of force majeure. Said principle allows one or both parties in a contractual agreement to withdraw from said agreement without financial penalty. Among the various act of god clauses in the standard deal contract, most industry contracts also specifically mention that a strike of eight to ten weeks will also trigger force majeure.
You have to understand is that virtually everyone and everything more important than a stapler has a studio deal. I worked for a company in Santa Monica that was funded completely by a deal with Disney (21 miles away in Burbank.) The next office over belonged to David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's production company -- a small organization that was, most likely, entirely funded by a deal with one of the big studios. Once upon a time, the film industry ran on the studio system; now it runs on deals. And all the deals, ultimately, go back to one of the big studios. (Disney, Sony, Time Warner, NBC/Universal, Fox and Viacom. That's six right? I think that's all of them.)
At this point in the story, I tend to use Mr. Cuba Gooding Jr. as a hypothetical individual with a hypothetical deal which perhaps his studio would like to terminate, rather than continue to pay him millions of dollars for such films as "Snow Dogs." I mean no offense to Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm sure his contract is in good standing and no one has any interest in releasing him from his deal.
And now, at long last, the relevant information. Futon Critic has a list here of Very Nearly All the TV Deals There Are. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the various film deals. From what I can see, 50 deals were canceled in the last week -- and that's just on the TV side.
Quite a lot of the details are fuzzy, but for example, Liz Astrof, who worked on "Welcome to the Captain" in some capacity, is rumored to have had a two year, seven figure deal. That means, minimum, she was going to make a million bucks a year. But not anymore, because her deal has been canceled.
Now, multiply those savings times the other 49 canceled deals on the list and that, dear friends, is why the AMPTP wasn't in any hurry to wrap up the strike. A month of "House" reruns is a drag, but it's nothing compared to saving several hundred million bucks in contractual payments.
We can only hope that, having thinned the ranks somewhat, the studios are now in the mood to actually make a deal.
And now, a long overdue follow up on my conversations with various relatives w/r/t to what exactly is the deal with this writers' strike.
In these conversations, I have frequently explained the concept of force majeure. Said principle allows one or both parties in a contractual agreement to withdraw from said agreement without financial penalty. Among the various act of god clauses in the standard deal contract, most industry contracts also specifically mention that a strike of eight to ten weeks will also trigger force majeure.
You have to understand is that virtually everyone and everything more important than a stapler has a studio deal. I worked for a company in Santa Monica that was funded completely by a deal with Disney (21 miles away in Burbank.) The next office over belonged to David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's production company -- a small organization that was, most likely, entirely funded by a deal with one of the big studios. Once upon a time, the film industry ran on the studio system; now it runs on deals. And all the deals, ultimately, go back to one of the big studios. (Disney, Sony, Time Warner, NBC/Universal, Fox and Viacom. That's six right? I think that's all of them.)
At this point in the story, I tend to use Mr. Cuba Gooding Jr. as a hypothetical individual with a hypothetical deal which perhaps his studio would like to terminate, rather than continue to pay him millions of dollars for such films as "Snow Dogs." I mean no offense to Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm sure his contract is in good standing and no one has any interest in releasing him from his deal.
And now, at long last, the relevant information. Futon Critic has a list here of Very Nearly All the TV Deals There Are. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the various film deals. From what I can see, 50 deals were canceled in the last week -- and that's just on the TV side.
Quite a lot of the details are fuzzy, but for example, Liz Astrof, who worked on "Welcome to the Captain" in some capacity, is rumored to have had a two year, seven figure deal. That means, minimum, she was going to make a million bucks a year. But not anymore, because her deal has been canceled.
Now, multiply those savings times the other 49 canceled deals on the list and that, dear friends, is why the AMPTP wasn't in any hurry to wrap up the strike. A month of "House" reruns is a drag, but it's nothing compared to saving several hundred million bucks in contractual payments.
We can only hope that, having thinned the ranks somewhat, the studios are now in the mood to actually make a deal.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
You Learn Something New Every Day
If I haven't mentioned it before, one of my most beloved guilty pleasures is the Trashy Audio Book.
Originally, I tried listening to audiobooks at the gym, as an incentive to work out, but I was forever switching over to NPR, or in the evenings, opting for the TV band on my radio/Discman. (This works better in the midwest, where network television starts at 7 p.m. and the really good stuff hits the air around 8, perfect for walking home from work or putting in some time on the elliptical. When you're on the west coast and have to wait until 9, it doesn't work nearly so well.)
Then I became ensnared in a protracted bout of insomnia -- brought on by a combination of too much coffee, not enough exercise, and a ton of anxiety about school and career prospects. One night, I grabbed my iPod and listened to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Practically Everything, " determined not to care how long it took me to fall asleep. I was out like a light inside of 20 minutes.
So that's how it started. Once I branched out into novels, I discovered that some books would hold my attention so well that I could actually bribe myself into going for a walk if it meant listening to the next installment. But whether I listen to it as I fall asleep or walk around the neighborhood, it has to be a ripping yarn.
I have tried, repeatedly, to go the classy route, with mixed results. Dickens works out pretty well, because he's a master story teller. "The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud was praised high and low when it came out last year, but it was a dreadful slog. Similarly, I don't think I'll ever get past the second chapter of "The Time Traveler's Wife," although I am cautiously optimistic about my chances with "Bel Canto."
But in the end, the best options are distinctly, hmm, populist. Elmore Leonard is great; Carl Hiassen even better, if that's possible. (Hiassen seems to keep a closer eye on the karmic scale, with the result that fewer people die through misadventure than in Leonard.) I've cut a giant swath through the backlist of Lois McMaster Bujold, a science fiction/fantasy writer of tremendous gifts but absolutely no intellectual cachet. (I wish it were otherwise. If Octavia Butler can score a MacArthur for her work, than Bujold should at least be in the running for her smart, shockingly well-observed fiction.)
In my last visit with Bujold, I realized with some pleasure that she was clearly an enormous fan of Jane Austen and, bestill my heart, Dorothy L. Sayers. The vogue for Austen is seemingly unkillable, and every month bring some new, close-but-no-cigar attempt at continuing her legacy. But Dorothy L. Sayers enjoys no such continual reuse, alas, and once you read through her books, you are at an end, until you forget the plots sufficiently to go back and re-read them. (There are two attempted sequels, based on notes found among her papers, but I cannot recommend them.)
Sayers was a mystery novelist, working through the 1920s and into the 30s, before becoming considerably more theological in her interests and switching over to writing religious dramas for the stage. Her chief protagonist was the younger son of a peer, one Lord Peter Wimsey -- a self-styled upper-class twit, with plenty of money and free time. Her novels have all had their moment in the Masterpiece Theater spotlight, although I don't think the definitive Peter Wimsey has been captured on film. If you could get Hugh Grant to completely immerse himself in the slick-haired, monocle-wearing fashions of 1920, you might be in the neighborhood.
Anyway, it was with great pleasure that I realized Bujold was borrowing subtly from both Austen AND Sayers in her Miles Vorkosigan series. Going back to the start of the book, I noticed that the dedication mentioned Jane, Dorothy and a third name that meant nothing to me: Georgette.
That, it turns out, was a reference to Georgette Heyer, a contemporary of Sayers who seems to have single-handedly invented Regency romance. It's a genre for which I have very little respect, having spent many hours as an Oak Park library aide putting to rights the endless inventory of paperback romances, all with interchangeable titles like "As My Lord Would Have It" and "A Decidedly Awkward Affair," illustrated with girls in empire gowns touching their fans to their chins with an air of elegant bewilderment.
But to begin with, Heyer set the bar very, very high. She was a thorough student of the Regency era, accumulating vast quantities of research materials on everything from slang to snuffboxes, and knew her history cold. Her work, like Bujold's, is not openly derivative of Austen -- it has a tone and a style all its own, and is likewise satisfying on its own terms, whether you get all the references or not.
The best illustration I can give of the inherent differences between Austen and Heyer: I am currently halfway through "A Civil Contract," which follows the struggles of a destitute young lord, attempting to repair his late father's decades of fiscal idiocy. A man, in other words, in much the same predicament as Elizabeth Bennett or the sisters from "Sense and Sensibility," in that he has nothing but his good name and a desire to protect his family from dishonor. Except that Austen could never have written this book. Unmarried to the last, I don't think she was ever able to know a man well enough to write entirely from his point of view.
(Or, alternatively, she thought it was her duty to tell the more-neglected female side of the story, and I can't say she was wrong. Happily, a hundred years later, Heyer was willing to give it a shot. An electrifying thought: What would Margaret Atwood make of a Regency novel?)
Anyway, I am greatly encouraged by this new find. I have no idea what the rest of Heyer's bibliography is like -- and she is reportedly an extraordinarily trite mystery novelist -- but I am really looking forward to investigating her other stuff.
P.S. The excellent Jane Espenson often finds a way to tie a seemingly unrelated tidbit of information back to her governing theme of Writing the Best Spec Script You Possibly Can. I think we all know that if I chose, I could tie this post into my current mania for Advice on Moving to Los Angeles, but we're all adults here, so I'm going to let you make that connection for yourself.
Originally, I tried listening to audiobooks at the gym, as an incentive to work out, but I was forever switching over to NPR, or in the evenings, opting for the TV band on my radio/Discman. (This works better in the midwest, where network television starts at 7 p.m. and the really good stuff hits the air around 8, perfect for walking home from work or putting in some time on the elliptical. When you're on the west coast and have to wait until 9, it doesn't work nearly so well.)
Then I became ensnared in a protracted bout of insomnia -- brought on by a combination of too much coffee, not enough exercise, and a ton of anxiety about school and career prospects. One night, I grabbed my iPod and listened to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Practically Everything, " determined not to care how long it took me to fall asleep. I was out like a light inside of 20 minutes.
So that's how it started. Once I branched out into novels, I discovered that some books would hold my attention so well that I could actually bribe myself into going for a walk if it meant listening to the next installment. But whether I listen to it as I fall asleep or walk around the neighborhood, it has to be a ripping yarn.
I have tried, repeatedly, to go the classy route, with mixed results. Dickens works out pretty well, because he's a master story teller. "The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud was praised high and low when it came out last year, but it was a dreadful slog. Similarly, I don't think I'll ever get past the second chapter of "The Time Traveler's Wife," although I am cautiously optimistic about my chances with "Bel Canto."
But in the end, the best options are distinctly, hmm, populist. Elmore Leonard is great; Carl Hiassen even better, if that's possible. (Hiassen seems to keep a closer eye on the karmic scale, with the result that fewer people die through misadventure than in Leonard.) I've cut a giant swath through the backlist of Lois McMaster Bujold, a science fiction/fantasy writer of tremendous gifts but absolutely no intellectual cachet. (I wish it were otherwise. If Octavia Butler can score a MacArthur for her work, than Bujold should at least be in the running for her smart, shockingly well-observed fiction.)
In my last visit with Bujold, I realized with some pleasure that she was clearly an enormous fan of Jane Austen and, bestill my heart, Dorothy L. Sayers. The vogue for Austen is seemingly unkillable, and every month bring some new, close-but-no-cigar attempt at continuing her legacy. But Dorothy L. Sayers enjoys no such continual reuse, alas, and once you read through her books, you are at an end, until you forget the plots sufficiently to go back and re-read them. (There are two attempted sequels, based on notes found among her papers, but I cannot recommend them.)
Sayers was a mystery novelist, working through the 1920s and into the 30s, before becoming considerably more theological in her interests and switching over to writing religious dramas for the stage. Her chief protagonist was the younger son of a peer, one Lord Peter Wimsey -- a self-styled upper-class twit, with plenty of money and free time. Her novels have all had their moment in the Masterpiece Theater spotlight, although I don't think the definitive Peter Wimsey has been captured on film. If you could get Hugh Grant to completely immerse himself in the slick-haired, monocle-wearing fashions of 1920, you might be in the neighborhood.
Anyway, it was with great pleasure that I realized Bujold was borrowing subtly from both Austen AND Sayers in her Miles Vorkosigan series. Going back to the start of the book, I noticed that the dedication mentioned Jane, Dorothy and a third name that meant nothing to me: Georgette.
That, it turns out, was a reference to Georgette Heyer, a contemporary of Sayers who seems to have single-handedly invented Regency romance. It's a genre for which I have very little respect, having spent many hours as an Oak Park library aide putting to rights the endless inventory of paperback romances, all with interchangeable titles like "As My Lord Would Have It" and "A Decidedly Awkward Affair," illustrated with girls in empire gowns touching their fans to their chins with an air of elegant bewilderment.
But to begin with, Heyer set the bar very, very high. She was a thorough student of the Regency era, accumulating vast quantities of research materials on everything from slang to snuffboxes, and knew her history cold. Her work, like Bujold's, is not openly derivative of Austen -- it has a tone and a style all its own, and is likewise satisfying on its own terms, whether you get all the references or not.
The best illustration I can give of the inherent differences between Austen and Heyer: I am currently halfway through "A Civil Contract," which follows the struggles of a destitute young lord, attempting to repair his late father's decades of fiscal idiocy. A man, in other words, in much the same predicament as Elizabeth Bennett or the sisters from "Sense and Sensibility," in that he has nothing but his good name and a desire to protect his family from dishonor. Except that Austen could never have written this book. Unmarried to the last, I don't think she was ever able to know a man well enough to write entirely from his point of view.
(Or, alternatively, she thought it was her duty to tell the more-neglected female side of the story, and I can't say she was wrong. Happily, a hundred years later, Heyer was willing to give it a shot. An electrifying thought: What would Margaret Atwood make of a Regency novel?)
Anyway, I am greatly encouraged by this new find. I have no idea what the rest of Heyer's bibliography is like -- and she is reportedly an extraordinarily trite mystery novelist -- but I am really looking forward to investigating her other stuff.
P.S. The excellent Jane Espenson often finds a way to tie a seemingly unrelated tidbit of information back to her governing theme of Writing the Best Spec Script You Possibly Can. I think we all know that if I chose, I could tie this post into my current mania for Advice on Moving to Los Angeles, but we're all adults here, so I'm going to let you make that connection for yourself.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Yet More Not-Terribly-Original Advice
I've just eaten 16 Milk Duds. They were delicious, but that is Too Many Milk Duds. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself just I'm finishing Milk Dud 3 or 4, or even 11. Now my taste buds are numbed out from the sugar/confectionery wax combo and I have 200 worthless calories rattling around inside me.
From the little-discussed-downsides of Too Many Milk Duds, let's transition to the little-discussed-downsides of Los Angeles -- things that every newcomer will discover in time, but by the time you see the pattern, you'll be so over it that you never mention it when people ask you what Los Angeles is like.
1. Terrible desserts. This town does not get sugar at all. A handful of places get it right -- Vanilla Bakery, thank God, and Mozza -- but most of the time, you're going to be confronted with some kind of roasted fruit tart and/or too-dry cake-type item. And forget about ever eating a decent tiramisu or cannoli again. Outside of one or two small Italian-American community, neither can be found for love or money.
2. Inadequate Clothing Inventories. Cute non-chain stores don't seem to carry anything above a 6. Thinking through this logically, I suspect that, in fact, boutiques order clothing in the larger sizes, but these sell out faster than the 2s and 4s, which is why it seems like there's never anything else in stock.
2a. Also, clothing for the non-19-year-old is generally thin on the ground. Around the corner at the Third Street Promenade, there's not a single clothing store for the Rational Adult Man or Woman until you get to Macy's at the end of the block. It's half a mile of PacSun and Pink Ice and the like.
3. Second-Class Status Dining. In our two-year-and-counting, the stories of places with Great Service for Celebrities, Terrible Service for Ordinary People just keep racking up. I can't think how this is a viable business model -- there can't be more than 1000 A-, B-, C- and D-List celebrities in all of Los Angeles, and they can't be everywhere at once. Surely you have to build word of mouth among the regular folks. And yet from Chowhound to Citysearch to Yelp to, sadly, our own experience at Melisse, the disappointments keep coming.
3a. Also, way too many restaurants are straight up terrible, and yet continue to survive on buzz and/or location. Nowhere is this condition worse than in our own Santa Monica, which supports both Boa, maybe the most worthless steak house in existence, and Ivy at the Shore, which is basically Sarabeth's with insane prices.
4. Many, many, many aspiring actors. I wish them all the best and hope for good things for all of them, but it wears you out after a while.
5. Insufficient stock of condominiums. Santa Monica is especially hamstrung because any building with enough charm to survive a conversion to condominiums will also have enough rent-controlled-tenants that no such conversion could ever go through. (That's the case in our building, for example.) Since rent control does not apply to new construction, I can see the attraction of putting up whole buildings worth of units that can rent for thousands of dollars a month. But at the same time, all of Los Angeles seems fiercely attached to the dream of owning a single family home -- surely the least efficient use of the area's scarce land and scarcer resources. And I'm not just saying that because I want to buy a condo.
6. Hard-to-Find Everything. After years of listening to my parents rattle off Chicago addresses in accordance with that city's carved-in-stone numerical grid, I admit: Los Angeles street-level geography is a nightmare. People who've lived here for 15 years still end up using a GPS unit to find their way around. In truth, I think there is some kind of grid, but since the numbers are not clearly marked on either buildings or street signs, it's almost impossible to track.
6b. Many, many stores like to create a significant street presence by building right up to the sidewalk, and then tucking the parking behind or underneath. I agree, that probably makes for a better streetscape, but the first three or four times I visit any major retailer, I inevitably end up driving in half-mile-circuits, trying to locate the tastefully concealed entrance to the garage. I only figured out how to park at Walgreen's this October. No, really.
6c. God help you if you have any kind of claustrophobia issues and you've parked in an underground garage. When they work well, they're the perfect solution to L.A.'s abundance of cars -- and I'm always happy to pay for parking. But if something goes wrong or traffic spikes, it's hell three stories under ground. See also: Whole Foods on New Year's Eve; Beverly Hills Municipal Parking at lunchtime.
7. Isolation. The obvious solution is to have friends already living out here, but that's not always so easy to arrange. A good second choice would be some kind of pre-existing job or school. USC picked up the slack for me, and then some, in a way that made the ridiculous tuition almost worthwhile. Since I started working, my various internships have gone a long way to fleshing out the rest of my social life in a very promising fashion. Meanwhile, MG has picked up some like-minded individuals (hi, Dirk!) and he's got various old friends here and a short phone call away. But if we didn't have these support structures in place, I don't know if we could have lasted a month, much less a year.
From the little-discussed-downsides of Too Many Milk Duds, let's transition to the little-discussed-downsides of Los Angeles -- things that every newcomer will discover in time, but by the time you see the pattern, you'll be so over it that you never mention it when people ask you what Los Angeles is like.
1. Terrible desserts. This town does not get sugar at all. A handful of places get it right -- Vanilla Bakery, thank God, and Mozza -- but most of the time, you're going to be confronted with some kind of roasted fruit tart and/or too-dry cake-type item. And forget about ever eating a decent tiramisu or cannoli again. Outside of one or two small Italian-American community, neither can be found for love or money.
2. Inadequate Clothing Inventories. Cute non-chain stores don't seem to carry anything above a 6. Thinking through this logically, I suspect that, in fact, boutiques order clothing in the larger sizes, but these sell out faster than the 2s and 4s, which is why it seems like there's never anything else in stock.
2a. Also, clothing for the non-19-year-old is generally thin on the ground. Around the corner at the Third Street Promenade, there's not a single clothing store for the Rational Adult Man or Woman until you get to Macy's at the end of the block. It's half a mile of PacSun and Pink Ice and the like.
3. Second-Class Status Dining. In our two-year-and-counting, the stories of places with Great Service for Celebrities, Terrible Service for Ordinary People just keep racking up. I can't think how this is a viable business model -- there can't be more than 1000 A-, B-, C- and D-List celebrities in all of Los Angeles, and they can't be everywhere at once. Surely you have to build word of mouth among the regular folks. And yet from Chowhound to Citysearch to Yelp to, sadly, our own experience at Melisse, the disappointments keep coming.
3a. Also, way too many restaurants are straight up terrible, and yet continue to survive on buzz and/or location. Nowhere is this condition worse than in our own Santa Monica, which supports both Boa, maybe the most worthless steak house in existence, and Ivy at the Shore, which is basically Sarabeth's with insane prices.
4. Many, many, many aspiring actors. I wish them all the best and hope for good things for all of them, but it wears you out after a while.
5. Insufficient stock of condominiums. Santa Monica is especially hamstrung because any building with enough charm to survive a conversion to condominiums will also have enough rent-controlled-tenants that no such conversion could ever go through. (That's the case in our building, for example.) Since rent control does not apply to new construction, I can see the attraction of putting up whole buildings worth of units that can rent for thousands of dollars a month. But at the same time, all of Los Angeles seems fiercely attached to the dream of owning a single family home -- surely the least efficient use of the area's scarce land and scarcer resources. And I'm not just saying that because I want to buy a condo.
6. Hard-to-Find Everything. After years of listening to my parents rattle off Chicago addresses in accordance with that city's carved-in-stone numerical grid, I admit: Los Angeles street-level geography is a nightmare. People who've lived here for 15 years still end up using a GPS unit to find their way around. In truth, I think there is some kind of grid, but since the numbers are not clearly marked on either buildings or street signs, it's almost impossible to track.
6b. Many, many stores like to create a significant street presence by building right up to the sidewalk, and then tucking the parking behind or underneath. I agree, that probably makes for a better streetscape, but the first three or four times I visit any major retailer, I inevitably end up driving in half-mile-circuits, trying to locate the tastefully concealed entrance to the garage. I only figured out how to park at Walgreen's this October. No, really.
6c. God help you if you have any kind of claustrophobia issues and you've parked in an underground garage. When they work well, they're the perfect solution to L.A.'s abundance of cars -- and I'm always happy to pay for parking. But if something goes wrong or traffic spikes, it's hell three stories under ground. See also: Whole Foods on New Year's Eve; Beverly Hills Municipal Parking at lunchtime.
7. Isolation. The obvious solution is to have friends already living out here, but that's not always so easy to arrange. A good second choice would be some kind of pre-existing job or school. USC picked up the slack for me, and then some, in a way that made the ridiculous tuition almost worthwhile. Since I started working, my various internships have gone a long way to fleshing out the rest of my social life in a very promising fashion. Meanwhile, MG has picked up some like-minded individuals (hi, Dirk!) and he's got various old friends here and a short phone call away. But if we didn't have these support structures in place, I don't know if we could have lasted a month, much less a year.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
I'm 100% Positive the Strike Will Go Until June*
Yes, I was wrong about last night's "Project Runway." I was positive that this week's challenge would be a return of the popular make-an-outfit-from-the-stuff-in-your-apartment. I was way, way off.
But I've never been happier to be wrong. For one thing, it reminded me that I can't predict the future, and proved that "Project Runway" can still surprised and delight me. (Oh, brother, can it! Between the Sweet P/Rami show down and the Kit/Ricky debacle? Delicious!) Ricky, btw, doesn't really bother me, but I admit, I have no idea why he's still on the show. I think it has to be a question of story arc. This wasn't his week. There wasn't a moment or a dramatic reversal that would justify taking down the Moistest Designer.
In a similar vein, rumor has it that the DGA has negotiated a deal with the AMPTP, and is now in talks with the WGA to see if they can be brought on board. My first thought is that this will never work, but again, I would be delighted to be wrong.
Which brings me to today's piece of Advice for the Aspiring Whatsit** Who's Thinking of Moving to L.A.:
Let Los Angeles surprise you.
When you start talking about moving to L.A., you'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom on the subject. My beloved Chicago Improv Network routinely bursts into brief storms of Why-Los-Angeles-Sucks-Balls-and-I-Would-Never-Move-There. Traffic, heat, smog, blah blah blah.
The city has some drawbacks. Every city does. But every city has its perks, if you let yourself see them. If you don't, you'll never be able to think of that place as home. (It's the same principle by which we fall in love with vacation spots. That pang of regret as you're leaving, and the brief, crazy thought of moving back there permanently? Both signs that you've noticed a few of that place's unique perks.)
Hands down, my favorite thing about L.A. is the light. It's the light of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings, hot, bright and shadowless for four to six hours every day. It makes whites shout, blues glow, oranges burn. It forces me to wear sunscreen, sunglasses and sometimes even a hat, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I'm also fond of the utterly unmidwestern plant life here, including a weird, spirally bush we call Gilliam Shrubs because they look like something out of Monty Python, and the wonderfully car-friendly terrain. After a month out here, the streets of Chicago look like the narrow alleys of a medieval Italian mountain town.
But in the end, you have to find your own favorite things -- but at the same time, you'll find your own way of thinking of Los Angeles as your home.
* I'm hoping glaringly wrong predictions comes in threes. Or at least twos.
** I came out as a screenwriter, but I can't think why this advice wouldn't help an actor, director or whathaveyou.
But I've never been happier to be wrong. For one thing, it reminded me that I can't predict the future, and proved that "Project Runway" can still surprised and delight me. (Oh, brother, can it! Between the Sweet P/Rami show down and the Kit/Ricky debacle? Delicious!) Ricky, btw, doesn't really bother me, but I admit, I have no idea why he's still on the show. I think it has to be a question of story arc. This wasn't his week. There wasn't a moment or a dramatic reversal that would justify taking down the Moistest Designer.
In a similar vein, rumor has it that the DGA has negotiated a deal with the AMPTP, and is now in talks with the WGA to see if they can be brought on board. My first thought is that this will never work, but again, I would be delighted to be wrong.
Which brings me to today's piece of Advice for the Aspiring Whatsit** Who's Thinking of Moving to L.A.:
Let Los Angeles surprise you.
When you start talking about moving to L.A., you'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom on the subject. My beloved Chicago Improv Network routinely bursts into brief storms of Why-Los-Angeles-Sucks-Balls-and-I-Would-Never-Move-There. Traffic, heat, smog, blah blah blah.
The city has some drawbacks. Every city does. But every city has its perks, if you let yourself see them. If you don't, you'll never be able to think of that place as home. (It's the same principle by which we fall in love with vacation spots. That pang of regret as you're leaving, and the brief, crazy thought of moving back there permanently? Both signs that you've noticed a few of that place's unique perks.)
Hands down, my favorite thing about L.A. is the light. It's the light of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings, hot, bright and shadowless for four to six hours every day. It makes whites shout, blues glow, oranges burn. It forces me to wear sunscreen, sunglasses and sometimes even a hat, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I'm also fond of the utterly unmidwestern plant life here, including a weird, spirally bush we call Gilliam Shrubs because they look like something out of Monty Python, and the wonderfully car-friendly terrain. After a month out here, the streets of Chicago look like the narrow alleys of a medieval Italian mountain town.
But in the end, you have to find your own favorite things -- but at the same time, you'll find your own way of thinking of Los Angeles as your home.
* I'm hoping glaringly wrong predictions comes in threes. Or at least twos.
** I came out as a screenwriter, but I can't think why this advice wouldn't help an actor, director or whathaveyou.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Step One: Visit Honda of Lisle. Ask for Manny.
I recently stumbled onto the blog of a couple of Midwesterners who came out to L.A. last summer, hoping to jump start their careers. The last entry, dated a week or two ago, announces that they're headed back to their hometown.
The goals that brought them out to L.A. no longer any appeal, and plainly put, they're both more than a little homesick.
MG & I have friends -- folks we like and respect -- who came out here before us, and headed back to Chicago before we'd signed our lease. Their reasons for going out, and coming back, were rational and considered, and we know a dozen more people just like them.
I admire them all for their bravery. Moving to a new city to try something out, and knowing when it's time to retreat are both remarkable feats, like finding the courage to go to college far from home, or breaking up with your impressive boyfriend when you realize he's a jackass.
We pulled off the first half so far -- two years, five months and counting. The second half? If the time comes, I trust we'll figure it out.
In the meantime, we can't go through our lives, waiting for the sudden realization that this was all a terrible mistake. We've had to build a life here, even if it's not going to work out in the long run.
My Irish grandmother would not approve. She was a world-class Preparer for Disaster, with a six-by-four foot cupboard stocked with emergency supplies of generic butter cookies and peanut butter. And she always kept an eye peeled for ill tidings. She used to listen to a police scanner radio in the evenings, ears pricked for any word of misdoings in our corner of Oak Park. If a squirrel so much as farted in the night, she'd be on the phone to our house -- just five blocks away -- to warn us to be careful when we went to put the car in the garage.
When we first thought of moving to L.A., I searched high and low for blogs or websites that might prepare us for the change, and came up woefully short. I found Franklin Avenue, which isn't quite the Welcome to Los Angeles gateway I needed, but it proved that sane people live in this city and have ordinary lives, almost entirely free of crack addiction and prostitutes. (Even if it didn't offer me a cookie and a glass of milk, Franklin Avenue is smart, well-written blog and highly entertaining. I recommend it whole-heartedly.)
Add to this that of late, I've started to think this blog could use a little bit more direction. Not a lot more. God forbid. If I can't ramble on my blog, the top of my head might well blow right off. But I'm thinking it might be time for me to start putting up the kind of posts I would have killed for when we were trying to make this decision.
The first, and most essential piece of information I can possible provide someone thinking of moving to L.A.:
Buy a car.
Even if your move is months or years away, buy a car. A good car, well-maintained, with excellent gas mileage and a fully-functioning air conditioner. We bought a 2001 Certified Used Honda Civic in 2004, almost 18 months before we ultimately moved to L.A. For one thing, it spread out the expense of the move over a longer window of time. For another, it let me establish a good driving record in the marginally less-insane city of Chicago before moving to Los Angeles.
More importantly, buying the car started to prepare me for a mindset that has proven invaluable since we moved here. There are driving days and walking days. The point is, condense all your car-centric errands into as few days as possible. Hit Costco on your way home from work, schedule lunches with your Mid-Wilshire friends for the same day as your haircut in West Hollywood. At the same time, try to bundle together local errands into a single neighborhood walk.
You can't spend your whole life in the car. It will drive you insane. At the same time, you can't not have a car in Los Angeles. Maybe someday, when at last there's a light rail line all the way to the sea, but right now: No.
So you have to make a point of balancing the two extremes. During the semester, every class day is a driving day, so I've tried to make the rest of the week as pedestrian as possible. With the spectre of employment looming, I will probably be reduced to pedestrian weekends, but even that's something. I already take pedestrian weekends pretty seriously, riding public transit to haircut appointments just because I can.
If you work it right, eventually it's a treat to be in the car, because you're not on foot. And it's a treat to be on foot, because you're not in the car. Or put it another way: Eventually you get sick of both. Uh, yeah.
Tomorrow: More advice of dubious value
The goals that brought them out to L.A. no longer any appeal, and plainly put, they're both more than a little homesick.
MG & I have friends -- folks we like and respect -- who came out here before us, and headed back to Chicago before we'd signed our lease. Their reasons for going out, and coming back, were rational and considered, and we know a dozen more people just like them.
I admire them all for their bravery. Moving to a new city to try something out, and knowing when it's time to retreat are both remarkable feats, like finding the courage to go to college far from home, or breaking up with your impressive boyfriend when you realize he's a jackass.
We pulled off the first half so far -- two years, five months and counting. The second half? If the time comes, I trust we'll figure it out.
In the meantime, we can't go through our lives, waiting for the sudden realization that this was all a terrible mistake. We've had to build a life here, even if it's not going to work out in the long run.
My Irish grandmother would not approve. She was a world-class Preparer for Disaster, with a six-by-four foot cupboard stocked with emergency supplies of generic butter cookies and peanut butter. And she always kept an eye peeled for ill tidings. She used to listen to a police scanner radio in the evenings, ears pricked for any word of misdoings in our corner of Oak Park. If a squirrel so much as farted in the night, she'd be on the phone to our house -- just five blocks away -- to warn us to be careful when we went to put the car in the garage.
When we first thought of moving to L.A., I searched high and low for blogs or websites that might prepare us for the change, and came up woefully short. I found Franklin Avenue, which isn't quite the Welcome to Los Angeles gateway I needed, but it proved that sane people live in this city and have ordinary lives, almost entirely free of crack addiction and prostitutes. (Even if it didn't offer me a cookie and a glass of milk, Franklin Avenue is smart, well-written blog and highly entertaining. I recommend it whole-heartedly.)
Add to this that of late, I've started to think this blog could use a little bit more direction. Not a lot more. God forbid. If I can't ramble on my blog, the top of my head might well blow right off. But I'm thinking it might be time for me to start putting up the kind of posts I would have killed for when we were trying to make this decision.
The first, and most essential piece of information I can possible provide someone thinking of moving to L.A.:
Buy a car.
Even if your move is months or years away, buy a car. A good car, well-maintained, with excellent gas mileage and a fully-functioning air conditioner. We bought a 2001 Certified Used Honda Civic in 2004, almost 18 months before we ultimately moved to L.A. For one thing, it spread out the expense of the move over a longer window of time. For another, it let me establish a good driving record in the marginally less-insane city of Chicago before moving to Los Angeles.
More importantly, buying the car started to prepare me for a mindset that has proven invaluable since we moved here. There are driving days and walking days. The point is, condense all your car-centric errands into as few days as possible. Hit Costco on your way home from work, schedule lunches with your Mid-Wilshire friends for the same day as your haircut in West Hollywood. At the same time, try to bundle together local errands into a single neighborhood walk.
You can't spend your whole life in the car. It will drive you insane. At the same time, you can't not have a car in Los Angeles. Maybe someday, when at last there's a light rail line all the way to the sea, but right now: No.
So you have to make a point of balancing the two extremes. During the semester, every class day is a driving day, so I've tried to make the rest of the week as pedestrian as possible. With the spectre of employment looming, I will probably be reduced to pedestrian weekends, but even that's something. I already take pedestrian weekends pretty seriously, riding public transit to haircut appointments just because I can.
If you work it right, eventually it's a treat to be in the car, because you're not on foot. And it's a treat to be on foot, because you're not in the car. Or put it another way: Eventually you get sick of both. Uh, yeah.
Tomorrow: More advice of dubious value
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Rejection
It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the world does not need another meticulous dramatic English language adaptation of "Persuasion."
I am very sorry to put it so plainly, but really! I cannot see that this newest arrival has any advantages over the 1997 installment. Indeed, I find Anthony Stewart Head the most agreeable performer, and generally speaking, I do enjoy Miss Austen's works.
But to cast aside the earlier version with Mr. Ciaran Hinds? It is not to be borne! And to what end? It is a truth universally acknowledged among readers of "Persuasion" that Captain Wentworth is a sailor, a profession that cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly. Just so! Mr. Hinds is the very picture of a seafaring fellow, his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree. (All this quite aside from the gentleman's efforts in the theatrical vein, which are a delight to behold.)
As if it did not give offense enough to cast aside the earlier work, with its many advantages, the newer version casts Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth. A man of such pleasant countenance as might have never known a single spray of salt nor an hour's bright sun!
Good heavens! I cannot think what the world is coming to. It puts me quite out of heart.
I am very sorry to put it so plainly, but really! I cannot see that this newest arrival has any advantages over the 1997 installment. Indeed, I find Anthony Stewart Head the most agreeable performer, and generally speaking, I do enjoy Miss Austen's works.
But to cast aside the earlier version with Mr. Ciaran Hinds? It is not to be borne! And to what end? It is a truth universally acknowledged among readers of "Persuasion" that Captain Wentworth is a sailor, a profession that cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly. Just so! Mr. Hinds is the very picture of a seafaring fellow, his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree. (All this quite aside from the gentleman's efforts in the theatrical vein, which are a delight to behold.)
As if it did not give offense enough to cast aside the earlier work, with its many advantages, the newer version casts Rupert Penry-Jones as Captain Wentworth. A man of such pleasant countenance as might have never known a single spray of salt nor an hour's bright sun!
Good heavens! I cannot think what the world is coming to. It puts me quite out of heart.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Like Air Leaking Out of a Tiny Balloon
The internet is a wonderland, full of nooks and crannies of buttery goodness.
And also some websites that I have put on month- and year-long timeouts. They're still on the internet and whatnot, I just can't go look at them. Because then I will observe the words/actions represented on said blogs, and have a little World Wide Web Rage Blackout. Which usually ends with me slowly regaining consciousness in a darkened room, my hands clenched around my PowerBook and one or more empty bags of Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips scattered around me.
I may as well say this now, as I cruise past the halfway mark in my third month of daily blogging. Most people cannot post every day to their blog, or worse, post multiple times a day to their own blog, without some portion of mental illness. In my case, I think there's just a smidge of compulsion afoot, but nothing much worse than that. Many, many, many blogs, however, are nothing but a running list of People Who Piss The Blogger Off and Why They Should Be Shot.
(I don't need to name names. You know there are blogs like this. You know you've read them. Don't lie to me. I can smell the Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips on your breath. It's okay. Don't be ashamed. You're among friends.)
Anyway, I have very few really unshakable addictions, but for sure, Blogs of the Mentally Disordered is one of them. So much so that I have to quarantine the links in a folder, label the folder "No! Kate! No!" and then bury it in a subdirectory in my bookmark file. Yes, yes, of course I could just delete the link, but that might lead to googling the blog to find it again. This way, I know right where the blog is, I'm just not reading it.
This is all 100% true, btw. I have such a folder, hidden in a subdirectory. No, I still won't tell you which blogs are on the list. Oh, all right, I'll give you one clue, but that's it. Ready? Tucker Max.
Most such blogs take a tone of deliberate confrontation, if they're not openly striving to produce outrage. At first, I find myself unconsciously forming counter arguments to disprove this or that half-assed observation. Then I start to compose a possible comment for posting. Once I realize what I'm doing, I quickly click away, only to spend the next hour or two still disturbed by what I've read.
In time, and with sufficient immersion in the New York Times, the memory fades, but only until the next time I'm bored and looking for something to pass the time, and next thing you know, I'm reading some lady's description of how she shivved a 16-year-old boy for talking on his cell phone in the Kinko's.
Look, I get my knickers in a twist in just this way, almost daily. For example, I don't believe in holding a table before I've ordered my food -- it's an official rule at some L.A. coffee houses, actually.
When I stroll back towards an open seat, only to see that someone has just snagged said seat while their friend (six people back from me in line) orders for them, I get fucking pissed. Yes, I said fucking pissed. I'm sorry, I know that's a swear, but it really roasts my beans.
But then I let it go, do my thing and get on with my life. I don't frickin' post about every single instance, every day, for my entire life. (Uh, wait, did I post about that Williams-Sonoma thing? I did, didn't I? Okay, but that's still just twice in the entire month of January. And I'm not posting pictures of erstwhile asshats on my website.)
Let's just take a minute to savor the rich irony of how this blog post, which started out being about blogs that are so relentlessly negative and fault-finding that I can't read them, has now turned into a relentlessly negative and fault-finding post about said blogs.
A more cautious or careful blogger would probably delete this entry and start over, but that's not how I roll. In fact, this is the only way I can keep posting every single day: By opening Blogger and typing for half an hour until once again, I seem to have produced a post. It's a daily exercise in dumping out my mental junk drawer, and helps me practice letting go of this non-helpful belief that everything I write has to be awesome.
And on that note: My cat Willa just farted in her sleep.
Good night! You've been a fantastic audience! We'll be here all week! Try the veal!
And also some websites that I have put on month- and year-long timeouts. They're still on the internet and whatnot, I just can't go look at them. Because then I will observe the words/actions represented on said blogs, and have a little World Wide Web Rage Blackout. Which usually ends with me slowly regaining consciousness in a darkened room, my hands clenched around my PowerBook and one or more empty bags of Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips scattered around me.
I may as well say this now, as I cruise past the halfway mark in my third month of daily blogging. Most people cannot post every day to their blog, or worse, post multiple times a day to their own blog, without some portion of mental illness. In my case, I think there's just a smidge of compulsion afoot, but nothing much worse than that. Many, many, many blogs, however, are nothing but a running list of People Who Piss The Blogger Off and Why They Should Be Shot.
(I don't need to name names. You know there are blogs like this. You know you've read them. Don't lie to me. I can smell the Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips on your breath. It's okay. Don't be ashamed. You're among friends.)
Anyway, I have very few really unshakable addictions, but for sure, Blogs of the Mentally Disordered is one of them. So much so that I have to quarantine the links in a folder, label the folder "No! Kate! No!" and then bury it in a subdirectory in my bookmark file. Yes, yes, of course I could just delete the link, but that might lead to googling the blog to find it again. This way, I know right where the blog is, I'm just not reading it.
This is all 100% true, btw. I have such a folder, hidden in a subdirectory. No, I still won't tell you which blogs are on the list. Oh, all right, I'll give you one clue, but that's it. Ready? Tucker Max.
Most such blogs take a tone of deliberate confrontation, if they're not openly striving to produce outrage. At first, I find myself unconsciously forming counter arguments to disprove this or that half-assed observation. Then I start to compose a possible comment for posting. Once I realize what I'm doing, I quickly click away, only to spend the next hour or two still disturbed by what I've read.
In time, and with sufficient immersion in the New York Times, the memory fades, but only until the next time I'm bored and looking for something to pass the time, and next thing you know, I'm reading some lady's description of how she shivved a 16-year-old boy for talking on his cell phone in the Kinko's.
Look, I get my knickers in a twist in just this way, almost daily. For example, I don't believe in holding a table before I've ordered my food -- it's an official rule at some L.A. coffee houses, actually.
When I stroll back towards an open seat, only to see that someone has just snagged said seat while their friend (six people back from me in line) orders for them, I get fucking pissed. Yes, I said fucking pissed. I'm sorry, I know that's a swear, but it really roasts my beans.
But then I let it go, do my thing and get on with my life. I don't frickin' post about every single instance, every day, for my entire life. (Uh, wait, did I post about that Williams-Sonoma thing? I did, didn't I? Okay, but that's still just twice in the entire month of January. And I'm not posting pictures of erstwhile asshats on my website.)
Let's just take a minute to savor the rich irony of how this blog post, which started out being about blogs that are so relentlessly negative and fault-finding that I can't read them, has now turned into a relentlessly negative and fault-finding post about said blogs.
A more cautious or careful blogger would probably delete this entry and start over, but that's not how I roll. In fact, this is the only way I can keep posting every single day: By opening Blogger and typing for half an hour until once again, I seem to have produced a post. It's a daily exercise in dumping out my mental junk drawer, and helps me practice letting go of this non-helpful belief that everything I write has to be awesome.
And on that note: My cat Willa just farted in her sleep.
Good night! You've been a fantastic audience! We'll be here all week! Try the veal!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Huh
As part of the Anniversary 2008 festivities, we went to a matinee of "Walk Hard" this afternoon. Very, very funny. Very, very enjoyable.
And yet...
John C. Reilly nails it. Yeah, this is a guy who could play either role in "True West" seven nights a week for two months running and not even break a sweat. He's a treasure.
The music is spectacular. From a "Fresh Air" interview, I know that the writer/producers had something like six to ten teams of songwriters working on each assignment, with a brief on the tone, meaning and significance of each song. No wonder, with hundreds of options to choose from, that every song in the movie is a jewel. I am a particular fan of the song that plays over the credits, "Hey! Did You Hear the News? (Dewey Cox Died)" -- which appears to be written and sung by Dewey Cox himself.
So you've got half the movie buffed to a high, perfect gloss. And then you cast Jack Black as Paul McCartney.
Look, maybe I'm not the biggest fan of Paul McCartney, but you are hamstringing yourself and any/all Beatles-derived comedy if you start by casting Jack Black as Paul McCartney. And put him next to three much-closer stand ins for John, George and Ringo.
It's not just that, but that's the biggest non-spoiler I can find to illustrate my point. Reilly kills himself to sell the reality of his character. The songwriters clearly went all out to nail the musical numbers. And then some combination of Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow sold them down the river by cutting the reality out from underneath the film.
If you've seen the film, you're probably thinking by now of two or three other things that, "Naked Gun" like, strip out any pretense of realism. At the time, they are huge, gut-deep laughs.
But I'm not sure they're worth keeping in the film. At some point, maybe about a third in, I stopped caring about the story and started waiting for the next song parody and/or cameo to show up. Nothing else held my interest. Even poor Tim Meadows, who has some great lines, couldn't keep me from thinking "C'mon, c'mon, let's get on with it already."
My two favorite moments in "Knocked Up" are the Vegas 'shroom trip and the final delivery scene -- both as utterly grounded, utterly real and believable as anything I've ever seen. The realism there doesn't prevent the movie from still having some huge, huge laughs, and gave me good reason to watch it again if I get the chance.
So I know Apatow understands the importance of keeping comedy grounded, but for some reason, that sense eluded him here. I have to think there was a way to tell this story, still be hilarious, and, you know, not hit that weirdly cartoonish note.
God, I hope so.
And yet...
John C. Reilly nails it. Yeah, this is a guy who could play either role in "True West" seven nights a week for two months running and not even break a sweat. He's a treasure.
The music is spectacular. From a "Fresh Air" interview, I know that the writer/producers had something like six to ten teams of songwriters working on each assignment, with a brief on the tone, meaning and significance of each song. No wonder, with hundreds of options to choose from, that every song in the movie is a jewel. I am a particular fan of the song that plays over the credits, "Hey! Did You Hear the News? (Dewey Cox Died)" -- which appears to be written and sung by Dewey Cox himself.
So you've got half the movie buffed to a high, perfect gloss. And then you cast Jack Black as Paul McCartney.
Look, maybe I'm not the biggest fan of Paul McCartney, but you are hamstringing yourself and any/all Beatles-derived comedy if you start by casting Jack Black as Paul McCartney. And put him next to three much-closer stand ins for John, George and Ringo.
It's not just that, but that's the biggest non-spoiler I can find to illustrate my point. Reilly kills himself to sell the reality of his character. The songwriters clearly went all out to nail the musical numbers. And then some combination of Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow sold them down the river by cutting the reality out from underneath the film.
If you've seen the film, you're probably thinking by now of two or three other things that, "Naked Gun" like, strip out any pretense of realism. At the time, they are huge, gut-deep laughs.
But I'm not sure they're worth keeping in the film. At some point, maybe about a third in, I stopped caring about the story and started waiting for the next song parody and/or cameo to show up. Nothing else held my interest. Even poor Tim Meadows, who has some great lines, couldn't keep me from thinking "C'mon, c'mon, let's get on with it already."
My two favorite moments in "Knocked Up" are the Vegas 'shroom trip and the final delivery scene -- both as utterly grounded, utterly real and believable as anything I've ever seen. The realism there doesn't prevent the movie from still having some huge, huge laughs, and gave me good reason to watch it again if I get the chance.
So I know Apatow understands the importance of keeping comedy grounded, but for some reason, that sense eluded him here. I have to think there was a way to tell this story, still be hilarious, and, you know, not hit that weirdly cartoonish note.
God, I hope so.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Nnnn Cha Nnnn Cha Nnnn Cha
I love Late Night Writers' Strike TV.
I've been watching David Letterman with the kind of devout attention I usually reserve for "Battlestar Galactica." Largely it's because I know his writers are back, and as such, his show is a possible venue for the odd strike-related joke.
For example: A fake commercial from the AMPTP, complaining that the WGA expects writers to be paid 2 1/2 cents per iTunes download -- a complaint illustrated with a picture of 2 and 1/2 pennies. But the WGA hasn't thought this through. "How are we supposed to cut a penny in half?" the piece lamented. "With magic penny scissors?"
Also, I really enjoy any segment which dances in the general direction of making Dave squirm a little. Chris Elliot rubbing himself all over Dave's desk was good; Howard Stern asking Dave about his love life was event better.
But my real addiction, and I say it with some shame, is the nightly spectacle of Conan and Colbert soft-shoeing through 30 to 60 minutes of airtime armed with nothing but their wits and an honorable determination to not write one single syllable of content before show time.
The interviews are hit or miss. It's hard to really hate the Nobel Prize winning economist who appears on Colbert to discuss microloans -- I mean, yes, he crossed the picket line, but on the other hand, better him than, say Wolf Blitzer. Or Huckabee. Again. God, does that man do nothing but appear on talk shows and produce folksy aphorisms about pigs, butter, barns and weather vanes?
Conan has the bigger problem -- his guests are limited almost entirely to talent all-but-forced to appear as a promotion for NBC/Universal content (Hulk Hogan for "American Gladiators," Howie Mandel for "Deal or No Deal") while Dave has racked up Stern, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman and Tom Brokaw. (Yes, I'm aware that technically, Dave goes up against another NBC late night show, but for some reason, I can never remember to tune in. Huh, go figure.)
But the raw found comedy in between the interviews is... delightful. Conan riding a little girl's bicycle. Colbert's off-the-cuff riffing on New Hampshire. Turning the Late Night set into a German discotheque, complete with Conan yelling in a German accent, "How do you like my light show, ja?"
At the end of a segment introducing viewers to a Late Night associate producer who enjoys protein shakes, cracking a bullwhip and the music of Rush, Conan shook his head woefully at the depths to which he had sunk. "I've never hated the writers' strike more."
Oddly, I've never loved it more.
I've been watching David Letterman with the kind of devout attention I usually reserve for "Battlestar Galactica." Largely it's because I know his writers are back, and as such, his show is a possible venue for the odd strike-related joke.
For example: A fake commercial from the AMPTP, complaining that the WGA expects writers to be paid 2 1/2 cents per iTunes download -- a complaint illustrated with a picture of 2 and 1/2 pennies. But the WGA hasn't thought this through. "How are we supposed to cut a penny in half?" the piece lamented. "With magic penny scissors?"
Also, I really enjoy any segment which dances in the general direction of making Dave squirm a little. Chris Elliot rubbing himself all over Dave's desk was good; Howard Stern asking Dave about his love life was event better.
But my real addiction, and I say it with some shame, is the nightly spectacle of Conan and Colbert soft-shoeing through 30 to 60 minutes of airtime armed with nothing but their wits and an honorable determination to not write one single syllable of content before show time.
The interviews are hit or miss. It's hard to really hate the Nobel Prize winning economist who appears on Colbert to discuss microloans -- I mean, yes, he crossed the picket line, but on the other hand, better him than, say Wolf Blitzer. Or Huckabee. Again. God, does that man do nothing but appear on talk shows and produce folksy aphorisms about pigs, butter, barns and weather vanes?
Conan has the bigger problem -- his guests are limited almost entirely to talent all-but-forced to appear as a promotion for NBC/Universal content (Hulk Hogan for "American Gladiators," Howie Mandel for "Deal or No Deal") while Dave has racked up Stern, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman and Tom Brokaw. (Yes, I'm aware that technically, Dave goes up against another NBC late night show, but for some reason, I can never remember to tune in. Huh, go figure.)
But the raw found comedy in between the interviews is... delightful. Conan riding a little girl's bicycle. Colbert's off-the-cuff riffing on New Hampshire. Turning the Late Night set into a German discotheque, complete with Conan yelling in a German accent, "How do you like my light show, ja?"
At the end of a segment introducing viewers to a Late Night associate producer who enjoys protein shakes, cracking a bullwhip and the music of Rush, Conan shook his head woefully at the depths to which he had sunk. "I've never hated the writers' strike more."
Oddly, I've never loved it more.
Friday, January 11, 2008
MG Dances on the Knife's Edge
MG may well be banned from all handling or physical contact with our television and/or its various remote controls.
Why?
Because he's watching a show in which a man drank the moisture...
...from an elephant turd.
Yes, believe it. It happened. We saw it and nothing, no nothing, can make us unsee it.
Why?
Because he's watching a show in which a man drank the moisture...
...from an elephant turd.
Yes, believe it. It happened. We saw it and nothing, no nothing, can make us unsee it.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
I Am Kate's Brain
Even though it's the kind of delicious tidbit that inspires many a bumper sticker and novelty t-shirt, it is, alas, a myth that human beings only use 10% of our brains.
I'm surprised this didn't get debunked much, much sooner. On every medical drama, when a doctor checks out a CT scan or an MRI of the brain, the screen is always lit up like a Christmas tree. If we were only using 10% of our brains, the screen should look like the terrain outside a jet window when you fly over Utah.
(Note to readers who may be actual doctors: Okay, maybe the CT or the MRI doesn't track brain activity, but one of those things does, because I saw this documentary on addiction, and they were totally looking at a picture of a guy's brain as he thought about doing crack. And it was lit up like a Christmas tree. So even former crack addicts use more than 10% of their brains.)
Anyway, I knew this already because my brain works even when I don't want it to. This start years ago, during a family viewing of an Agatha Christie mystery. Half way through, I proposed that the murderer was a female character who killed her victim for giving her TB (I think. Or maybe cholera) and causing her to miscarry her one and only child. I was, I think, twelve or thirteen at the time.
I was right.
Since then, it's been the rare hour of television that can completely stump me. My best hope is to have a small drink before turning on the TV, so that I'm working at a disadvantage. After that, there's surfing-and-watching, which distracts me just enough that I don't pick up all the clues. Then, too, there are the people who can bring it every single week. My first day as an intern on "Mad Men," I walked around the room reading the white boards, with my jaw hanging open in disbelief.
(That's right. I knew in March that Peggy was pregnant. And did I say anything? To anyone? I did not. I didn't even tell my MOM. Because I don't believe in spoilers. And also because I signed a confidentiality agreement.)
Sadly, the strike has stripped me of all my usual favorites, and I am reduced to obsessively watching "Project Runway." It used to be that I would never see the challenges coming. It used to be that I delighted in the surprise reversals and unexpected rivalries. Now, unfortunately, my brain has too much time on its hands. Even as the trailer is running for the following week, I know what's coming.
I knew last week would be a candy story challenge. I actually thought it would be Dylan's Candy Bar, but that's because I forgot that Project Runway doesn't deal with one-shot stores owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter. Rookie mistake.
This week, I knew it would be prom dresses. I knew. And I knew the models would be teenage girls.
And alas, I know what next week's challenge will be as well. I wasn't even trying to figure it out, and it snapped into my head. Stupid brain! This is one of my few remaining pleasures and you had to ruin it for me! That's it. We're going straight to the bathroom to do a couple shots of Nyquil until you learn your place around here.
I won't spoil it for anyone else, but just for posterity, I will "inviso-text" it below. So if you want to see my guess, or come back next week and see if I'm right (which I'm hoping I'm not), highlight it with your cursor.
SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER!
Next week's challenge: Making an outfit from materials found/taken from the contestant's apartment.
I'm surprised this didn't get debunked much, much sooner. On every medical drama, when a doctor checks out a CT scan or an MRI of the brain, the screen is always lit up like a Christmas tree. If we were only using 10% of our brains, the screen should look like the terrain outside a jet window when you fly over Utah.
(Note to readers who may be actual doctors: Okay, maybe the CT or the MRI doesn't track brain activity, but one of those things does, because I saw this documentary on addiction, and they were totally looking at a picture of a guy's brain as he thought about doing crack. And it was lit up like a Christmas tree. So even former crack addicts use more than 10% of their brains.)
Anyway, I knew this already because my brain works even when I don't want it to. This start years ago, during a family viewing of an Agatha Christie mystery. Half way through, I proposed that the murderer was a female character who killed her victim for giving her TB (I think. Or maybe cholera) and causing her to miscarry her one and only child. I was, I think, twelve or thirteen at the time.
I was right.
Since then, it's been the rare hour of television that can completely stump me. My best hope is to have a small drink before turning on the TV, so that I'm working at a disadvantage. After that, there's surfing-and-watching, which distracts me just enough that I don't pick up all the clues. Then, too, there are the people who can bring it every single week. My first day as an intern on "Mad Men," I walked around the room reading the white boards, with my jaw hanging open in disbelief.
(That's right. I knew in March that Peggy was pregnant. And did I say anything? To anyone? I did not. I didn't even tell my MOM. Because I don't believe in spoilers. And also because I signed a confidentiality agreement.)
Sadly, the strike has stripped me of all my usual favorites, and I am reduced to obsessively watching "Project Runway." It used to be that I would never see the challenges coming. It used to be that I delighted in the surprise reversals and unexpected rivalries. Now, unfortunately, my brain has too much time on its hands. Even as the trailer is running for the following week, I know what's coming.
I knew last week would be a candy story challenge. I actually thought it would be Dylan's Candy Bar, but that's because I forgot that Project Runway doesn't deal with one-shot stores owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter. Rookie mistake.
This week, I knew it would be prom dresses. I knew. And I knew the models would be teenage girls.
And alas, I know what next week's challenge will be as well. I wasn't even trying to figure it out, and it snapped into my head. Stupid brain! This is one of my few remaining pleasures and you had to ruin it for me! That's it. We're going straight to the bathroom to do a couple shots of Nyquil until you learn your place around here.
I won't spoil it for anyone else, but just for posterity, I will "inviso-text" it below. So if you want to see my guess, or come back next week and see if I'm right (which I'm hoping I'm not), highlight it with your cursor.
SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER!
Next week's challenge: Making an outfit from materials found/taken from the contestant's apartment.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Why I Own So Many Cardigans
A true, and somewhat embarrassing fact:
When I buy clothes, I have to leave the dressing room and find the most cutely attired sales lady, preferably around my own age or a little younger.
I show her what I'm wearing and then I ask: "Do I look like a 65-year-old librarian?"
Okay, no, wait. There is NOTHING WRONG with being a 65-year-old librarian. One of my favorite people in the whole world was a librarian, and honestly, it would be an enormous accomplishment to resemble her in anyway.
But that said, I am not 65, nor a librarian, and should not dress like one. And also one of the most surprising things about My Favorite Librarian was the extent to which she bucked one's expectations of librarians and their ways. So what I am really asking the sales person is: Picture the most stereotypical image of a tragically fuddy-duddyish person at their most ridiculous. Do I look like that?
The answer, btw, is almost always yes. And I am then required, almost always, to swap out one or more pieces of clothing until the overall look more closely resembles something a person of my age, gender and professional background would wear.
(Note: A process which more exhausting than ever, now that I work in an industry that considers a blazer-with-jeans appropriate wear for everything up to and including weddings and, depending on the deceased, some funerals.)
All of this is a long way of saying that even though I know it is wrong, even though I know I must not give in, nonetheless, I am drawn, like a moth to the flame, to this beauty:
God, it's awful. I know that. It's a half purse, with a wallet sort of fused onto the back. And yet, it has a siren's hold on my heart.
In part, it's the little pockets. Oh Jesus, how I love little pockets. Remember those commercials for that purse that allowed bedraggled career gals to stuff a metric ton of possessions into one easy-to-tote purse? (Available in black, brown and, fascinatingly, bone. Always bone. I don't know if I've ever seen a woman with an off-white leather handbag even once in my entire life.)
If I can think of an appropriate Google string, I might look for a copy of the commercial online. I remember a few of the things that fit inside the bag: A hook for keys, a slot for a wallet, and I think, a pocket for a small umbrella. And yet I remember there were at least a dozen specific pockets. And all this well before the era of cell phones, PDAS or even Walkman radios.
The madness will pass in time, preferably before Levenger sells out of the bag and I am reduced to eBay stalking. (Have I no shame? Apparently not.) Until then, I will pine for this wildly age-inappropriate item like a wolf, yearning for a poured-concrete zoo habitat even as she takes for granted the freedom of her native scrub-covered plains.
When I buy clothes, I have to leave the dressing room and find the most cutely attired sales lady, preferably around my own age or a little younger.
I show her what I'm wearing and then I ask: "Do I look like a 65-year-old librarian?"
Okay, no, wait. There is NOTHING WRONG with being a 65-year-old librarian. One of my favorite people in the whole world was a librarian, and honestly, it would be an enormous accomplishment to resemble her in anyway.
But that said, I am not 65, nor a librarian, and should not dress like one. And also one of the most surprising things about My Favorite Librarian was the extent to which she bucked one's expectations of librarians and their ways. So what I am really asking the sales person is: Picture the most stereotypical image of a tragically fuddy-duddyish person at their most ridiculous. Do I look like that?
The answer, btw, is almost always yes. And I am then required, almost always, to swap out one or more pieces of clothing until the overall look more closely resembles something a person of my age, gender and professional background would wear.
(Note: A process which more exhausting than ever, now that I work in an industry that considers a blazer-with-jeans appropriate wear for everything up to and including weddings and, depending on the deceased, some funerals.)
All of this is a long way of saying that even though I know it is wrong, even though I know I must not give in, nonetheless, I am drawn, like a moth to the flame, to this beauty:
God, it's awful. I know that. It's a half purse, with a wallet sort of fused onto the back. And yet, it has a siren's hold on my heart.
In part, it's the little pockets. Oh Jesus, how I love little pockets. Remember those commercials for that purse that allowed bedraggled career gals to stuff a metric ton of possessions into one easy-to-tote purse? (Available in black, brown and, fascinatingly, bone. Always bone. I don't know if I've ever seen a woman with an off-white leather handbag even once in my entire life.)
If I can think of an appropriate Google string, I might look for a copy of the commercial online. I remember a few of the things that fit inside the bag: A hook for keys, a slot for a wallet, and I think, a pocket for a small umbrella. And yet I remember there were at least a dozen specific pockets. And all this well before the era of cell phones, PDAS or even Walkman radios.
The madness will pass in time, preferably before Levenger sells out of the bag and I am reduced to eBay stalking. (Have I no shame? Apparently not.) Until then, I will pine for this wildly age-inappropriate item like a wolf, yearning for a poured-concrete zoo habitat even as she takes for granted the freedom of her native scrub-covered plains.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Not A Serious Problem
The last time I went to the Funky Gourmet Food Shoppe (tm), I bought a bottle of something called Blood Orange Bitters.
I had some vague notion that Blood Orange Bitters is an ingredient in champagne cocktails, and it occurred to me that once my cold cleared up, we might finally bust open that long-neglected flagon of New Year's Eve ambrosia. I also thought this might be a way to perk up the stuff the day after it's opened.
(Between MG and myself, we can put away about 8 oz. of wine per 24 hour window. It helps that we have an elaborate pump/cork system which really does a pretty good job, but it's not perfect, especially when sparkling wine is involved. And who likes to throw out champagne? Answer: Not me.)
It turns out, yes, a sugar cube soaked in Blood Orange Bitters is the main ingredient in champagne cocktails. And also that champagne cocktails are AWESOME.
So now I'm really boned, because my new favorite drink only comes in $35 bottles that must be consumed in the next 48 hours, or those wee splits, which are $10 less, but, to quote the ancient Roman philosopher, have hardly any booze in them.
I had some vague notion that Blood Orange Bitters is an ingredient in champagne cocktails, and it occurred to me that once my cold cleared up, we might finally bust open that long-neglected flagon of New Year's Eve ambrosia. I also thought this might be a way to perk up the stuff the day after it's opened.
(Between MG and myself, we can put away about 8 oz. of wine per 24 hour window. It helps that we have an elaborate pump/cork system which really does a pretty good job, but it's not perfect, especially when sparkling wine is involved. And who likes to throw out champagne? Answer: Not me.)
It turns out, yes, a sugar cube soaked in Blood Orange Bitters is the main ingredient in champagne cocktails. And also that champagne cocktails are AWESOME.
So now I'm really boned, because my new favorite drink only comes in $35 bottles that must be consumed in the next 48 hours, or those wee splits, which are $10 less, but, to quote the ancient Roman philosopher, have hardly any booze in them.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Must Not Google My Lunch
In the early days of the internet, I had a frightening moment of clarity.
I could not find my keys anywhere, although I had already ransacked my apartment for 20 minutes. Finally, I stood in the middle of the room, and stared at the walls. It took a few moments, but eventually I realized what I was doing, and why it would not help me find my keys:
I had been looking for my apartment's search engine.
From that moment on, I've been acutely aware of the ways in which my brain has adapted to this new internet age. I am even more of a research freak than ever, and more than happy to pay for access to a valuable database. (Except when said access is ridiculously overpriced -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Hollywood Creative Directory.)
But I didn't see the newest wrinkle in my brain coming: I am addicted to online reviews.
This is so much more than a compulsive need to check consumerreports.org before buying my cell phone. (Although, of course, I did that too.) At first, I'd read the Amazon.com reviews before taking a leap on a new book. Then I'd occasionally check in with makeupalley.com, if I was thinking of switching moisturizers.
But over Christmas, I started checking the recipe reviews on Epicurious, and now I have a real problem on my hands. I tried to buy a tub of pesto yesterday, but couldn't -- because there was an outside chance that it wasn't any good. Later, I drove past a cute sandwich shop and thought about stopping in for a bite, but held off because I wanted to get home and Chowhound it.
Basically, I need to Google everything I eat. This is not good. Then again, I don't really have anything to worry about -- at least, until I hold off on breathing until Consumer Reports publishes their annual 2008 Oxygen Overview.
I could not find my keys anywhere, although I had already ransacked my apartment for 20 minutes. Finally, I stood in the middle of the room, and stared at the walls. It took a few moments, but eventually I realized what I was doing, and why it would not help me find my keys:
I had been looking for my apartment's search engine.
From that moment on, I've been acutely aware of the ways in which my brain has adapted to this new internet age. I am even more of a research freak than ever, and more than happy to pay for access to a valuable database. (Except when said access is ridiculously overpriced -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Hollywood Creative Directory.)
But I didn't see the newest wrinkle in my brain coming: I am addicted to online reviews.
This is so much more than a compulsive need to check consumerreports.org before buying my cell phone. (Although, of course, I did that too.) At first, I'd read the Amazon.com reviews before taking a leap on a new book. Then I'd occasionally check in with makeupalley.com, if I was thinking of switching moisturizers.
But over Christmas, I started checking the recipe reviews on Epicurious, and now I have a real problem on my hands. I tried to buy a tub of pesto yesterday, but couldn't -- because there was an outside chance that it wasn't any good. Later, I drove past a cute sandwich shop and thought about stopping in for a bite, but held off because I wanted to get home and Chowhound it.
Basically, I need to Google everything I eat. This is not good. Then again, I don't really have anything to worry about -- at least, until I hold off on breathing until Consumer Reports publishes their annual 2008 Oxygen Overview.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Formal Announcement
I like "The Wire." Every episode or portion of an episode I've ever seen has been astonishing. But at this point, I've seen, at best, 2% of all the episodes ever made.
Also, despite my frequent attempts to catch up on the show, every video store in a ten mile radius has had every single DVD, from every single season, rented out since late November.
Therefore, I am formally announcing that I will be Tivo'ing "The Wire," with every intention of watching the entire final run once I've managed to see the earlier four seasons. Any conversations you may need to have with me about the "The Wire" and how great it is will have to wait until then.
Thank you for your patience in this difficult time.
Also, despite my frequent attempts to catch up on the show, every video store in a ten mile radius has had every single DVD, from every single season, rented out since late November.
Therefore, I am formally announcing that I will be Tivo'ing "The Wire," with every intention of watching the entire final run once I've managed to see the earlier four seasons. Any conversations you may need to have with me about the "The Wire" and how great it is will have to wait until then.
Thank you for your patience in this difficult time.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
History Will Judge Us by Our Chorus Lines
I had some pistachio gelato earlier this week that had so much dairy fat, it actually crossed into butter territory. It wasn't like eating a stick o' Land o' Lakes, but it was more like that than a bowl of ice cream.
Anyway, it's at times like this that I think it's important to remember that the best rules are there to help us make good decisions.
I just saw "Enchanted," and I think it's time we instituted a law requiring musicals to feature equal opportunity bands of merry dancers. Maybe it's because just last night I saw "Ferris Bueller," with its now archaic "black people getting down" sequence. You're in downtown Chicago, people of all races and creeds are attending this parade, listening to Ferris/Lennon belt out "Shake It (Now Baby)", but for some reason, the entire crowd of synchronized dancers is made up of black people. Who are dressed like extras from "Good Times," even though all the white people are in suits.
Point being, I couldn't help noticing that in "Enchanted"'s Central Park sequence, the adorable, "my gracious! I'm not a bad dancer for an octogenarian!" elderly people were all white, and boogie-ers were all dark-skinned. Also, I call a moratorium on angry, sassy black women in various civil service positions, i.e. bus drivers and postal workers. I remain, as ever, fine with angry, sassy black female Supreme Court Justices and brain surgeons. Although I fail to see why, in all the world, only Shonda Rhimes ever steps up to this particular plate. (I'd like to give partial credit to Aaron Sorkin for casting Edward James Olmos as the Supreme Court nominee pulled over for drunk driving in that one episode of "West Wing," but then he kinda slid hopelessly into "Aren't white guys, like, the best?" with "Studio 60" and "Farnsworth's Whatchamagig.")
And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to lie on the couch and nurse my cold.
Anyway, it's at times like this that I think it's important to remember that the best rules are there to help us make good decisions.
I just saw "Enchanted," and I think it's time we instituted a law requiring musicals to feature equal opportunity bands of merry dancers. Maybe it's because just last night I saw "Ferris Bueller," with its now archaic "black people getting down" sequence. You're in downtown Chicago, people of all races and creeds are attending this parade, listening to Ferris/Lennon belt out "Shake It (Now Baby)", but for some reason, the entire crowd of synchronized dancers is made up of black people. Who are dressed like extras from "Good Times," even though all the white people are in suits.
Point being, I couldn't help noticing that in "Enchanted"'s Central Park sequence, the adorable, "my gracious! I'm not a bad dancer for an octogenarian!" elderly people were all white, and boogie-ers were all dark-skinned. Also, I call a moratorium on angry, sassy black women in various civil service positions, i.e. bus drivers and postal workers. I remain, as ever, fine with angry, sassy black female Supreme Court Justices and brain surgeons. Although I fail to see why, in all the world, only Shonda Rhimes ever steps up to this particular plate. (I'd like to give partial credit to Aaron Sorkin for casting Edward James Olmos as the Supreme Court nominee pulled over for drunk driving in that one episode of "West Wing," but then he kinda slid hopelessly into "Aren't white guys, like, the best?" with "Studio 60" and "Farnsworth's Whatchamagig.")
And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to lie on the couch and nurse my cold.
Friday, January 04, 2008
For Whom the Nose Drips
Some of my really prize-winner colds snuck in under the cover of other problems. Like the time in NYC when a cold slowly edged into a full-on fever, but I didn't realize I was getting chills, not just the normal coldness of someone in a loft with no heat.
Also, I'm extremely good at accommodating symptoms. I had a rash of bad ear infections sophomore year in high school, but since my Am Lit class had just hit post-WWI writers, I dug into a pile of Hemingway and stayed there through the month of April.
For reals, if you ever have a splitting earache, I recommend all the early Ernie. It's spare, clean prose without a lot of subtext. In fact, EH took such good care of me that I insisted on going back to school, only to have the girl across from me lean over in the middle of class and whisper "I think your ear is bleeding."
Seldom has blood leaking out of an ear ever given a 15-year-old more pleasure. She was from the school of teenage girl who lives for the moment when she glimpses a tiny flash of white through a four-millimeter gap in the back pocket of your Eddie Bauer backpack, and can loudly hiss in disgust "Is that a maxipad?" But I digress. On this occasion, all I could say was, "Oh, thanks. I'm getting over a bit of an ear infection," and then wiped off the micro-trickle with a Kleenex.
I know I didn't exhibit nearly enough shame or regret for the Girl Who Sees Everything, alas. I wonder if she still goes through life looking for embarrassing slip-ups or stains she can point out. And if so, what on Earth she gets out of it. I mean, when was the last time you checked everyone in the room to see if anyone was bleeding from the ear?
Anyway, this all a rambling way of saying that either I really am getting a cold, or it's just unseasonably chilly in Santa Monica and there's nothing wrong with me that an extra sweater and some shut windows won't fix.
Also, I'm extremely good at accommodating symptoms. I had a rash of bad ear infections sophomore year in high school, but since my Am Lit class had just hit post-WWI writers, I dug into a pile of Hemingway and stayed there through the month of April.
For reals, if you ever have a splitting earache, I recommend all the early Ernie. It's spare, clean prose without a lot of subtext. In fact, EH took such good care of me that I insisted on going back to school, only to have the girl across from me lean over in the middle of class and whisper "I think your ear is bleeding."
Seldom has blood leaking out of an ear ever given a 15-year-old more pleasure. She was from the school of teenage girl who lives for the moment when she glimpses a tiny flash of white through a four-millimeter gap in the back pocket of your Eddie Bauer backpack, and can loudly hiss in disgust "Is that a maxipad?" But I digress. On this occasion, all I could say was, "Oh, thanks. I'm getting over a bit of an ear infection," and then wiped off the micro-trickle with a Kleenex.
I know I didn't exhibit nearly enough shame or regret for the Girl Who Sees Everything, alas. I wonder if she still goes through life looking for embarrassing slip-ups or stains she can point out. And if so, what on Earth she gets out of it. I mean, when was the last time you checked everyone in the room to see if anyone was bleeding from the ear?
Anyway, this all a rambling way of saying that either I really am getting a cold, or it's just unseasonably chilly in Santa Monica and there's nothing wrong with me that an extra sweater and some shut windows won't fix.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The Duh Files
The NYTimes is reporting that talking on your cell phone makes you drive more slowly.
First, I will say it if no one else will: This is a good thing.
Nobody wants you to race along the 10 with a Samsung stuck to your ear, going 75 miles an hour. If you're going to do it, by all means, drop down to 60 and head over to the right lanes.
But we all know that cell phone users don't want to go slower. That is not why you answer the phone while driving 75 miles an hour. It's because you want to know who's calling you right now and you don't want to wait to find out until you're off the road.
I know, I sound smug and judgmental. That's because I am special.
I am completely incapable of driving and talking on the phone.
I can't do it. Either I go spontaneously deaf and cannot hear what is being said, or I go momentarily blind and can't see what's going on in front of me. It is this same personal failing that forces me to not talk -- at all -- when parking or unparking or navigating an airport. (I was so happy to see a recent houseguest that I drove right past the airport exit and then opted for the southbound Sepulveda Blvd., even though Santa Monica is, in fact, several miles north.)
It's not just my problem. It affects the people around me. After we got a car, I so seldom answered my cell phone that, upon moving to L.A., I gave up mine and used MG's. Now, of course, I most definitely have my own cell phone, and still it is hard to reach me. I turned off the ringer for the drive to the airport yesterday and sure enough, missed a call several hours later because I never turned it back on.
Make no mistake: This makes me a very annoying person to know/try to contact. I'm aware of this and I'm sorry about it. If I could change it, I would.
But consider, if you will, the possibility that this flaw of mine is actually an evolutionary advantage. Because I *cannot* talk on the phone and drive, I know better than to try. As a result, I get where I'm going more quickly, and mayhaps, in one piece.
First, I will say it if no one else will: This is a good thing.
Nobody wants you to race along the 10 with a Samsung stuck to your ear, going 75 miles an hour. If you're going to do it, by all means, drop down to 60 and head over to the right lanes.
But we all know that cell phone users don't want to go slower. That is not why you answer the phone while driving 75 miles an hour. It's because you want to know who's calling you right now and you don't want to wait to find out until you're off the road.
I know, I sound smug and judgmental. That's because I am special.
I am completely incapable of driving and talking on the phone.
I can't do it. Either I go spontaneously deaf and cannot hear what is being said, or I go momentarily blind and can't see what's going on in front of me. It is this same personal failing that forces me to not talk -- at all -- when parking or unparking or navigating an airport. (I was so happy to see a recent houseguest that I drove right past the airport exit and then opted for the southbound Sepulveda Blvd., even though Santa Monica is, in fact, several miles north.)
It's not just my problem. It affects the people around me. After we got a car, I so seldom answered my cell phone that, upon moving to L.A., I gave up mine and used MG's. Now, of course, I most definitely have my own cell phone, and still it is hard to reach me. I turned off the ringer for the drive to the airport yesterday and sure enough, missed a call several hours later because I never turned it back on.
Make no mistake: This makes me a very annoying person to know/try to contact. I'm aware of this and I'm sorry about it. If I could change it, I would.
But consider, if you will, the possibility that this flaw of mine is actually an evolutionary advantage. Because I *cannot* talk on the phone and drive, I know better than to try. As a result, I get where I'm going more quickly, and mayhaps, in one piece.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
From the Desk of Kate the Irascible
My beloved olive green J. Crew stretch city fit chinos are starting to return to their basic molecular structure. It was bound to happen -- since the first season of "Project Runway," and Jay McCarroll's habit of wearing bright pink oxfords with fatigues, they've been in very heavy rotation.
The problem is that for the last year, J. Crew stretch city fit chinos haven't had decent pockets. Just useless little divots sewn into the waistband, not even big enough for a building pass. (And if you try to wedge a building pass in there, it will pop out the first time you bend at the waist.) Pffft. I should know, I own a pair, and every time I wear them it's a living hell. Worse, they do not sell any other stretch chinos, in olive or any other color.
Yes, yes, I know there are other stores that sell pants. But these fit my non-16-year-old body, unlike pants sold by a certain company that rhymes with Blaberboney and Ditch. And they're well priced, unlike my lovely but hugely expensive pants from, shall we say, Mince. And they hold up pretty well despite repeat washings -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Ranana Bepublic.
So, at long last, I gave into my greatest weakness, my deepest, most intractable addiction: My fondness for writing the cranky letter. To wit:
The problem is that for the last year, J. Crew stretch city fit chinos haven't had decent pockets. Just useless little divots sewn into the waistband, not even big enough for a building pass. (And if you try to wedge a building pass in there, it will pop out the first time you bend at the waist.) Pffft. I should know, I own a pair, and every time I wear them it's a living hell. Worse, they do not sell any other stretch chinos, in olive or any other color.
Yes, yes, I know there are other stores that sell pants. But these fit my non-16-year-old body, unlike pants sold by a certain company that rhymes with Blaberboney and Ditch. And they're well priced, unlike my lovely but hugely expensive pants from, shall we say, Mince. And they hold up pretty well despite repeat washings -- yeah, I'm looking at you, Ranana Bepublic.
So, at long last, I gave into my greatest weakness, my deepest, most intractable addiction: My fondness for writing the cranky letter. To wit:
Will this turn J. Crew around on the whole pocket situation? Will I be forced to keep my word and switch over to the appallingly expensive Vince sneaker pants? Stay tuned!
Dear J. Crew,
I have been waiting for the pocket-hate to end, but as your spring line shows no signs of improvement, I had to write.
I have been a loyal J. Crew customer for the last ten years or more -- I coveted your sweaters when I was a freshman in Madison, WI; I bought your career separates when I started my first job in NYC. Literally, your products make up close to 75% of my wardrobe.
That will change in the near future if you do not stop selling pants without functional pockets. No, wait, let me clarify: I'm not buying any more city fit stretch chinos until you give them decent pockets. Those tiny coin pockets in the waistband do not work at all. To be blunt, they suck.
I like your city fit trousers, but to be honest, I would buy any pair of machine washable pants with a little bit of stretch to them. But for some reason, month after month, your only stretch chinos are these city fit trousers with, frankly, shitty pockets.
Just to give you some background, I work as an assistant in Los Angeles. It's an incredibly demanding job, with work weeks that range from 60 to 80 hours. I have to crawl on the floor to plug in laptops. I have to eat lunch out of a carton while taking notes at a meeting. And I need to do all this and more while looking like a presentable, trustworthy human being.
In short, it's the kind of job that many, many of your customers take as they leave school. And all of us need good looking, machine washable pants that stretch when we move -- and we need them to have pockets that can hold car keys, a pen, even just a security badge without said item popping out onto our laps when we sit down.
I notice that you do not sell men's pants with such useless pockets -- very likely because no man would ever buy them. Women, wanting to look presentable, will occasionally buy something that isn't perfect because it's better than nothing. But no more. Until you fix this pocket situation, I am spending my money in the Vince department at Saks. True, I will only be able to buy one pair of Vince pants for the price of three pairs of J.Crew pants, but at least they'll have frickin' pockets.
Yours in irritation,
Me
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
The Best Things About 2007
I am addicted to the iPod Nike +
. I bought it on Black Friday 2006, and December 2006 was such a blur, it barely got any use. But since then, I've become obsessed with keeping the little sensor strapped to whatever pair of shoes I'm wearing at the time. So much so that I actually exhausted the battery on the sensor in just over a year of use and had to buy a replacement.
I tip my hat to the U.S. Postal Service and its $4.60 Priority Mail. Something like a dozen or more packages left Santa Monica for points east this month, and thanks to Priority Mail, they all arrived in a timely fashion for not a lot of cash. It almost makes up for the fact that 90% of my Christmas stamps are now 2 cents short of official postage, thanks to recent rate hikes.
My Treo 755p.
Totally exceeded all my expectations. And thanks to Google Maps and its traffic feature, I now no longer need or want a GPS unit. As the young people say, WOOT!
Bobbi Brown Tinted Lip Balm in Pink Raspberry. Bought one, lost it, and promptly stocked up on three more tubes so I'd never be without it again. Like a classy black tube of Chapstick, with just enough color to keep me from looking washed out. If BB discontinues this item, I cannot vouch for her personal safety.
Vanilla Bakery macaroons. At this exact second, we are still well stocked on cookies of all kinds, but when this era of sugar largess passes, I know Vanilla will be there for me, with their excellent coffee and pistachio cookies.
And the very best thing about 2007, for the eighth year running: MG, who continues to shatter all previously held records for Awesomeness in the Field of Husbandly Arts. This year's secret weapon: Horn rim glasses that make him look like the illegitimate son of Ewan McGregor and Marcello Mastroianni's disturbingly handsome sister.
. I bought it on Black Friday 2006, and December 2006 was such a blur, it barely got any use. But since then, I've become obsessed with keeping the little sensor strapped to whatever pair of shoes I'm wearing at the time. So much so that I actually exhausted the battery on the sensor in just over a year of use and had to buy a replacement.I tip my hat to the U.S. Postal Service and its $4.60 Priority Mail. Something like a dozen or more packages left Santa Monica for points east this month, and thanks to Priority Mail, they all arrived in a timely fashion for not a lot of cash. It almost makes up for the fact that 90% of my Christmas stamps are now 2 cents short of official postage, thanks to recent rate hikes.
My Treo 755p.
Totally exceeded all my expectations. And thanks to Google Maps and its traffic feature, I now no longer need or want a GPS unit. As the young people say, WOOT!Bobbi Brown Tinted Lip Balm in Pink Raspberry. Bought one, lost it, and promptly stocked up on three more tubes so I'd never be without it again. Like a classy black tube of Chapstick, with just enough color to keep me from looking washed out. If BB discontinues this item, I cannot vouch for her personal safety.
Vanilla Bakery macaroons. At this exact second, we are still well stocked on cookies of all kinds, but when this era of sugar largess passes, I know Vanilla will be there for me, with their excellent coffee and pistachio cookies.
And the very best thing about 2007, for the eighth year running: MG, who continues to shatter all previously held records for Awesomeness in the Field of Husbandly Arts. This year's secret weapon: Horn rim glasses that make him look like the illegitimate son of Ewan McGregor and Marcello Mastroianni's disturbingly handsome sister.
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