We also watched The Bank Job (could have used three more rounds of revisions, I think) and Giant (very long, a little messy, but enjoyable), and ate at 67 Burger. I made grocery lists for the week. We did not watch the Olympics at all, because we can’t, really, except by streaming the video, and I am not that motivated.

Tom is working for a few days this week on the Jonas brothers’ 3-D movie (first job in six weeks), or something like that, and I have my evenings free except a screening on Wednesday night of What Just Happened. I am looking forward to finishing my book (The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen) and starting another (probably The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross), maybe watching a movie (we have Bottle Rocket and A Mighty Wind from Netflix for my own especial viewing pleasure), and probably working on getting The Curator ready to launch by the end of the month. After today, there’s only two more Mondays at this job!

And to my joy, Stila - which I love, but seldom purchase - is having a very good sale on some of their oldies but goodies, and some collections, too. Plus, free shipping! Go fast!

Yesterday we had the delight of the Shake Shack with Angela, who was in town, and various others. We stood in line for an hour and it was worth it. Everyone had regular burgers, but I had the ’shroom burger, which was divine; a portobello mushroom, stuffed with mozzarella and other cheeses, breaded, fried, and on a bun with shack sauce. Everyone duly oohed and ahhed, and Angela tried to take a bite and was inundated with cheese.

Tom and I came home and watched Kubrick’s version of Lolita, which is pretty tame (considering the source material, and no, I haven’t seen the 1997 Jeremy Irons version yet) and includes a hysterically twitchy Peter Sellars as Quilty. Also, Tom read the IMDB trivia, which noted that you can clearly see a famous building in Albany off in the distance near the end, when Humbert is visiting a slightly more grown-up Lolita, which means she was living in relative squalor in . . . Rensselaer. Teehee!

I have officially finished my stack o’ novels for class, and it was with much joy and deliberation that I picked up a book off the shelf since February that wasn’t assigned either by a professor or an editor. Happiness! I went with The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen’s first novel, and I have about four weeks until school starts again so I’m hoping to polish off The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross, and then maybe something by Joan Didion or Kathleen Norris. I am practically salivating at the thought. I discovered this morning that the gym is the ideal context for reading the New Yorker (I can finish a lengthy profile and a shorter article in the half hour or so that I’m on the treadmill), so I can finally get back into reading.

We saw two excellent movies last week, one of which you might be able to see soon if you have an art theater nearby - Frozen River, directed by Courtney Hunt (a hometown girl!), a deeply moving, low-budget drama about smuggling, single mothers, and the working poor in the extreme northern US. The other film was the ensemble dramedy A Christmas Tale, which I’m reviewing for Paste and can’t rhapsodize about too much except to say it was funny, heartwarming, and French, with a cast to die for (including Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and legend Catherine Deneuve). It will be out in November.

The film itself wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was solid, and to our surprise, there was a Q&A afterwards with Brad Anderson, the writer & director. I am always annoyed at the end of Q&As in an relatively open forum. It’s not so much that people ask stupid questions as that they like to hear themselves talk. But, it was interesting. Anderson also directed The Machinist (also known as “the film for which Christian Bale lost an obscene amount of weight”) and he certainly has the whole indie director thing going on. He’s gotten a lot of funding from European countries - something worth exploring, I think. We headed to Angela’s afterward to hang out with some friends of hers who were visiting from Madrid (Spanish and Italian) and eat yummy pear mousse tart from Claude’s.

After a brunch on Saturday, I took off for midtown to interview an artist for an upcoming profile article, then went downtown to work on my midterm. The interview was interesting - her work is great - but the midterm was a dismal failure. I started writing one thing and wound up the afternoon by switching topics. It’s due a week from today, which would not normally be a problem, except there are many things going on this week and a wedding on Saturday. Oops. Wound up the day with the Zoae Series, a thoroughly enjoyable evening of music, performance poetry, and slightly sardonic art.

Yesterday I woke up feeling more exhausted than usual, and Tom decided we should stay home and relax, for which I was rather grateful. We made waffles and spent the day relaxing and resting, which is appropriate, I suppose, for the Sabbath. I’m very grateful; while I’m not exactly bouncing off the walls today, I don’t feel like crawling under my desk, and I’m accomplishing things. Hurrah!

We’ve yet to see “The Dark Knight”, and it’s looking like we may not this week either. On the bright side, that means we may get to see it at an IMAX theater when we do!

This, folks, is why we live here.

We also dropped by the Apple store yesterday to see if we could get iPhones. Let me back up here; I haven’t planned on getting an iPhone, since I have a Blackberry (for work) and a cell phone and both work perfectly well, and I’ve become increasingly averse to bandwagon-jumping in my old (snort) age. Tom, on the other hand, really has a legitimate business need for a data phone, and after copious amounts of research, he concluded that an iPhone would be the best bet. So, he has been planning to get one. After running the numbers and taking into account a few as-yet extenuating factors, we realized that it would be cheaper, in the long run, for us both to jump to AT&T and get iPhones (8GB for me, 16GB for him) now, rather than waiting and keeping a contract with both companies.

So then, yesterday - you know, four days after the device’s release - we arrived at the Apple store only to find the line wrapped around the block and stretching several more blocks north. Yeah. Right. We popped by the AT&T store, which didn’t have any phones and said to come back in the morning. It’s across from my office, so we went by early this morning and waited until they opened. They don’t have any iPhones, they don’t know if they’ll have any iPhones today or indeed any other day. By this point, I was getting frustrated, envisioning my life in the next few weeks as a futile attempt to get an iPhone. Solution: we ordered them. Should have them within a week. Shiny new gadgets, woohoo.

Far more information than you wanted to know. But I’ll bet a few bucks that the iPhone craze in New York is more ridiculous here than anywhere else. Anyone have similarly insane reports?

I have a scarily long and sordid to-do list this week, mostly due to a concentration of articles and papers in the near future. But tonight, I am taking my reading to Central Park for the Philharmonic’s other concert in that park (they were in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last night). Tom is meeting me with a blanket, a bottle of wine, and some food. Tonight they play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, and Sibelius’s Finlandia. Lang Lang is the pianist. Hopefully we can get near the front, since it’s just the two of us.

A few collected links:

- From Papercuts, the NYTimes book blog: The Perfect Novel

- New rules about shooting on New York City streets.

- The Knitting Factory, a Lower East Side institution, is heading to Brooklyn and westward.

- Why more authors should be blogging.

- The aesthetics of buzz in the dining room.

- Art in the Berkshires. First stop: The Clark Art Museum, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I grew up about forty minutes away from here, on the New York side, but didn’t spend too much time in the museum, unfortunately. Williamstown is great. If I’d been thinking harder, I probably would have tried to go to Williams College.

- Supplies of rice, corn, and wheat - crops that yield half the world’s food calories - could shrink dramatically by 2050.

- The monster collection of Moleskine tips, tricks, and hacks, especially useful for Moleskine newbies. I own too many Moleskines.

Liz was our fabulously gracious hostess for the entire trip; we hung out with her and various friends all weekend. We saw Wall-E (again for Liz and me, first time for Tom and Angela), as well as Wanted (well, it’s not great cinema, but lots of things blow up and it’s visually awesome). We went to the Newseum and were duly shellshocked by the Pulitzer Prize Photojournalism exhibit, which I highly recommend - it’s worth the cost of admission alone. We watched fireworks from a rooftop and ate really good food, notably at Nora, Zaytinya, and the legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl. Tom and I stumbled into the National Portrait Gallery and wished we had a lot more time there. We stayed up very late and were rather raucous and, all in all, had a great time.

We got home Monday around 5:30pm and I dashed off to my 6pm class, for which I’d just finished the readings, and wow, I just love school. It’s so much work and it makes me stressed out but all this reading and discussion and research is invigorating.

Yesterday evening we had a screening of Brideshead Revisited, and I’m happy to say that the trailer is completely misleading and it’s actually very tight with the book. The casting is great (Ben Whishaw continually blows my mind), and the music is beautiful, and it’s really very good. We both were a bit confused by its August 1 release date, since it actually seems like Oscar material. In any case, I’m reviewing it, so I’ll say no more until then.

Tomorrow night, Bret Lott is having a book release party at the IAM space for his upcoming novel, Ancient Highway, and Kelley McRae is opening with a set. I know. I love living in New York. If you’re nearby and want to come, check out the Facebook event.

On the home front, I’m now reading H.G. Wells’ Tono-Bungay for Monday’s class, and we’re finishing Six Feet Under, at long last. We even went grocery shopping yesterday. It’s been a while. I have class again tonight, and then I’m off until Tuesday (thank God for a stay-cation!), so I might not blog too much more this week!

I head south tomorrow morning for a long weekend in DC, which will involve festivities of various kinds, none of which are very nailed down. Just having a vacation outside the (well, this) city for a few days should be refreshing.

Lastly, this article on being a writer in Brooklyn is kind of awesome, especially this part:

I have a hard time understanding all the hype. I dig it here and all, but it’s just a place. It does not have magical properties. In interviews, I get asked a lot, “What’s it like to write in Brooklyn?” I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it’s like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it’s like writing in Manhattan, but there aren’t as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It’s like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French. What do they expect me to say? “Instead of ink, I write in mustard from Nathan’s Famous, a Brooklyn institution since 1916.” “I built my desk out of wooden planks taken from the authentic rubble of Ebbets Field. Have I mentioned how I still haven’t forgiven the Dodgers for moving to Los Angeles?”

But we also went to the movies, and so the most important thing I can impress on you is this:

GO SEE WALL-E.

That is all.

Though walking across the Bridge leans toward the touristy side, I had a good reason for wanting to go: the aforementioned Waterfalls in the East River, which “opened” yesterday. They are lovely and fascinating to watch, and at night they’re stunning (see the pictures in that article). If this is the future of public art, I heartily approve.

Tom left early this morning to meet up with his father in New Jersey and head south to Virginia. I’ll join him on Thursday. In the meantime, I am traipsing home to Albany tonight, and will be back in town Sunday night, ready to start learning about the modern British novel. I have a seedling of an idea for my paper for that class, which is more than I can usually say. Maybe that means I am starting to catch onto this humanities stuff.

Have a good weekend, and in the meantime, if you are one of the ten people who haven’t, check out Garfield Minus Garfield.

My next class starts on Monday, but in between I am heading Albany-ward to see my family for the weekend and to write frantically on the way up. Thank God for electrical outlets on trains. Tom is going in the opposite direction and will be in the DC/Virginia area for about a week and a half to see his grandpa, other family, and a lot of friends. I’ll be joining him on Thursday.

Yesterday I went uptown on my lunch break and met Tom to see the Olafur Eliasson show at MoMA before it closed. It was fascinating. I especially liked a few pieces where he had film-style spotlights aimed at mirrors so that the spot reflected off the glass and landed in a place on the floor that seems very removed from where the spot would normally fall. Hard to describe, but really cool. I sadly won’t get to see the P.S.1 part of the exhibit, but I’m glad I saw what I did. You can see the online exhibition here.

Speaking of Eliasson, today is the first day of his Waterfalls installation in the East River! I won’t have any trouble seeing that, since I cross the East River at least twice a day to get into Manhattan.

Also, Wall-E comes out this weekend. Please go see it. Pixar is apparently making bold moves with this one, which bodes well for the future of animation. You might find this interview at Christianity Today with Andrew Stanton (Wall-E’s director) interesting.

Grumbling tummy. Must find food.

Well, what a weekend. I was feeling rather under the weather on Friday, so I took a sick day. I pounded out most of a paper as I sat on the couch and drank copious amounts of water. We don’t really have any food at home - no time to shop lately - but thankfully, our neighborhood is full of wonderfully healthy and moderately-priced eateries, so we had brunch at Olea and dinner at Lil’ Pig. We spent the evening watching Hellboy - the first one - and it was, well, awful, though made a bit better because it does not take itself seriously at all. I’m all for movies with very vague plots, but not in that genre. But I try not to demand much from movies based on comic books; that way, I’m delighted with things like Batman Begins and Iron Man. (By the way, I am totally psyched for The Dark Knight. Moving on.)

I was feeling much better on Saturday, and because I got so much done on Friday I was able to tag along to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, along with Tom and a few friends who we met up with there. It was everyone’s first time, and it was certainly . . . interesting. On the one hand, I enjoyed the whole borough pride aspect. Brooklyn is proud to be Brooklyn, diverse, nutty, and happy. People from neighborhoods where you can have a house and garage brought out their antique cars, which were really cool. And some of the costumes were fantastic and well thought out. On the other hand, lots of people like to use marching in the parade as an excuse to get tipsy and wear very little clothing, and that’s their (legal) prerogative, but it gets old after a while and isn’t something I feel the need to experience repeatedly. So it was a one-time must-see event, but probably not one that will get any better year to year, and I don’t think we’ll do it again.

After the parade we went back to our apartment and cooked hamburgers for everyone, which was good fun, and watched trailers for scary movies. An excellent end to a Saturday.

After church on Sunday, we went back out to our ‘hood and had brunch at Red Bamboo, a vegan Thai restaurant (you won’t believe it’s not meat, etc.) with friends and ended up at Brooklyn Flea for a bit, where we did not buy anything but admired lots of things, including some imported and salvaged furniture. We wandered over to Smooch, which I immediately adopted as my coffeeshop, because it has really, really good coffee, great decor, eclectic decor, and a relaxed vibe.

We headed uptown shortly afterwards for the “Jesus Hopped the A Train” benefit reading, which was simply remarkable. Original cast plus Stephen Adly Guirgis, who is fast becoming my favorite playwright because he’s so remarkably profound. His plays are messy and profane, but somehow grace and forgiveness always explicitly slip in.

Our seats were good - on the floor, but near the back - and we were serendipitously seated directly across the aisle from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s perch at the soundboard as director. He still laughs, despite having heard this play and these actors a mind-bogglingly enormous number of times, and it was fun to be that close. I could have reached out and tapped him. He’s the most refreshing kind of famous New Yorker - still strolls around outside the theater and smokes before performances (this was the third time I’d seen him doing it), frequents the same random coffeeshops that I do. When we saw “The Little Flower of East Orange” a couple months ago, he got in an elevator with a bunch of the audience as they were going up to the theater on the third floor. They looked a little thunderstruck.

But! Our brush with celebrity was not complete. Yesterday I woke up with one of those stark-raving-mad headaches, and as this is not a week in which I can afford to be sick, I called in sick again and slept in very late. I had a dull headache all day, even after lunch at Pequena down the block, but I worked a little more on my paper and then went to class.

After class I took a few painkillers and dashed across town to met up with Tom at Madison Square Garden for the Coldplay concert. Coldplay gave away all 30,000 tickets for this performance, which was kind of awesome, because it was the first time they’d played through that set, which included a bunch of songs from Viva La Vida as well as some older stuff. They came into the arena seating - three rows behind us!! - and sang “Yellow”. And they didn’t play an encore - vaguely disappointing, but I’m kind of glad. I find encores a little pretentious. Everyone pretends they’re special, but it happens every time. Let’s save the encores for truly spectacular concerts. This one was an experimental concert, they flubbed a bit, but they were good-natured about it and very funny, and everyone enjoyed themselves. The only black mark was the drunken people to our left and in front of us who decided to get into a fight, just short of throwing punches, during “Fix You”, which is probably my favorite song. Oh well.

I’m finally back at work today and swamped, but tonight I’m planning to meet up with our dear friends Sarah and Matt and bring them up to the NY Philharmonic’s free concert in Central Park, as long as it doesn’t get rained out. This is my last week of the Moby-Dick class, and next week starts “Modern British Novel”. I admit that I’m a bit dubious about how I’ll manage to read all eleven novels and write two papers in the six weeks, but they don’t call it a “master’s degree” for nothing, I suppose.

The dark spot on my weekend is that it looks like I won’t get to see Wall-E on its opening night. Alas.

We watched Lars and the Real Girl on Sunday night as well, at long last. There were so many good movies in the theater when it came out that we missed it, and we haven’t had much time for movie-watching so far this year. It was great, as everyone said. Ironically, we’d been eating brunch at Tartine earlier that day when Ryan Gosling, very bearded, walked past with a friend. We continually find that life and art intersect in weird ways when you live here.

Which, by the way, reminds me that next week will mark the end of my third year in New York City. I think that makes me an official New Yorker. I no longer need a subway map to get around pretty much anywhere in Manhattan and a lot of Brooklyn’s “brownstone belt”, I don’t need to hold the pole in the subway anymore, I am completely ignorant of gas prices except when they show up on the news, I know the best place to get falafel for $2.50, I no longer venture above 14th Street unless it’s absolutely necessary and kind of turn up my nose at living in Manhattan, I say things like “the city” and “the Times” and expect people to know what I’m talking about, and I walk around saying things like “that used to be that great French cafe” and grumbling at tourists who walk four-across on the sidewalk. In short, I am some combination of the worst stereotype and the actual reality. Oh well. We are all victims of our locations, and this isn’t a bad one. I am so blessed to live here.

Did anyone else out there who grew up in church watch a movie called “Hoomania”? It was about a kid who got sucked into a board game that taught him about the book of Proverbs. There were some gamepieces called “Sluggards”, and a wise owl, and some other crazy characters, and it was partially live-action and partially claymation. I suddenly remembered this movie the other night and wanted to watch it, but it’s out of “print” and I can’t find any clips on YouTube.

My most notable accomplishment this weekend - besides reading a lot about Zoroastrianism for class - was learning to play Uno last night. It wasn’t that we didn’t play card games when I was a kid (we played a lot of Dutch Blitz), but when we did play games they were usually either educational or something like checkers. So this was fun. I also did well, which is a plus. I still want to take poker back up again.

We had brunch at Lil’ Pig near our apartment. I had a chilled cucumber and avocado soup and a tilapia sandwich with pickled onions on baguette; Tom had gazpacho and I think a cornmeal-encrusted catfish sandwich. Tee-riffic. Not only is the place close, but they serve about fifteen varieties of tea, there’s wine in the evenings, the menu changes daily and is all kinds of local and healthy and innovative, and it’s all pretty reasonably priced. Like Grey Dog, but a little cheaper and with a much more interesting menu.

Tonight, it looks like we’re going to the premiere of the film Tom worked on as first assistant director the summer before we got married. Cool.

I have been unbloggy lately because of busy-ness, but we have, at home, Sam Phillips’ Don’t Do Anything, as well as upcoming book releases by Amanda Petrusich and (gasp) Marilynne Robinson, and we’re currently set to see Sunday in the Park With George on Saturday (Sondheim!), so despite its busy-ness and sometimes its frustrations, life is good.

The heat finally forced me into joining a gym; I can’t breathe in this weather, let alone run in the heat, and it was 80 degrees at 6am today and that’s just too much. So I found the Crunch in our neighborhood, which has a pay-by-the-month plan (i.e., pay only for the months when you want to go), and I joined this morning. Hello, being able to read for class while I’m running, or even watch TV if I’m feeling frazzled. Hello, pilates and yoga. Hello sauna!

And on Sunday, we went to church, then had a wonderful brunch at La Palette - you must try Brazilian eggs benedict before you can say you’ve lived - and went home to watch Mongol for a review (it was great).

It has been non-stop since then, and I think big things are afoot. As I mentioned, Tom is working tonight, but we had a birthday bagel breakfast and I gave him his presents - Maps & Legends by Michael Chabon, Volume One with She & Him (which is M.Ward and Zooey Deschanel and was featured in Paste a while back), the There Will Be Blood soundtrack, Lotta Jansdotter post-its, and a bottle of Macallan 18. I’m awfully grateful that he was born!

See, I told you.

Last night, though, was fun - especially Sam Shepard, who is seriously hilarious and told a story about his horse and a movie and a stuntman named Choo-Choo.

We have a full weekend that will hopefully still be a bit of a respite, and I’m excited, because I have a screener for Mongol sitting on the coffee table waiting to be reviewed. And Stone Park for brunch tomorrow, which can make nearly anything better.

What did you do yesterday? We went to Coney Island, and it was wonderful. We took the subway - about half an hour from where we live - oh YEAH. It’s not exactly a highbrow beach, but then, that’s not what you go to Coney Island for. And it was much nicer than we expected. The boardwalk is short, but has a lovely look out over the beach, which is very wide and sandy with little bits of colored rocks and shells in it - and yes, a little bit of broken glass polished smooth. I stuck my toe (singular) into the water and it was frigid, but I think it probably gets warmer in the later summer, in tandem with the Jersey coast. Big waves.

So we walked the length of the boardwalk, laid out on the windy beach for a bit, then got some good boardwalk-y junk food. Fried clams and shrimp and onion rings, oh my. We went to the Coney Island Sideshow, which, as it turns out, is kind of delightful and low budget, but has bona fide fire eaters and snake handlers and sword swallowers, and the host-guy pounds a nail into his nostril, then a power drill. We were a little enthralled. We left and played video games and shooting-range games and scoped out the rides for a future trip we are planning. They are not cheap, but day passes are. Maybe I’ll even overcome my distaste for being jerked around and go on the Cyclone, because, after all, it’s actually got a sign placed there by the Parks Service.

I am coughing today, which I hope is the remnants of my allergies and maybe a little sand, so I stayed home to work to spare the ears and my lungs. Knocking an hour and a half or so out of my commute isn’t shabby either. I’ve gotten the laundry done in between my workings and will soon embark on the rest of my reading. Tom went to set around 6:30 this morning and has been running around all day. The busy part of his shoot is finally commencing, and he has some weekends coming up. Yay to overtime pay; boo to weekends apart. But that’s life in a film biz household!

Luckily, the Melville biography is quite interesting. Did you know that he spent many of his growing-up years in the general Albany area? He lived in Albany, Greenbush, and Lansingburgh. Just a like a certain other New York-dwelling writer. :)

Happy Memorial Day, Americans, and everyone have a great weekend!

Of course, the sun comes up pretty early these days, as it’s trudging toward the solstice next month, so it’s been waking us up a bit. No worries - Tom’s needed to be up roughly when the sun is lately, so it works out pretty well.

But I wake up then, too, and I have been completely astonished by how beautiful the sky has been. And it changes color, too - sometimes the sunrise is pink, sometimes it’s red, sometimes blue, occasionally yellow.  It’s beautiful. Almost worth waking up for.