Tom & Alissa

Altogether now; a great big hurrah for Friday!

Here’s a question - what do you all think of the use of semicolons? I can’t recall, at the moment, Strunk & White’s opinion, but I’ve been thinking about it lately (oh what a fascinating cognitive life I lead) as some people use them a lot, some people not at all, and I don’t remember being taught the proper care and feeding of semicolons in my twelve years of English grammar. (Twelve years of English grammar which may, in fact, have created a kind of hedge against four years of devil-may-care college literature deprivation. Also, I just had to look up how to spell “deprivation”, and that is sad, because spelling has always been my strong point. I thought it had two As.)

Anyhow. It’s been a very long week, oddly, too, as it hasn’t been a bad one. Since I last posted, on Tuesday (sorry), we’ve watched a handful of movies, Tom’s been working, I’ve been working, all that. I’ve been neglecting books (I think I burnt out on them last month, and then had a week where my eyes didn’t work at all this month), but I have completely devoured the Style issue of the New Yorker which came. Undoubtedly my favorite special issue of my favorite magazine, and I’m suddenly feeling shallow mentioning that. But the profile of Karl Lagerfeld totally fascinated me. The man never sleeps? Maybe? It’s weirdly inspiring to keep working and learning and just never stop. Those who do so seem to be the once who remain interesting throughout their lifetime.

It’s Dine-In Brooklyn week (since Monday until a week from now, the 30th, which really makes it more like two weeks), and as New York magazine pointed out at some point in the last week or two, a lot of the restaurants really don’t ever warrant spending $21.12 on a meal; however, we did go down to Blue Ribbon last night, and to be honest, it was awesome. I’d have to highly recommend it. I can’t believe it took us this long to go there (not for lack of trying, but did you know they don’t serve lunch?), but it was well worth it.

We watched Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love a few nights ago, and I won’t write much because it’s totally captured Tom’s fascination and maybe he’ll write something ::cough cough:: but it was splendid. I, for whatever reason, have serious difficult with Chinese movies - and maybe I’ve just seen the wrong ones, or maybe the aesthetic escapes me entirely - but I really enjoyed it. Lusciously shot (by Christopher Doyle), clever plot, and apparently a uniquely loose working environment.

The director’s next film, My Blueberry Nights, comes out this October. Credit cast includes Norah Jones (!), Jude Law, David Strathairn, Natalie Portman, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz . . . and it’s in English, obviously.

To those who have asked, or are wondering - we haven’t seen and probably won’t see 300 (I definitely have no interest), and we haven’t seen Zodiac yet, though we definitely want to. It’s just very long and we never think of it with enough time to actually go see it. We have not, in fact, now that I think of it, seen a movie in the theater since The Lives of Others several weeks ago. I guess that’s what happens early in the year!

We’re going to see Matthew Bourne’s production of Edward Scissorhands at BAM tomorrow night. Yes, it’s a ballet. No, neither of us have seen the movie (yet, though we have it from Netflix).