Kittens and puppies

In the continuing Moby-Dick saga, I got an email yesterday with an outline of the class and I think it shall be fascinating. It’s going to include an exploration of the uses of new media in teaching and scholarship, and though that sounds fabulously incongruous, it’s not, as I’m discovering as I actually read the book. Editors have been tweaking and changing Moby-Dick over the years, much as you might tweak, say, a wiki. Also, something about religion in American cultural studies. I can’t believe I almost didn’t take this class. It will be work, but hopefully good work, and I am all about all of the above.

It’s a grey day - so grey, in fact, that I had a cup of coffee when I went out for my break instead of tea. It’s almost the weekend. It wasn’t very good coffee, though. What is Starbucks’ issue with brewed coffee? I tried the Pike Place roast and it was not yummy. I should always stick to Kenyan coffee at Starbucks - granted, I always drink it black, but I maintain that you should not have to add milk to your coffee for it to be drinkable. Milk is for sops.

We watched Enchanted recently and enjoyed it, though I suspect our favorite part may have been seeing all kinds of familiar names in the credits (Tom’s current project is also Disney, and also includes many of the crew). I watched Spellbound last night - oh my word, I am so glad I am not an eighth-grader any more. Actually, come to think of it, I skipped eighth grade. Anyhow, all the braces just made me wince at the remembrance of being a tall, retainer-and-lip-bumper-laden, gawky teenager who talked too much and used big words and got quizzical/patronizing looks from adults. We have only two episodes left in BSG Season 3, which we’ll probably watch very soon. And I’ve been watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on Hulu whenever I can, and man, I am way too in love with that show.

We may get to see Altman’s Thieves Like Us tonight over at Film Forum (love Film Forum!), and tomorrow is brunch with the lovely Amanda, who is in town for a few days from Aberdeen, and the Zoae Series at night. And after church on Sunday, we’re off to an engagement party for two of our favorite people. And then, on Monday, I start the summer session. That was all too short of a break, but then again, I’m kind a junkie for school. Okay, so I’m still a nerd.

Largo

Lovers of good film and music: there’s a great article on Largo, the Los Angeles music/comedy club beloved of people like Sean & Sara Watkins, John Brion, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, and Paul Thomas Anderson, in this week’s New Yorker. The whole thing isn’t online yet, but keep an eye out.

So much better than a chicken sandwich

Lunch with Tom at Momofuku Noodle Bar: steamed pork buns, smoked chicken wings, the special of the day (homemade soba noodles with crab, ramps, and snow peas in a spicy broth), and a tiny cup of salty peanut butter ice cream.

Perfection.

A Marginal Life

Ann Conway writes about venturing outside your own kind at the Image Journal blog. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Weekend Woundup

Friday night was great fun, listening to Michel Gondry talk about his work (he is kind of hilarious), watching a couple of his music videos - the Rolling Stones, Bjork, and the White Stripes - and hanging out with friends old and new. After a champagne reception with the Man Himself, we ate in Times Square, at a place that I think probably specializes in giving the “authentic American experience” to tourists. Not so much, but eating in Times Square is basically an exercise not unlike eating at one of the “authentic” places in Disneyworld. Suspend all disbelief, ye who enter here. And it was good chili.

I got home around 1:30 am, which was kind of a bad idea since I had to be up before six to pack and shower and catch a train. But we did all of the above and made our train with a few minutes to spare. By eleven we were in Albany with my Mom.

We went to the Tulip Festival in Albany’s Washington Park. I have to say that I lived in the general Albany area for twenty-one years, but had never really gone to the Festival except once to see my aunt dance, and we didn’t stay past the performance. Oh, my. Mom says the paper reported that 30,000 people were there; you could have fooled me, and I walked around in a bit of a daze, saying I had no idea there were that many people in Albany, period. There were street fair-style food vendors (we had gyros and split a funnel cake), booths for all kinds of crafty pursuits, bouncing castles, a petting zoo, two stages with bands, and a whole bunch of artists, which we enjoyed very much and even bought a Japanese-style cherry blossom painting by an artist from Massachusetts. We wandered about for a bit - the weather was sunny and warm and perfect - and then headed back to the house.

We spent the afternoon sitting around and chatting with Mom, mostly about politics (yes! us!), and then headed to Marmora Cafe, on River Street in downtown Troy. Now, I went to school in Troy for four years, and there wasn’t much to eat there, it seemed. A good Chinese restaurant and a loosely middle eastern restaurant, plus some pizza joints and the local brewpub (which, admittedly, was great), seemed to round it out. So I’m always a tiny bit dubious of Troy when it comes to eating, mostly because everything that’s sprouted up there in the three years since graduation is in areas of town I’ve never managed to be able to find very easily.

But, hurrah! We walked into Marmora and the owner said he was out of food. Disappointed, we started to turn away, but he said he thought he had a little bit left and could probably make us a nice platter. We almost left, but then decided to go for it, and fifteen minutes later there was a huge platter with tabouli, a lot of different kinds of hummus, baba ganoush, cheeses, strawberries, some kind of falafel ball with a sweetly spiced beef inside, and pita wedges. We ate like kings and thanked the owner profusely before driving out to the Colonie marina for a boat ride with the Womers. All in all, a perfect Saturday.

On Sunday we got to go to Terra Nova - always a treat - then went to my aunt’s house for Mother’s Day chicken and some time with the family. We had to leave pretty early to catch a train back, which got us home by 7:30 or so. Naturally, I cooked up some dinner and we watched The Machinist, which neither of us had seen, though we both distinctly remembered watching the trailers when it was coming out. It was less creepy than I thought it would be, but more than Tom thought. Whatever the case, it was beautifully shot and very solid. It was also very hard to watch Christian Bale, who lost something like 60 pounds for the role. He looked so emaciated. And to think, he did it again for Rescue Dawn. That man is one committed (and brilliant) actor.

I stayed home from work today with sore sinuses and head, venturing out only to buy groceries. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching eight (count ‘em) episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Season 3, which is of course brilliant. We have one disc left and then will probably start watching Season 4 on Hulu. We love the show, but I think we’ll be glad when it ends so we can finish Six Feet Under and start a new drama (The Wire? Sex and the City? The Sopranos? the possibilities are endless).

I’m hoping to be back on my feet tomorrow. Tom has a long, but relatively simple week this week (so far - schedules seem to change maniacally on this project), and I have nothing in particular planned but work until this weekend (which is very full). This is my last week before summer classes start, and I am very much hoping to have finished Moby Dick by Monday night. I’ve made a good dent in it already. Tom is also reading it, and we have two copies so we can both bring it along during the day. Thankfully, it’s none of the stuffy Victorian novel we were expecting. Actually, it’s hilarious and quirky and messy, and we are greatly enjoying it. Good thing, since I’ve got six weeks of studying it up ahead.

Iron Man

Iron Man: the review, in far too few words. As Tom summarized over dinner last night and I briefly mention in the review, the genius of the film is that Stark has no real superpowers except privilege and wealth. Tom pointed out that he’s a prototype for what we all want, for those with power and privilege (that’s us, folks) to stop pointing fingers and take responsibility for righting wrongs.

I thought I was the only one

I read the always intriguing Malcolm Gladwell’s article on simultaneous discovery and some other stuff this morning on the way to work. I always find this phenomenon fascinating. Though he does make a distinction between artistic and scientific discoveries, it does happen in Hollywood, too, and I wrote briefly about it at WORLD a few weeks ago in the midst of a film review. It’s simultaneously comforting and unnerving to think that if you’re on the brink of a big idea or new discovery, someone else probably is, too.

Come on Wednesday, we can do this

I am happy to find myself with no more articles to write this week, though I really need to make a dent in Moby-Dick. I looked for it this morning, but I think Tom brought it with him to work in the wee hours. :) I have plenty to do at work but not too much, and the prospect of Friday night’s soirée, followed by the weekend’s trip to Albany, is keeping me smiling.

We saw Iron Man on Monday night - review, of course, forthcoming. We greatly enjoyed it. Stay past the credits. Tom had to be at work at 3am on Tuesday (after a full day on Monday), so he was getting home right about when I was leaving work yesterday, so I stayed out and browsed the mall-that-is-Soho, escaping with exactly one pair of fishnet tights (who knew they were so hard to find?) and a very inexpensive, surprisingly well-made summer dress from H&M.

Not much else to say right now, except that we were watching The Simpsons last night after I got home, and as it turns out, Grampa Simpson was “voted the best-looking boy in Albany”. Who knew? He’s a homeboy.

Take and read!

I never actually mentioned it when I talked about the New York Times Reading Room book blog, but Kathleen Norris - one of my very favorite authors, and whose little book The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women’s Work I finished yesterday - is one of the people blogging about the great novel Housekeeping by one of my other favorite authors, Marilynne Robinson. That is such an inspired combination that it should forgive the Times of any of its faults for at least a couple years to come.

Thank God there are still papers out there that believe in literature.

Also on the Times, Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts, is taking questions on the health of the arts in New York City this week. It should be an intriguing discussion.

Weekend Woundup

I left work early on Friday to have lunch with the lovely Liz, who I’ve known through a couple different mutual friends for a while but hadn’t met. She was on her way from DC to visit her brother and had a stopover between bus and train in town, so we ate dutiful salads at a random Europa Cafe (oh, NYC lunch chains) and shared a kahlua brownie and talked for a couple hours. It was splendid.

I then went to see Made of Honor for a review which should be in WORLD (print!) soon. It was not very good, but it wasn’t painful. That’s about all I can say. Afterwards I headed downtown and jotted down the substance of my review before heading to a ukelele extravaganza at the Bowery Poetry Club, then the Half Pint with a horde. Definitely one of the better Fridays I’ve had lately.

On Saturday our dear Colleen came over; she was in town for a few days after moving home to Anchorage last year, and she’s headed Dublin-ward to Trinity this fall, and I am very excited for her. We had burgers at 67 Burger and then picked up some groceries. Alisa came by later on, and we ate copious waffles and drank rosé and discussed good books before everyone went home.

After church on Sunday, we had a lovely relaxing brunch in the garden behind Palma, and dinner at the Stone Home Wine Bar around the corner from us, all with friends. I also finished Brideshead Revisited and started Saturday, which is amazing.

Today I had one triumph - I convinced the university that I am properly immunized and managed to register for the Moby-Dick class. I’ve already bought the books, so I’m glad there were no snags. I am very excited for this class to start. I’m playing at being a grad student in the English department this summer, what with Moby-Dick and the British novel class, and I have to say, I think it’s a good way to spend the summer.

A relatively open week for me, besides work. I don’t even have class. On Friday I’m going to An Evening with Michel Gondry at the Museum of the Moving Image, and perhaps a tiny féte afterwards, and Saturday brings an Albany-bound train for Mother’s Day. I haven’t been home or seen my mom since January, and I’m very much looking forward to it. She tells me the Tulip Festival is brightening the pretty part of downtown Albany, and maybe we’ll get to see it this year.

Lastly, my review of Harmony Korine’s newest, Mister Lonely, is in this issue of Paste, but it’s also online. I tried, but I wasn’t a huge fan.

I also have a day job

In case you’re interested in (part of) what I do to pay the bills, the magazine I edit and publish just came back from the printer and is now up on the web as well. It’s available as a webzine, which I don’t design (I’m in the process of revamping it, in fact), and a print version, which you can download as a PDF. This is our “green” issue. Happy browsing.

Books for April

All the Sad Young Literary Men - Keith Gessen
I read this for a review (forthcoming, RELEVANT July/August issue), but I was wonderfully surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s the intertwined stories of three young men as they overthink college, then pursue their ambitions. It reminded me a lot of Jonathan Franzen, who is in fact quoted on the back cover. If you like slightly dark, sardonic literature with a hint of hope, this is a good one. [4/5]

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch
Also for a RELEVANT review; I can’t recommend this book highly enough. As someone who grew up in the kind of Christian environment that delighted in being critical of culture, this was a great encouragement to move on and create culture - and not just art, but law, cities, and omelets. A must-read. I think it comes out in August. [5/5]

Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture - Heather Hendershot
A really great ethnographic/sociological look at evangelical culture (pre-2004) and media, by someone from the “outside”. It’s one of the main sources for my term paper. Everything in it was (sometimes painfully) familiar, and it was interesting to get a more academic take, especially on how certain emphases within evangelical culture can contribute to common psychological problems that pop up (especially eating disorders). It’s very gentle and very balanced, and I have to say, I agreed with pretty much everything she talked about. [4/5]

Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
I started reading books for my Modern British Novel course in July; this was the first. I have always enjoyed Orwell’s books, but I hadn’t read this one, and it was great (though the main character is frustrating, on purpose). A gentle satire of socialism - or really, more of certain types of socialists. Very redemptive in the end. [4/5]

I was going to plow through a bunch of my other books for class this month, but now that I’m taking Moby Dick, I know what I’ll be reading. I’m also in the midst of Brideshead Revisted right now, as well as The Quotidian Mysteries. I kind of want a month off to read!

Whale of a tale

After realizing that I am going to have a lot of time to myself in the next two months while Tom does the whole production thing and I had no classes, I figured I should just knock out a few more credits (because, well, the more credits I have, the sooner I can graduate and move out into the big bad world, or at least onto more school). So I’m taking a class on Moby Dick (and literary criticism) in the English department. I’ve never actually read it, though I am pretty sure I read excerpts in high school, so I’m looking forward to it.

We have an awful lot buzzing and brewing, but nothing much to report. Stay tuned.

Check yes or no

You can join ConversantLife’s new profile system and be my fan! Or even my friend, if you’re feeling ambitious.

Poor little neglected blog

I’m not in a bloggy mood lately, but I give you Battlestar Galactisimpsons.

Monday

Hi, netheads.

I haven’t much to say, except I did manage to bang out the required number of pages for my paper and make some kind of cohesive argument, and the rest of the week is devoted to lots of rewriting and some introducing and concluding and bibliographing. It’s odd, though, because now I have no reading for class and I’ve tied up my articles, and suddenly I’m doing things like reading for pleasure again. Granted, I’m reading the novels for my summer class, but they are wonderful. Currently, it’s Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

It’s very rainy out, but I can’t complain. As they say in Jane Austen books, “we’ve been enjoying exceptional weather of late.” I do hope I can go out for a run tomorrow morning, though.

Friday

I haven’t got much to say; I went out for a run around 7am today and Tom was home when I got back. Long night at the Guggenheim for him!

And I’m looking forward to a long weekend of paper-making, in the hopes of putting my own feeble little brick into the wall of scholarly knowledge within the week. Long live the academy.

Perhaps someday . . .

Proud to be a Brooklynite.

I took today off to work on homework; I spent most of the afternoon in the park reading and marking books, then came home and typed up notes wildly till I couldn’t carry on. I’m going to have my hands full this weekend. But I’m finding that research is intoxicating, especially synthesizing ideas into new ones. Am I a nerd?

Oh, yes, that’s it

I’m far from a Luddite, but I’ve been falling out of love with technology for a while now. I just don’t really get excited over fancy new techie gadgets or technologies any more. I’m not sure that I ever did, but it avoided lynching when I was at the Tute. (Though I retain a healthy amount of gratefulness for things like WordPress and Facebook and all things Google, which make it easier for me to be an efficient writer/worker/human.)

Which is why this is perfect.

Why editors are never out of a job

From McSweeney’s: First drafts of the parables of Jesus.

Jesus said, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

One of the disciples asked, “What of the man who builds his house inside the house built on the rock? Surely his house will be even less damaged by water and wind. Is this what we should do?”

And Jesus said, “No, don’t do that.”

On a editorially related note, there’s been a Hallmark e-card phishing scam going around, which I put up on the website at work. This was the most clever scam email I’ve seen in a long time, in that all the links do actually go to the Hallmark website (for information about the company, shopping links, etc.) except the one that’s supposed to be going to the e-card. Tricksy tricksy.

But the dead give-away? They spelled receive as “recieve”. Why is it that spammers inevitably give themselves away with bad spelling? Wait, don’t answer that, I suppose I know.

Getting it all done

I’m not trying to impart wisdom here. I’m too young and inexperienced to have much in the way of wisdom. But lately, a lot of people have made comments to me (in person and online) to the tune of “how do you do it?”, mostly because, well, I do work a lot, and I don’t miss deadlines, and I guess this isn’t normal. :) So that’s all this is.

I’m not a particularly high-energy person. I can’t remember the last time I woke up in the morning and felt rested, even after sleeping a long time. (Yes, I realize this is probably not a good thing!) I would almost always rather be on the couch watching mindless TV than doing anything else.

But when I moved to New York, and nobody was telling me what to do at any particular time, I realized that I could turn into a serious lump, the kind of person who only got off the couch to go to work so as to pay the rent, who always eats Chinese take-out and never does the laundry or makes the bed, the kind of person who always talks about doing things, but never actually does them. And I didn’t want to be that kind of person. Realistically, if I expect to do anything significant in life, I have to form good working habits so that I have some structure from which to deviate. :)

In that vein, I established some practices that I mostly live by, and I think these help me to keep doing what needs to be done . . .

I never say that “I’m just not motivated enough to do X.” Kids need to be motivated to do what they need to do, but adults are supposed to be able to do things whether or not there’s a carrot dangling in front of their face. Same for saying “I just can’t [do that thing I need to do]“. Yes, I can do it - I have the time and I am physically able. If I don’t do it, it’s not because I can’t - it’s because I’m choosing not to.

When I wake up in the morning, I usually want to roll over and hit the snooze button. Then I realized that the extra twenty or thirty minutes of sleep, no matter how good it sounds, doesn’t realistically make any difference, so I just get out of bed. (See above!)

In the last year or so I’ve become a little more crazy about my health habits, because I don’t really have time to be sick and I seem to be extra susceptible to it, especially in winter. So, I get up a little earlier in the morning to exercise for twenty minutes (which, by the way, if I can exercise in our tiny apartment, anyone can exercise), I take supplements (a multi, an essential fatty acid, and a gingko biloba, and Emergen-C if I’m feeling under the weather), I don’t drink coffee except on the weekends and instead drink a lot of green tea (no mid-morning crash), and I sorted out foods that I seemed to be sensitive to - chief among them dairy - and stopped eating them. I seek out vegetables and proteins and try to save any “bad” eating for the weekends, when I’m out with friends. I choose to take the extra minute and “just do” things that are easy to slack on, like flossing my teeth or putting my clothes away properly at night. ;) A little goes a very long way.

I “overcommit” on purpose. This is a dicey one and I realize it’s a slippery slope. I don’t take on more than I can possibly do (or at least, I try not to do that), but I do commit to work that I know I should do, but that will require effort I may gripe about later - article assignments, grad school, whatever. I take on a challenging workload because I don’t work well unless I’m under a deadline. (This, incidentally, is why I have the highest regard for novelists and people who don’t necessarily work under assignment. They do it because they do it, not because someone is tapping their foot and breathing down their neck!)

When I write, I just sit down and pound it out. I am the most scattered writer in the world, I think, but I write my thoughts down, and every time I have another thought I quickly start a new paragraph and type out the thought, because my brain doesn’t retain things from moment to moment and I don’t want to lose any of them. Anne Lamott says something in Bird By Bird about writing a “s***ty first draft”, and that’s exactly what I do. I’m confident enough to know I can do it, but only only gained that confidence by doing. (If you’re a writer, but you don’t write, then you’re not a writer.)

Oh, and I use Google Docs to hold all my articles, so that if I’m at work and I have a sudden thought, I can input it into a document and still access it from home.

I rigorously keep a calendar. I once kept all my appointments and things-to-do in my head, but that flew out the window ages ago. Last year I used a Moleskine day planner, which was great; this year I’m using a combination of Google Calendar, Google Sync, and my Blackberry. I check the calendar every morning and I make sure to cross things off my list as I do them, so I feel a sense of accomplishment. The calendar holds everything - workout, laundry, screenings, meetings and deadlines at work, grocery shopping. I’m totally comfortable moving things around on the calendar and rescheduling and even removing things, but it keeps me sane and lets me not worry about forgetting something.

Until my to-do list is done for the day, I don’t take a break beyond a lunch break (during which I’m often reading for class or an article). Taking a break to “goof off” makes me lose serious traction and the day goes haywire from there. Working till it’s all done means more time to relax after the work is done, which also means more time to spend with my husband.

I take a Sabbath. I wasn’t good about this in college and I definitely paid for it. On Sunday, I don’t worry too much about what I’m eating, I don’t work out, I drink coffee, I go to church and brunch with friends, I read books that interest me (rather than books for school), and I watch bad movies with Tom. Basically, I don’t do anything that’s “productive”, in the sense of crossing it off my list. All those things are wonderfully productive and regenerative in their own right. And though I’m not really happy to see Monday come, at least I’m not already completely exhausted.

Except the first and last principles here, these are just what works for me, my working style, and the way my life is structured. I realize that I work fast, my work is well suited for short bits here and there that add up to a whole, and I live in a small space with one adult and no children, which means relatively little housework. I don’t claim any of this would work for anyone else, though I suspect much might. But as I read about the people who do significant and good work in the world, it seems that they are willing to push past mental limitations and their own laziness to do more, and they just never say they can’t do something.

What disciplines, principles, or tools do you use to do the work that’s set before you?

I want to go home

Rather than being at Calvin like, oh, pretty much everyone in the universe right now, I’m still at work, hoping to have the magazine packaged at at the front desk for the printer to pick up on Monday. Hurrah!

So I’m going home once that’s done to start trying to gather research for my paper. Not to jinx it, but I’m postulating something along the lines of how the “new” evangelical film, produced by filmmakers from outside “the church”, has a lot in common with the classical definition of kitsch. I think I’ve got a lot to draw on for that. (If you’re in IAM, you know what I mean, but I do have a lot of scholarly work to back it up as well.)

Happily, today was delivery day at the house; the cable guy came to hook up our internet, the new bookcase was delivered, and the refrigerator has finally arrived (hurrah for groceries again!). Oh, and yesterday we got a coffee table, so now I finally have a place to scatter all my papers and set down my cup of tea while I work, since I don’t have a desk. Tom uses our desk and his job requires a lot of papers to be around all the time. I don’t really mind. After sitting in front of a desk all day at work, it’s nice to work from the comfort of the couch.

I have grand plans to spend most of tomorrow writing reviews for three books that only just came in the last couple days, watching a film and writing a review, wading through the five scholarly books I have from the library and tagging what’s useful, hopefully getting the skeleton of an outline down, then heading off to a pre-Tribeca Festival press screening and a friend’s staged reading. It’s times like these that I have a love-hate relationship with being a writer; on the one hand, it’s pretty easy for me to start writing a paper. I’ve gotten past the whole fear-of-the-page thing by now, since I’m always under the gun. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly hard to write scholarly work when you’re used to turning out Paste-worthy snappy writing. Academia seems not to look kindly on wit. My academic prose will never be too dry, but I have to kick myself into big-word mode.

It’s nice to be able to use big words, though. I’d gotten out of the habit.

Why wait?

I just have to ask . . .

Why, oh late filers, do you wait for the last minute to file your taxes? I ask in genuine curiosity. Is it the intimidating paperwork? Is it lacking vital pieces of information? Fear of the result? Your accountant? Procrastination? Or some other reason I just don’t know of?

I ask only because Facebook and blogs have revealed that this is a relatively widespread phenomenon. I have always filed mine as soon as all the W2s come in, usually in January, because I want to know if I’m getting a refund - if I’m not, I want to know how much I owe so I can save the money by April 15, and if I am, I want the return as soon as possible. Since I started using TurboTax, even filing our highly complicated taxes - a dozen W2s, two small businesses, deductions on business-related equipment and rent space, plus NYC municipal taxes - took about an hour and a half and we had the refunds directly deposited into our bank account within a week, so there didn’t seem to be a good reason to wait.

Granted, after growing up without much money, I’m always hyperconscious of making the bills (and taxes seem to be just one more bill). But I feel like most other people must be concerned about having enough money to pay their taxes. I’m really just intrigued. Talk to me.

Writers and databases and the Cult of Sincerity

One of the good things about writing journalistically (if what I do can be called that) is that I’m generally working on some kind of pitch-and-assign basis, rather than writing on spec. Fiction/poetry/other creative types, however, generally have to submit their work, finished, to a journal. So for them, Relief Journal has a blog entry on “Why Writers Need A Database”. And they’re even releasing some specially designed writer’s database software for the PC at Calvin this weekend, then making it available on their website.

By the way, have I mentioned lately how incredibly bummed out I am to not be going to the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing? Yes, I know I’m swamped, but as it turns out, we moved early, and the magazine is likely to be out by Friday, so I could have actually squeezed it in. Alas.

We went to the cast & crew screening of Cult of Sincerity last night, which was good fun. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Speaking of Cult, AmieStreet is actually a rather fabulous website. I don’t really get too into exploring new music - I just find the array dizzying, and keeping up with movies keeps me pretty busy - but this makes it pretty easy and fun (and cheap!).

Mostly Fort Greene

Well, all our stuff was in our apartment by Friday night, and by Saturday afternoon, we’d unpacked most of it. Eightish boxes of books still await a bookcase. Tom’s longsuffering father drove in and picked up all the stuff we can’t store but don’t want to get rid of (like, a couple of guitars, and our bikes, and some mementos) and drove them back out to New Jersey. Suddenly we realized how big the apartment really is, at least by our standards. And we were glad.

We had dinner on Friday night at Epoca Ristorante (delicious), and dinner on Saturday at 67 Burger (inexpensive and delicious). We don’t have a full-sized refrigerator yet, so the eating is a bit dicey, but soon! Soon we can buy perishables again.

I spent a little time on Saturday reading about our new neighborhood, which, as it turns out, is rather historically significant; it was a fort during the Revolutionary War (the monument is in the park), a very high-end place for the rich to live, an Irish shantytown, a dangerous place to live and now one of the finest and most ethnically diverse places to live in town. The church near us was significant in the abolitionist movement; the creation of Fort Greene Park was called for by none other than Walt Whitman (and designed in part by Frederick Olmstead, designer of Central Park and Prospect Park). And apparently the neighborhood is a designated historical district. Fascinating.

I miss Prospect Park, but I went for a run in Fort Greene Park this morning, which is much smaller but very cheery, with lots of dogs and their owners congregating in the middle. In fact, people seem downright friendly here, and we met several people in our building just by riding the elevators. I think we’re going to like it here.

The Saturday (Afternoon) Post

We moved to Fort Greene yesterday. Yes, we did. We have wonderful friends who came and helped us with about a day’s notice and everything is in our apartment now, though we need to send some stuff out to live in Tom’s old room in his parents’ house in New Jersey. But after working all day, it’s in livable condition. And though we’ll always miss living in the Slope, we like it here very much.

In the meantime, however, interesting things were published in Comment:
An article on the “blog.mode” exhibit that just closed at the Met, or is about to, written by me.
An interview with our own dear Dan Nayeri, writer of The Cult of Sincerity and various forthcoming things and pastry chef extraordinaire (you think I am kidding, but I’m not).

Ok, that’s enough for now. The two weeks ahead are enormously full of ridiculous amounts of things to do and I need a little rest before that begins.

Thursday Culture Snippets

• The NYTimes Reading Room “blog” is discussing Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson next. Seriously, whoever’s picking the books over there has impeccable taste. They’ve already done War and Peace and The Moviegoer this year, among others.
Small Cool Apartments, one of the more inspirational ideas for those of us who live in places the size of most people’s living room (and love it), has been on for a while at ApartmentTherapy.
• If you’re in New York, or even if you’re not, you can still catch Patrick Stewart in Macbeth, because it’s moving to Broadway! We saw it at BAM and it was astounding.
The New York Philharmonic is playing a free concert on Governor’s Island this summer, and by george, I’d be there, but I just checked the calendar and we’re supposed to be seeing Les Liaisons Dangereuse, starring Laura Linney, that night. Hmm. Also, how cool is it that everyone will have to take a ferry?
• Poets.org says to celebrate Poetry Month by bringing a piece of poetry to your place of worship.
• And lastly, join about 6,000 other people and go watch The Cult of Sincerity. You’ll be glad you did.

La Misma Luna and The Visitor

I wrote about two recent movies, La Misma Luna and The Visitor, and about making movies about illegal immigrants.

I guess that’s encouraging

From yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of novelist Barbara Kingsolver, born in Annapolis, Maryland (1955). She grew up in rural Kentucky, where she spent her childhood exploring the alfalfa fields and wooded hills surrounding her home. She started keeping a journal when she was eight years old and has continued to do so her entire life . . .

. . . She was working on a Ph.D. thesis on the social lives of termites when she decided to abandon a career in science and try to become a writer. She took a job as a technical writer, which forced her to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day and do nothing but write. She later said, “I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.”

Today’s the day!

The Cult of Sincerity premieres today on YouTube! It’s already gotten a ton of traffic today. Go check out the comments, then watch the movie.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the trailer:

In other news, we are definitely moving. Probably next week. Details still to be determined.

And of course, work never slows down - here’s my review of My Blueberry Nights.