Tom & Alissa

Oh, look. The Sundance lineup is out. Neither of the films Tom worked on last year made it (we all knew it was a very long shot - they got a ton of submissions this year), but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is, based on Michael Chabon’s novel. Cool. Wish I could be there. Anyone need someone to cover the festival? ::doe eyes::

It’s very cold out today. Or it feels cold. I think it is actually just damp.

We saw Paranoid Park last night. Better than I expected. I kept thinking of my brother, because it was all about a kid who skateboards and has floppy hair like my brother. But that’s pretty much where the resemblances ended. And that’s where my comments end, because I have to write a review of the film.

Which brings me to another point. I have come at this film critic thing (which, after two years at this, I still feel odd calling myself because, really, I’ve only written a handful of reviews that are more than 300 words in length, but whatever) so sideways that I am not sure of all the protocol. Can I blog about a movie I’ve seen in press screenings? Can I blog about it only if I am not reviewing it? Can I only blog about it after my review comes out? After the movie comes out? Can I quote my own reviews on my blog? And if we go to cast & crew screenings of big important studio movies (as we shall be, soon), can I write reviews based on those screenings? Does anyone even care? Help.

I am really exhausted today, and not sure why. Went to bed reasonably last night and slept close to seven hours, which is quite a bit. I did have a dream that frightened me a lot. I dreamt that because of the WGA strike (to which, for the record, I’m rather sympathetic, after spending some time watching Tom in the entertainment industry), they had to end The Office altogether, and in the series finale, they broke Jim and Pam up; Pam moved to someplace in the Third World to do charitable work, and Jim was completely heartbroken and may have possibly left town without telling anyone. I was ridiculously relieved to wake up and realize it was a dream. This bothers me. I am clearly far too invested in these figments of a writer’s room. This is why I do not watch television. Bad! Bad!

My boss calls people in offices down the hall on speakerphone sometimes, and I think whoever she is calling answers on speakerphone, and because our office is next to hers and we leave our doors open, it sounds like she’s in surround sound. It makes us laugh.

Tonight, at class, we are having pizza. I probably should not be as happy about this as I am. I am a huge fan of free pizza, especially when it comes at times when I’d usually be having to skip dinner.

Also, afterwards, I am heading to the Bitter End for a concert, which I shall blog about tomorrow, probably. I have lived in New York for two and a half years and not been to the Bitter End, so tonight! Is the night!

Tom, who isn’t feeling well, got home relatively early last night - before me - and had to be back at work at 3am this morning, and he had gone to bed early, so when I came home I just turned on a tiny strand of twinkly Christmas lights, put some of the barbecue chicken from the Crock-Pot in a bowl and ripped off a piece of a baguette, and watched Masculin feminin on my laptop, which I thoroughly enjoyed (plus, I was like, “Hey! That’s the kid from 400 Blows!” and felt all smart and savvy). Am obviously a huge sucker for the French New Wave. Thank God that I live in New York, where you can still regularly see Truffaut and Godard on the big screen.

Also, the chicken was yummy, if a tiny bit overcooked. It was dark meat, though, so it worked out fine.

Tonight I am heading to a screening of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. My Van Sant watchage is relatively low, but I’ll remedy that before writing the review.

My last grad school recommendation came in this morning, after a lot of finagling and biting of nails. One huge load off my shoulders. Also, after reading the HR guide, it appears that the tuition for my first semester of class may not be counted as taxable income, which would make me very happy. (Tuition is entirely tax-free if the class relates to your job, but in my case, that’s unlikely.)

Was excited to unexpectedly see a mention of our friend Danai’s 2005 play in this New York magazine article this morning. I usually read New York while I’m doing other things in the morning. And enjoyed this short piece on Ellen Page, star of the upcoming Juno, which I am dying to see. She sounds like the kind of actress I can admire.

Also, it’s a good day when a check comes from a publisher and you stare at it for a while, trying to remember what it’s for.

I got home and found the December issue of Paste in my mailbox. Hurrah!

If you have it, turn to page 75. Now look way down at the bottom, at the tiny line of type denoting the contributors.

Grin.

I wrote blurbs for Michael Clayton, This Is England, Zodiac, and Paris, je t’aime. I’m also proud to say that the winners for best actor (Viggo Mortensen, for Eastern Promises), best director (David Cronenberg, also for Eastern Promises), and originality of vision (Julie Taymor for her crazy, pretty bad, but very creative Across the Universe) were three of my picks, though obviously others had them in their top picks as well. But you know, it’s nice to be validated in one’s opinions.

In any case, check it out.

Back at work. We got home pretty late on Saturday night, watched the last new episode of The Office (sniff) with hot cups of tangerine rooibos and went to bed.

Yesterday we went to church early to set up communion. The service was downstairs again - the building we rent out is having serious heat problems, and the sanctuary upstairs, where we normally meet, was frigid - and it was reasonably crowded for a holiday weekend. After church we snuck off to Angela’s apartment and had buckwheat blueberry pancakes, sausages, and what I think was golden raisin bread with her and Steve.

Tom’s shooting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, so he worked yesterday evening to set up. They are shooting a very long day with a lot of extras in temple of Dendur room today. So while he was working, I went out in search of a tiny Christmas tree for us. I was unsuccessful - the hardware store where they’re sold was closed - but I did come back with lots of little white Christmas lights, candy canes, a couple of baguettes, four tomatoes on the vine, a bag of baking apples, and a power strip. Similar. Spent the rest of the evening cleaning up the apartment for the holidays and strategically placing lights and candles about the place. My major accomplishment was consolidating my stacks of notebooks, papers, portfolios, and books into a basket which I’ve placed at the foot of the couch, where I tend to do all my work anyhow.

If you haven’t guessed, I’ve abandoned the NaNo project this year around 22,000 words. I wasn’t anticipating the sudden spike in paid writing work this month, and paid (and published) work always comes first. I feel much better about it after talking to Josh yesterday, though - those 20k words do include one fully-finished story and half of five others, and that’s an accomplishment for me, especially with everything else that’s been going on. If nothing else, it’s helped me overcome my fear of writing fiction.

I have a lot going on this week, the most daunting of which is my wisdom teeth (uppers only) being removed on Thursday. Perhaps I’ll get some rest then?

We made a tiny excursion today at noon to Target: cold medicine, socks for me, Matrix Revolutions and The Good Shepherd. And we didn’t stand in line. Excellent. Still, we’ll be doing as much of our Christmas shopping online as possible this year. Christmas shopping in New York is a nightmare.

But we have had a good Thanksgiving here in Virginia with the Wilkinson side of Tom’s family and we’re heading back to the city tomorrow night to start the Christmas season with a bang!

Christmas cookies, here I come. (Also, determined to experiment with Christmasy drinks this year - eggnog, mulled cider, mulled wine.)

I’m off, shortly; Tom is wrapping later tonight than expected, and I’m trying to sort out how to kill four hours. I could go see a movie, but the only ones I want to see are not ones that I can really see alone, since Tom will definitely want to see them. I could stay here at work, but that seems pretty stupid; my brain is so fried that I cannot possibly do any writing. I could go shoot pictures, but my back was breaking with all the other things I’m carrying just on the way to the subway this morning and I don’t know if I can sustain. Or I can go sit in a Starbucks, which just sounds boring.

I’ll find something to do. :) See you kids on the flip side.

Jeffrey Overstreet has taken on the million dollar question: Should we be afraid of The Golden Compass?

Now I can stop repeating myself on people’s blogs. Just go read this. He says everything.

I rather enjoyed this New York Times’ writer’s take on the architecture at the Times’ new building. He says some great things about skyscrapers and about what architecture says about ideals.

Go share your favorite Christmas albums on my blog entry at Radiant.

Heading to the office to run over the proofs, but by lunchtime, the magazine will be out the door and in the hands of the printers. Hurrah!

And bigger news, kids: I am going to grad school in January. The admissions office at Gallatin called this morning to let me know. Still waiting on Draper, but the good thing is that I know I am going, and that in either place, I’ll be studying twentieth century American literature and cinema. This is the culmination of a lot of longing . . . and I’m so excited.

I’m beginning to doubt more and more that I’ll finish the NaNoNovel, not because I don’t want to but because I keep getting (paid) work thrown in my direction. Which is awesome! But I want to do my best on it.

But still, maybe I’ll just keep going and see what happens. I ran out of story suddenly yesterday but I’m keeping it all in the back of my head. If you have a good idea for a somewhat realistic story in which the protagonist is a smart six-year-old boy living in Greenwich Village, let me know.

In other news, this has been a crazy week at work and I got home around 9pm tonight, forced to forgo the IAM event I was going to both attend and photograph. In lieu of that, I watched a screener of Sand and Sorrow, a George Clooney-narrated documentary about the events leading up to the genocide in Darfur and into last year, and I’m now thoroughly outraged. I do highly recommend seeing the film when it comes out (next month?) but I can’t say much more because I’m supposed to write a review this week.

I am hearing nothing but the biggest and best of raves about There Will Be Blood. P.T. Anderson is probably my all-time favorite filmmaker (I kid you not, it borders on worship sometimes), so I was expecting this, but I didn’t anticipate the almost deliriousness of every review. Now I absolutely cannot wait to see this film.

But, this is not the weekend. (I think it comes out right after Christmas.) So this weekend, we were thinking of seeing Beowulf, but we may see something else. I am very prejudiced against this Beowulf - from the first time I saw the trailer, I knew I was going to hate it, it’s all wrong - but whatever. They’re calling it a “must-see” and so I must. I guess.

Also, we are going to a SeptokberfestinNovember party (don’t think about that too hard) at Kevin & Laura’s tomorrow night, which will undoubtedly be awesome, and I really need this weekend to recuperate. I am very glad that next week is a short work week, even if it means spending a lot of time traveling. Also, stuffing and gravy make everything much better. And Christmas can officially start. We can get our (tiny little) tree!

Last random observation: on my way to the IAM reception/lecture last night, I passed bagpipers on the steps outside of Cipriani and a whole lot of men in kilts for what felt like blocks. Sometimes I think that writers in New York are actually at a little bit of a disadvantage, because we get so used to the unusual that it barely registers and therefore rarely makes it into the notebook.

P.S. Amanda, I read the Zadie Smith book today, and I’m swooning.

Midwestern-y friends (well, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, plus Kentucky and Tennessee which I suppose are not midwestern but WHATEVER) - Over the Rhine is touring their Christmas album, Snow Angels, for a short stint starting next week and going through the middle of December, and I promise you it will be wonderfully Christmas-y and well worth the cost of admission, which probably won’t be too much anyhow.

You can find details on their website.

There’s a SuperFastBaby (and a new little TVC kidlet)! Congrats, guys!

Big day for me:

My review of No Country for Old Men is up is up at WORLD magazine’s website.

Blendie, the blender that works only when you growl at it. Link includes video. I think this would be really useful in, say, an alarm clock that turns off when you growl at it. Or something. (via kottke)

Rob Long, TV writer guy and the man behind one of my favorite KCRW podcasts, Martini Shot, has a blog.

I missed the National Book Award finalists reading not, as I thought, because I had other plans that night, but because it apparently was last night and not Monday night. But it sounds like it was a real ruckus.

Download classic movies for free from Amazon.

I made a scrumptious curry turkey sandwich on a baguette for lunch this morning before I left for work. Very easy and very delicious. The recipe is from the Chocolate & Zucchini recipe book (see the equally scrumptious blog here) that my in-laws sent me for my birthday. It still sounds weird to say that I have in-laws, even after more than a year.

Anyhow. Highly recommended, especially if you’re kind of like me and obsessed with simple French food.

I do have to mention, though, that though I’ve handily churned out about 3,000 words today, I am realizing that I’ll have to do that every working day from now until the end of the month if I’m actually going to finish this thing, since I’m most certainly going to lose a few days next week. And I’m getting my wisdom teeth out the week after that, which I’m suspecting will either have a seriously detrimental effect or will make me a brilliant writer in my drug-induced delirium. Also: several film reviews to write.

Honestly, I don’t know if I will make it, but for now, I’ll keep trying.

You probably won’t get anything terribly substantive out of me this week (but hey, you never know).

But this made me laugh.

The lovely Amanda sent me the Pocket Penguin editions of Zadie Smith’s Martha and Hanwell and P.D. James’ Innocent House, all the way from Aberdeen. I am very, very happy.

Here’s some news for your inner badly-behaved Bohemian: absinthe is back.

I started reading The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris, on my way to church on Sunday. Truly wonderful. So meditative. I don’t where it’s going, or if it’s going anywhere, but I’m enjoying it.

I fear I am falling ill. I ache all over, in places that are strange to ache. This is a really bad week to be sick. Then again, is there ever a good one? In any case, I can’t actually be sick this week, so I won’t. Mind over matter. Right?

Norman Mailer died this morning.

I’m still at work, ending a really spectacular week (sense the irony, reader) and watching this printer spool 1veryslow% at a time. All I want is my printed book. Just give me the book and let me go home.

62%.

Actually, I’m not going home; I’m crossing the street (to Starbucks, where I’m too cheap to pay for Internet, and ergo, without distractions) to try and catch up the NaNo, maybe get ahead a little bit (the other day I turned out about 2,000 half-decent words in forty-five minutes, so it’s not a totally ridiculous idea), polish off the film review for Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights, from Hollywood to the Heartland due on Monday. Yes, that is the name of the film.

I saw said film last night, but clearly ate or drank something before it that did not settle well, and finally had to leave because I was so nauseous. Times Square is the last place in the world to be when you are nauseous. I had to get home. Briefly considered paying the obscene amount it would be for a taxi, but realized that sitting in the back seat of a car would be the worst thing - my car tolerance has all but disappeared in the last two and a half years of being a New Yorker - and decided an underground train really was the best plan. So I managed the subway and walked home from a further stop, and the cold air really was a Good Thing. I was weak when I got home, but happy to be there.

83%.

And I’m fine, now. Very excited about this weekend. We are planning to see No Country for Old Men (one of my most anticipated films of the year), go to a “wig” party (we have no wigs, so I’m not sure how that will work), and on Sunday, I am tickling the ivories at church for the first time ever at the Village Church and the first time in probably about three or four years in public. I played two services a week, every week for years at my home church in a fairly decent band, but I quit during my last year of college from sheer exhaustion. But now I’m revived. I’ve been thinking of doing this for about a year, and now that I have a piano at home, there’s nothing stopping me from doing it.

So I am.

93%.

Red cups everywhere.

As far as I’m concerned, Christmas arrives when Starbucks says it does.

Ho ho ho.

I found on the shelf . . . Tom bought it, but I forgot.

My word, I totally forgot how awesome this movie is.

Sometimes I suspect I live in more of a bubble than I realize, because my first reaction to this article is, “This is news?!”

From the article - this sounds like a patently awful idea:

SYFs (Single Young Females) are also looking for wheels, and manufacturers are designing autos and accessories with them in mind. In Japan, Nissan has introduced the Pino, which has seat covers festooned with stars and a red CD player shaped like a pair of lips. It comes in one of two colors: “milk tea beige” and pink.

Anyone SYF out there (single, hip, urbane young woman in her twenties or thirties) who might buy that? Really? Or does it sound like a car made expressly for pre-teens?

Can anyone explain to me why Word gives me a word count of about 100 words less than Google Docs?

And who’s right? Hmm? I’m not going to sit down and count my 8044/8133-word document by hand.

. . . words so far. Not quite “on track” by the 1,667 words per day standard, but Anne Lamott would be proud of me (by the by, Bird by Bird has been quite an encouragement to me).

I had a relaxing birthday weekend. We spent Friday evening mostly at home; I had turned in my article before my deadline (this is a breakthrough, friends), and I wasn’t going to be NaNoing this weekend, so Tom picked me up from work in his big work van and we went home and watched The Simpsons before bed. We are on Season 2, now. At this rate we’ll finish by next year.

We got up somewhat late for us (we’ve both been doing early mornings lately, Tom obscenely so) on Saturday and ate some breakfast before heading out to see American Gangster (as apparently everyone else did). Perfect film? No. But very enjoyable. (Though, read a review before you go; definitely for mature audiences.) Afterwards, I remarked to Tom that it was refreshing to see a movie in which the cop was not only the good guy, but he stayed the good guy throughout the whole movie.

Came home, and Tom edited pictures while I cooked up a storm of cheese grits, chicken poached in white wine, and glazed parsnips & carrots. Delish. We will be eating a lot of grits in our household, I think, though our only real connection to the south is through family and neither of us have ever lived there. I made them with mozzarella and jalapeno jack cheese, which wasn’t quite right (mozzarella is too stringy and jack too Mexican), but we do think that bits of hot peppers might be a good idea. So I’ll try cheddar next. They were just as good the next day, too.

Ate dinner over an episode of Battlestar Galactica (okay, so, this sci-fi hater is totally addicted to this show now and if you’re sneering then you’re only just proving your unenlightened state), and then we headed out to BAM for the Sufjan Stevens extravanganza.

Which was a ton of fun. It was the third night, completely sold out. I really adored the musicality of the first half, which was a commissioned half-hour “cinematic suite” on the theme of the BQE with a good-sized orchestra and three separate reels of footage and hula hoopers throughout. That all sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it worked wonderfully, especially after reading in the program that Robert Moses (who designed the monstrosity that is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) opposed any sports that were not competitive, and obviously, hula hooping is the antithesis of that.

Tom loved the second half more, where Sufjan broke out a bunch of hits (he said they were “songs of civic pride”) and performed them with the orchestra and his band. Excellent stuff. It’s true; he’s not the best or most groundbreaking musician, but watching him, you just feel happy. He is definitely up there playing the music that he hears in his head, and it seems a lot like he’d be ok if you didn’t like it. He’s offering what he has to offer and not trying to be anyone else. And that is wonderful to see, especially in a young guy who’s had great success.

Sunday was my birthday. (I’m 24, lately a fact that scandalizes everyone.) I had about fifty Facebook “happy birthdays” from everyone (thanks, guys!) and a bunch of phone calls from the family. We were out to church, then to home to eat our leftovers and watch more Battlestar Galactica before meeting up with some friends at Union Hall. And of course, my sweetheart had gotten me the Piano of Awesomeness and some much-needed and lovely clothes, so I am spoiled and happy.

Hectic work week, and not just at work.

There’s an excellent article in Comment this week about Taproot Theater in Seattle and their development, from the creative to the spiritual to the business side. I’m pretty sure I’ve met some of these folks last year at the IAM conference.

“There is a surprising consistency between our founding intentions and where Taproot is at right now, thirty-one years later,” Nolte says. When you see one of Taproot’s shows, “it’s not about didactic measures or an altar call. It’s the delivery of a story and counting on the audience to be responsible enough or bothered enough that they’ll go away and sort through what the story had to say.”

Still hunting for an equivalent in New York. (Intriguingly, though, I recognized the article’s authors as Redeemer people right off the bat. So maybe we’re getting somewhere.)

3938 words so far. So far, so good.

In other news, we are going to Sufjan Stevens’ symphony at BAM tomorrow night, and I have a birthday this weekend.

Also, I am exhausted today. Why? I don’t know.