Tom & Alissa

I did manage to get some books read in between the hundreds of pages I’m reading for school.

Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste - Herbert Gans
This was actually for class. It’s apparently a classic in the academic study of popular culture; it was originally published in the 1970s and then updated via postscript around the turn of the millenium. Gans tackled the idea of popular culture in a time when nobody was talking about it in the academy. He surveys different “taste cultures”, from high culture to middle cultures to low cultures and the different entertainment/art-related choices that they make, and then makes some nebulous policy proposals for funding popular culture. Unfortunately, I (along with my classmates) found the book a bit patronizing and realized that the arguments had become woefully dated with the advent of the internet, but unfortunately, the “updates” didn’t sufficiently address the changes. [2/5]

Love, Work, Children - Cheryl Mendelson
The second in Mendelson’s “Morningside Heights” trilogy, this is a comedy/drama of manners and hearkens back to Dickens and (especially) Austen in its language. The catch is that it’s set in present-day upper Manhattan. As with most books that try to get inside the heads of lots of protagonists (The Corrections, so far, being the grand exception), the book ends up lurching around a bit and doing too much “telling” instead of showing. However, something keeps drawing me back to Mendelson’s books. I think I just enjoy reading about the intelligentsia of my town. I don’t think it will be abiding literature, but it was enjoyable, and despite its length, a quick read. [3/5]

Slow Food: The Case for Taste - Carlo Petrini
Yes, at long last, I’ve finished it. Petrini is the founder of the “slow food” movement in Italy and the book is his extended essay outlining the founding of the movement and the many ways it has manifested itself, from educational outreaches to “convivia” to publications to the “ark” concept, which seeks to preserve dying (think “endangered”) forms of regional food. The first part of the book would be a great starting place for people trying to get a grasp on what slow food is all about. A bit pedantic at times, but still thought-provoking and very short (despite how long it took me to read it). [3/5]

Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading - Eugene Peterson
This took a while, too, but it’s not Peterson’s fault. He’s a wonderfully engaging writer. The book takes the reader through a comprehensive (but still short and not drawn-out) overview of reading the Bible, from where it came from, to the ways we’ve subtly bent the Bible to fit what we want it to mean, to what we mean by “inspired”, to lectio divina, to a historical explanation of how we got the text we have now from the Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Peterson concludes with an explanation of why he embarked on “translating” The Message, which should help those who are dubious to see it in a new light. Definitely recommended to anyone who’s spent their life reading the Bible and are finding it a bit stale, or who find the Scripture explanations they’ve always been given to be less than intellectually rigorous. [4/5]

My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro - Jeffrey Eugenides (ed.)
This was probably the best Valentine’s present ever. Almost 600 pages of classic and not-so-classic love stories, carefully edited by Eugenides, who is officially the best short-story anthology editor I’ve ever encountered (and not a half-bad novelist, either). The stories deal with “love” in all its forms, from lust to infatuation to romance to real true commitment, in marriage and outside marriage, old, young, beautiful and wince-inducing. Recommended to the married folks mostly. (Probably not a book to hand to your teenager, either.) [5/5]

With probably-moving and writing a big research paper this month, I don’t think I’ll get much read in April, but who knows.

One more post today. Literary Dealbreakers - for anyone who’s ever found that someone’s taste in books (or your own literary prejudices, rational or not) posed an insurmountable challenge in a relationship.

James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”

It appears that my Run, Fat Boy, Run review made it online. It wasn’t a great movie, but it’s not like you go see a Simon Pegg comedy for a cinematic revelation. It was fun.

We are seeing “The Little Flower of East Orange”, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Public Theater tonight (which I’m realizing I must clarify is an actual theater, not a movie theater, and this is not a film, because while PSH is amazing on-screen, he’s kind of a little god in the theater world as far as I’m concerned). I’ve been looking forward to this all week. Also to dinner at Applewood, our own little heaven on earth in Park Slope, tomorrow night.

Now if Bank of America would only SERIOUSLY get their act together and mail us that account confirmation letter (I mean, come on, I know it doesn’t take two weeks for something to get from Charlotte to New York), then we could put our application in for the apartment and start the nail-biting, and everything would be perfect.

I love weekends!

Big news, folks:

Brooklyn, NY—In what many are calling a “tipping point” in independent movie distribution, three redemptive filmmakers, in partnership with YouTube, will release their feature-length film free of charge on the world’s most popular video sharing website. The world-premiere of The Cult of Sincerity is slated for April 8, 2008.

“Five years ago, even two years ago, releasing a full-length feature online would not have been possible,” said filmmakers Adam Browne, Brendan Choisnet, and Daniel Nayeri of Cult Classics, LLC. “Independent filmmakers are democratizing Hollywood. The online generation is looking for good content, and we believe The Cult of Sincerity will be embraced by the college and career audience.”

An intellectual and off-beat comedy set in New York, the film’s main character, Joseph, starts a “cult of sincerity” to confront the perceived unhappiness, cynicism, and boredom of his generation. He wants to find something to believe in, something simple enough to put on a T-shirt. Reminiscent of Don Quixote, Joseph sets off to find the most genuine thing you could ever say to someone. The Cult of Sincerity is a witty exploration of changing friendships, permanent regrets, and hope in the age of irony.

Cult Classics is creating a new revenue model for independent filmmakers. By partnering with the independent music website, AmieStreet.com, the film will be available to audiences free of charge, while still generating revenue for the filmmakers and providing financial support for an African charity.

The goal is to get viewers to watch The Cult of Sincerity on YouTube, as well as sign-up with AmieStreet.com where the registrant will receive two free songs and the filmmakers $2. Cult Classics also is offering a mobile download (iPod, portable device) for the discounted price of $3, with 2/3 of the money going to Fount of Mercy, a respected faith-based charity that helps children in Africa.

“This is the triple-bottom-line approach to entertainment,” said Erik Lokkesmoe of Different Drummer, a global grassroots marketing company that is promoting the film. “Three things happen when people watch this film. They support the independent filmmaker. They receive free songs and an entire online experience. And they help a charity. This is the future of film.”

For more information on “The Cult of Sincerity,” contact Ben Laurro at Pure Publicity or visit www.cultofsincerity.com. Advanced online screenings for reviews are available upon request.

Tom was the first assistant director on this film, and if you squint, you’ll see me in the background as well. Expect to hear much more from me about this.

And join the Facebook group!

At ConversantLife, I talk a little about the idea of making goodness attractive, something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

Ah yes. The magazine I edit at work is found here. You can see that the archives need a serious upgrade, something I’m hoping to work on over the summer. The subject matter & aesthetic aren’t my preference, but I’m getting some good solid experience since I’m in charge of getting each issue out the door - from solicitation for articles, to substantive editing, to design and layout, to publishing.

I do love editing, so I hope someday to be editing something a bit closer to my interests . . . but this is a good interim step.

I am finishing a cup of Ginseng Green Tea (oh, I can feel the brilliance seeping into my brain). Yum. And because I got the magazine into layout after a lot of hours of hard work yesterday, I’m now doing everything I should have been doing the rest of the week. Oh, to be a real editor, one who doesn’t also do the designing and publishing! Anyhow. It’s fun, really, and I can’t complain. I get to listen to copious streaming archives of This American Life and drink tea while I do it.

Anthropologie sends me a lot of mail, both of the e and snail varieties, and I don’t mind because it’s pretty, but this “how to make a room your own” site that came in their last email is actually pretty cool. I especially love the library.

Tonight we are going to Alchemy, a local gastropub up the street from us, for Restaurant Week. Also, speaking of Brooklyn, I am crossing fingers, toes, and all other appendages in hopes that the letter from Bank of America which confirms that we do indeed have an account with them (nevermind that we have statements to prove it!) will arrive today, a full two weeks after it was requested, so that we can finally submit our application for the apartment. We are hopeful.

Lastly, Colin, who is awesome, ordered one of my prints from RedBubble. It arrived in Scotland from Australia, and he took a couple pictures of the picture. He claims it looks quite good. So, artists/designers/photographers, get thee to RedBubble.

Jenni, who has recently become one of my favorite internet-friends, is swapping tea with me, and hers made it here today from Adagio Tea, of which I am now wildly, rabidly a fan. Five cute little sampler-sized tins of tea are now stacked on my desk next to my monitor - almond black tea, green ginseng, blood orange herbal tea, rooibos caramel, and the “Bolero” signature blend made by one of Adagio’s customers.

This is one of the apparently multiple very cool things about Adagio - not only do they have an amazing selection of tea, and $2-4 sampler tins, not only do they have a points-earning frequent shopper program (1 point per dollar, and 100 points gets you a $10 gift certificate, which is many kinds of awesome), but they also let you make your own blend of tea (virtually, sort of) and order it, but you earn 10 points when someone else buys that blend. Seriously? This is tea for the artist.

Also, they have blooming display teas, which actually unfold into flowers when you put them in the water. That’s pretty much a grown-up edible version of those sponge things we used to have as a kid, which started out as brightly-colored pill-like things and turned into cats or elephants or other such creatures.

And to top it all off, a box of tea filters, which turn loose tea into teabags and is ABSOLUTELY BRILLANT for the office, because now I have no implements to wash but I can still brew loose tea. OH WOW. It’s a little weird how happy this makes me.

Righto. I’m going to go brew me a cup of something now.

From the NYTimes Paper Cuts blog:
Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing, and I think this goes for film reviewing as well. I plead guilty, though I do think and hope I’ve used most of these in their intended context.

muse (used as a verb): Few things in this world are mused. They are much more often simply written, thought or said. “War is hell,” he mused. Not much dreamy rumination there.

Stretching for the fanciful — writing “he crafts or pens” instead of “he writes”; writing “he muses” instead of “he says or thinks” — is a sure tip-off of weak writing.

Easter weekend has always been a busy and possibly significant one in my life for years; back in high school, our church performed a cantata on Palm Sunday weekend (probably one of the more musically good ones we’d ever worked on), and it was during one of those cantatas that I got the offer to come work at the church as the assistant to the music director, who is one of the most important influences on my life and my faith. Working there also set me inevitably on the course toward the current iteration of my existence (somewhere in the reformed-postevangelical-neocalvinist world), though they never would have suspected it.

A couple years ago, my first Easter in New York was also, if I remember correctly, the first time I went out to Tom’s childhood home (and possibly the first time I met my then-future-in-laws, though it does seem kind of late in the game for that, so maybe not). Last year I was in the buzzy-hubbub world of interviewing for new jobs and actually got my present job based loosely on a conversation I had there - long story.

This year, we saw Chop Shop on Good Friday. I can’t recommend this film highly enough. Tom likened it to the work of the Dardennes brothers - he’s completely right - but it’s by an American director of Iranian descent, Ramin Bahrani, whose previous film, Man Push Cart, played at the “New Directors/New Films” festival at Lincoln Center a couple years ago.

Chop Shop is the story of a twelve-year-old boy and his sixteen-year-old sister living in a tiny plywood room above a mechanic’s shop in the sea of car mechanics out beyond Shea Stadium in Queens; however, if it weren’t for the subway footage and the fact that the kids are speaking English, you wouldn’t realize it wasn’t in a third-world Central American village until you see the corner of the stadium peeking into frame twenty minutes into the film. It’s more real than a documentary; this will more than likely end up on my top-ten list this year.

We saw the film because our church doesn’t have a Good Friday service, since we don’t actually have a building (refresher: we rent a great space from a Seventh-Day Adventist church, but only on Sundays). Some day I’d like to go to a Good Friday service at one of the gorgeous cathedrals around here, but I am just not up to braving the tourists right now.

Saturday was a culture-y day; we saw “The 39 Steps” at the Roundabout (amazing), then tripped on up to the Upper East Side for brunch at Mon Petit Cafe (crepes for both of us, mm), and then popped by the segment of the Whitney Biennial at the Armory (very skippable, but it was free, and we only had an hour or so). Then, after coffee and chocolate souffle at Fig and Olive, we headed to the Zoae Series at the Brecht Forum.

And, I wore these shoes all day and was simultaneously flabbergasted and elated that my feet did not hurt. Shoes are the bane of my existence, and I could not believe it that these were almost more comfortable than just regular flats. So comfortable, in fact, that I’m ordering another pair, because when you live in New York and your feet take you everywhere, shoes are more important than almost any part of your wardrobe, even your bag.

Righto. Easter Sunday dawned sunny and chilly, of course, and after church we went to lunch at Smorgaschef with Tom’s parents, and then wandered about the Village a bit before they headed back to Jersey and we went on out to Brooklyn for a quiet evening. And so closed the weekend.

I am pushing to get the magazine into layout and copyedited this week - cross your fingers - and hopefully we’ll be turning in the paperwork for the apartment application by mid-week, and I have class again this week after a couple weeks off, and Tom is scouting office buildings, and we are taking full advantage of Brooklyn Restaurant Week, and we’re seeing Little Flower of East Orange at the Public on Friday, directed by none other than Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose work we tend to trust implicitly. Good ways to do good work during a good week at the start of spring.

Happy Easter.

Brooklynites, or those who wish they were so lucky, should take note of Dine-In Brooklyn, which happens next week!

Restaurants across the borough are offering three-course meals for $23 per person (not including drinks). That is a steal for places like Blue Ribbon and Applewood - our personal favorite - and it’s a great way to try out restaurants you’d otherwise never frequent.

We tend not to eat out for dinner, so we go all out during restaurant week. We have plans to visit Palo Santo (which I pass every day on my way to the subway), Alchemy (a gastropub we pass on our way to the subway on Sundays), and Applewood (one of the best restaurants we’ve been to in the city). YUM.

Speaking of Paste, congrats on their nomination for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence! More details here.

I just realized that my birthday is on Election Day again this year. (I think the last time this happened in a presidential election year was the first time that Bill Clinton was elected.) I do expect to be paying attention this year to the returns.

Well, phooey. Maybe I’ll celebrate another day.

I started this morning with yogurt/berries/granola (new carton of yogurt, which means cream on top!), a mug of Tazo Zen tea (because I didn’t have enough time to brew a pot of the loose lemongrass green tea I bought at the co-op this week), a softly glowing rosemary-mint soy candle from the co-op on the wine crates that double as everything-tables for us, and a little bit of time working on the couch watching the rain and appreciating radiator heat. It was rather lovely.

I got an email about the extra 20% off sale at J.Crew (there’s still nice things left!) and quickly bought this top in black, which has now sold out, because I’ve been eyeing it for months and I ended up getting it for something like $80 off the original price.

I really needed a black top for the summer. I have none, which is a serious problem in my wardrobe.

And now I’m at work; Tom ordered the Nick Drake “Fruit Tree” boxed set and it came yesterday, and I ripped it all to my computer and am loving it. This is perfect working music to keep me calm under stress.

Because I’ve realized of late that when I’m stressed out, I gripe to myself about having to go to work every day, or about having too much to do, and I don’t only make myself unhappy, but everyone else, too. And there’s no need for that. I have an excellent job with great opportunities that many other people would kill for. I think perhaps I’m just in need of patience.

So now I’m observing the loveliness at the Bodum site, because I want a way to brew one cup of loose tea (preferably both at home and at work) and am exploring options beyond the traditional tea ball approach of my youth. I very much like their Yo-Yo approach:

I’d need two, one for home and one for the office, but they’re rather reasonably priced.

I also really loved this:

That would make me happy, brewing on my desk at work.

But although I already have a really lovely set of espresso cups and saucers that I’m very happy with, these made me smile and wish:

Set of six for fifteen dollars. Come on, someone needs to buy them.

Something went funky with our comments database table yesterday, but I managed to fix it through the wonder that is Dreamhost. We’re back. Comment away.

My very first submission (which I think I submitted in June of 2006) showed up on Overheard in New York today!

Tom discovered One Million Monkeys Typing this morning - a “collaborative writing experience” akin to Choose Your Own Adventure, except you write your own adventure. Too cool.

Last night my commute took about twice as long as it should have - I can only blame St. Patrick - and I proceeded to try to read as much of my textbook as possible, which is taking far longer than it should (the fact that I have too many other things to do probably isn’t helping). Somewhere in there, I realized that we had almost nothing to eat in the refrigerator, so I made a dash over to the coop and bought a lot of veggies and fruits, and also got a tin of Burt’s Bees Therapeutic Bath Crystals. I drew a bath to spend more time reading when I got home, and what do you know - they work! Our bathtub isn’t full-sized, but hopefully the next apartment will mean that I have a deep, long tub in which I can full soak my poor twisted, knotted muscles. Hurrah!

RIP Anthony Minghella.

Happy 49th birthday, Dad. Hope they get you a German chocolate cake up there.

Paste subscribers: check out page 35 of the April issue.

We were out quite late Friday night, eating chips and other snacks and watching old clips of “Square One” (the PBS kids’ show about math from the late eighties/early nineties) on YouTube and talking with various people, and generally relaxing.

On Saturday, we ate brunch at Stone Park Cafe (best brunch in the universe). Tom had some kind of poached-eggs-on-fish-cake thing, and I had shrimp-in-savory-grits, and it was great. We headed home and started cooking; three hours later, or so, we had chili cooking on the stove and extremely rich chocolate pudding in a bowl and various other goodies ready to feed the (eventually) eleven people who were there. Nearly everything was raved over and polished off, so it seems it was a rousing success.

Yesterday after church we had brunch with ten others at Philip Marie (on Hudson Street), then Tom and I went home, ran back out to see an apartment, then came back home and watched Rushmore and tried to unwind. Possibly too little quiet, relaxing time this weekend, but it was fun and full of good food, so who’s complaining?

It’s spring break at the University this week, which means I don’t have class tomorrow night but I do have about twice as much reading to do, and a lot of other things to write and revise and edit and such. It’s also a bit chilly out for “spring”. I sort of wish we were in Cancun, or somewhere.

Also, the city is INSANE here, with all the crazy people who think they’re Irish and a handful who actually are. Mom is in Albany, where it’s not much better, with the inauguration and all. I Heart New York.

Good stuff from the internets today:

• Kevin was my featured poet today at ConversantLife.com; he also has a great new poem on his site.

• My multitalented friend Christy has an article at Comment, reflecting on the IAM conference and ways to be a creative catalyst in your community.

• Excellent article at Burnside Writers’ Collective on spiritual disciplines. It seems they are resurfacing at last in the younger evangelical and formerly-evangelical consciousness. I just reviewed a book for RELEVANT about the same ideas (see May/June issue).

We went to Rockwood Music Hall last night, after a dash around the Lower East Side trying to find food, and saw our friend Nate, a rockstar songwriter, play some old and some new songs. In the process we saw many friends (film people/singers/actors/writers), all of whom we’re seeing tonight again at the behest of Nate’s lovely Jenn. And tomorrow night, we are feeding chili to a handful of friends. Wish us luck.

Tom found this today: Park Slope 100. See why we love Park Slope.

The Kitchn loves the Co-op too.

Interesting article from the NYTimes about art institutions who are renovating to include event space in their floorplan. (The picture of the Morgan Library made me stop and stare a while. I want to live in a library.)

For New Yorkers and art lovers: three exhibitions not to miss, including the Olafur Eliasson at the MoMA & P.S. 1, about which I am probably unduly excited.

Shameless self-promotion: my website has gotten a wee facelift, courtesy of a new Wordpress theme and my mad hacking skillz (not really, but I know more about CSS than I wish I did).

Hulu has been released to the public, which is very good news for you, and you should go check it out now. They’ve been loading dozens of movies onto the site as well - good movies.

Also, I have been pondering the role of the critic lately, and I’d love it if you (intelligently) weighed in. Really.

We have been tres busy this week, what with two screenings, concert tonight, Tom’s upcoming chili and my upcoming dark chocolate pudding experiment, Tom scouting with the Disney bigwigs and eating great food, and my foray into the book I have to read for class next week. Also, it’s spring, which means we’re planning for all the theatre we need to catch this spring and summer. Oh, and I have a magazine coming out at work soon, I hope, and a related podcast to get off the ground. Did I mention we’re busy? But not too busy to watch a little bit of The Simpsons.

Dare I say it? I think spring is on the way.

They’re rating the movie critics (book critics, too) at MoreIntelligentLife.com, and like me, Anthony Lane is their favorite (though we all acknowledge he’s more of a humorist than a critic).

But this quote on David Edelstein caught my eye:

Back when I was an intern, I sent him a piece of fan-mail, sandbagged with reviews of my own. He responded immediately. I sent him a piece of fan-mail, sand-bagged with reviews of my own. He responded immediately and reassured me that he, too, began his career spending “48 hours writing a 400-word review”. “My advice is simple”, he wrote: “Write.” ~ EMILY BOBROW

Good to know.

I’ve got kind of semi-ringside seats to this Elliot Spitzer scandal - my Mom works for the Department of State in Albany - and I am sad about the whole thing, and trying to understand what the Christian reaction should be (moral outrage, yes; name-calling and snide remarks, probably not).

But is it awful of me that I’m immediately thinking just what a great movie this will make in a few years?

I wrote a little on slow food, growing up with an organic-veggie-loving Mom, and working at the Co-op at ConversantLife.

Also, I’ve suddenly become very popular on Goodreads, getting several “adds” a day. I’m not sure why. Do I read weird books or something?

Lastly - I started a Redbubble store recently, which appears to be a much better venue than Etsy for photographers looking to offer prints/notecards/framed versions of their work. I like the set-up of the site, too. Designers, artists, photographers - check it out.

1. An apartment cannot be “sexy”, “charismatic”, “vivacious”, or “cheerful”. Your use of these terms does not make me more interested in renting your apartment.

2. Listing the neighborhood of your apartment as “Brooklyn” is not helpful, at all.

3. In the same vein, “Berkeley Street” is not a useful designation. That could be almost anywhere in Brooklyn. Same for “Flatbush Ave”.

4. 20th Street is not Park Slope. It’s nice, but really, come on. We all know that’s not Park Slope.

5. Somehow, not putting any pictures or information about the apartment’s layout, size, or features, then saying it’s a “must see”, doesn’t convince me.

6. Rows of asterisks, ALterNaTING CaPS and lowercase, ALL CAPS, and anything involving an image that blinks basically makes me think that the apartment must be lousy for you to have to resort to weird and unintelligible measures to get me to see it. Who are you trying to attract? Four-year-olds?

7. Posting a listing in my price range, then using that space to list out multiple apartments above my price range, is called bait-and-switch. We don’t like bait-and-switchers and will not pay attention to anything they try to rent us. Please just stop.

8. You and I both know that there are no “giant” one-bedroom apartments in the West Village on “tree-lined blocks” that are $800 a month, all utilities included. Stop trying to scam the newbies.

Can you tell I’m tired of looking? Where are the sane people?

Tonight we saw Shotgun Stories, and it more than exceeded both our expectations. Well-written, well-acted, well-shot, grizzled, heavy, and real, taking a few notes from a few writers (I’m thinking O’Connor, Shakespeare, and McCarthy), and all from a first-time feature writer/director. I’m not sure when it goes into limited release, but it’s worth seeing.

We also finally watched Into Great Silence over the weekend - three hours of following Carthusian monks around in the quietness. So beautiful it takes your breath away. Philip Groning is a cinematographer after my own little photographic heart.

And we also finally saw The Namesake, which we liked until it fell apart two-thirds of the way through (though it was moving up to that point).

Also, Green & Black’s ginger dark chocolate bar is fantastically spicy, sweet, a little crystallized, very good.

I swear we had this idea a couple of years ago. Sigh.