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I’m not in a bloggy mood lately, but I give you Battlestar Galactisimpsons.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!).
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.
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.
• 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.
I wrote about two recent movies, La Misma Luna and The Visitor, and about making movies about illegal immigrants.
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.”
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.
We had many different invitations to do many different things Friday night, but after working very long days we decided to skip it all. Instead, we ate yummy food at the Hampton Chutney Co. and went to see My Blueberry Nights, which, though flawed, was enjoyable. Sometimes you just need a night off.
Saturday was busy; I gathered up some old clothes that either don’t fit or aren’t my style and brought them to a clothing swap, wherein many other girls had brought their clothes. We all went home with a bag (or more) and donated the rest to a local clothing drive and the Salvation Army. I scored a few short-sleeved tops that I needed desperately for summer work attire and a short-sleeved black dress, an essential. I love free clothes, but happily exercised restraint. After all, I don’t want to move anything more than I have to if the move pans out.
We had Renee and Adam (of Cult of Sincerity fame) for dinner and examination of their wedding pictures, finally, and after they left we unfortunately watched Into the Wild, which had its high points (chiefly Hal Holbrook) but seemed kind of a waste of a few hours. We had intended to watch The Squid and the Whale, but the Netflix disc was neatly broken in half, which kind of made the disappointment of Into the Wild all the more disappointing.
But on Sunday we had quite a lovely brunch at one of the many French places whose name I can never remember with a number of people we know but who didn’t know each other, and then went to Milk and Cookies (YUM) and hashed out the death of traditional journalism, since over half the crowd work directly in the field. Cheery.
And last night we watched Bug purely for Michael Shannon, who was really amazingly crazy reprising the role he played when “Bug” was onstage, and the movie doesn’t exactly work but it comes close, especially if you think about it as a play instead of a movie.
Oh, Monday.
Off to see My Blueberry Nights tonight! I have no idea what to expect, partially because it’s Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film, partially because it stars Jude Law, partially because it also stars Norah Jones (yes, that Norah Jones), and partially because the release date was pushed so many times that it’s hard to know whether it’s really great or bad or just confusing. One thing is for sure: it will be visually stunning.
I’m sipping Bolero and plotting out my next few weeks of work. I worked three hours at the coop this morning, stocking produce starting at 6:00 am, then came home and threw on the blooper reel for season 3 of The Office while I ate my breakfast and ironed my clothes. How I do love that show.
Speaking of, I also love Battlestar Galactica, but unfortunately I haven’t seen season 3 yet and so I’m not watching the premiere tonight. But! I have caught inadvertent wind of some of the plot developments in 3 and WHOA. Dude. I am dying to get our hands on the DVDs. Not having cable is generally great, but occasionally it’s bad, and this is one of those occasions.
Anyhow, I made my very first venture into the actual book areas of NYU’s Bobst Library at lunchtime in search of some volumes for my term paper, which is (I think) about the specialized arms of big movie studios aimed at evangelical audiences, and more generally, the American evangelical box-office power recognition phenomenon since The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004. Also something in there about aesthetics and critics. Can you tell I haven’t really ever had to write a bona fide research paper in the humanities? I found some interesting-looking scholarly volumes and reveled in the fact that when you check out academic books, you get five months till you have to return them, which can also be a curse when the one book you really want is checked out until the end of June (yep). Yes, interlibrary loan, blah blah blah, but unfortunately I’m late to the game and the paper’s due in a month and I don’t have a NY Public Library card and I applied for one but it could be a month before it gets here. Anyone have a copy of Shaking the World for Jesus by Heather Hendershot that they want to mail me? I’ll pay postage.
This weekend entails a swap at Carey’s (yay for getting rid of old clothes and maybe picking up some new ones), possibly Leatherheads (George Clooney! Renee Zellweger! John Krasinski!!!), lots of reading, maybe some games, hopefully some relaxing.
Hey look, I am on ApartmentTherapy (or more accurately, my photography is). I thought it would be a fun series to participate in.
I am reading Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch right now for a RELEVANT review. It comes out in August.
And let me just say, this is really good stuff. Finally, someone wrote a comprehensive view of culture that prompts one to act and do work. It’s smart and it’s well-researched and it handily avoids being uber-hip or uber-dull. This is not the same thing we’ve been reading for years. Don’t miss it. In fact, go pre-order it.
Stephen Colbert was just nominated for a Peabody.
Here’s the Peabody nominating staff’s reasoning for nominating the Colbert Report:
“Let none dare call it “truthiness.” Colbert, in his weeknight Comedy Central send-up of politics and all that is bombastic and self-serving in cable-news bloviasion, has come into his own as one of electronic media’s sharpest satirists.”
Colbert responded:
“I proudly accept this award and begrudgingly forgive the Peabody Committee for taking three years to recognize greatness. On a personal note, I’d like to say that I’ve long been a fan of Mr. Peabody, as well as his boy Sherman.”
Ah, I sent the original article to Tom on Sunday but forgot to blog about it. Everyone’s favorite Office sales guy on adapting David Foster Wallace.
How did you obtain the film rights to the book?
Basically, I was waiting tables, and trying to get the rights to do it as a theater piece, and repeat the performance that I had done. That didn’t go over great, as far as getting the rights. It’s a much more difficult process than a 22-year-old waiter would fantasize about. So I started to get a few more roles, and then all of a sudden I got “The Office,” and right after we shot the pilot, I took pretty much all the money that I had made on that, and went and bought the rights for a film. They said the theater rights were gone, but the film rights were still available. I’ve had the rights ever since, which is about five years.
Via Relief Journal, which is running an excellent series on why writers need technology - veteran blogger/author J. Mark Bertrand explains why writers, especially those who like to, you know, get published, should blog:
It’s 2004. The Art & Soul Conference at Baylor University. I’m in the lobby between sessions, browsing at the Eighth Day Books table. Minding my own business, in other words, in sharp contrast to everyone else. They’re networking. All of them. Somehow they’ve managed to meet up over the course of the event, to learn each other’s names. Not me. I’ve kept to myself. I’m a social moth.
“Hey, aren’t you—”
I turn to find a smiling man at my elbow. People are always saying I remind them of someone. Usually a crazy brother-in-law. I start to say, No, I’m not.
“—Mark Bertrand?”
“No, I’m . . . Oh.” Yes, actually. I am.
“I thought so,” he says. “I read your blog.”
That explains it. At least half the people I know, I met through my blog. Only I don’t usually meet them. Not without planning it in advance. The crazy thing is, for a brief shining moment, I feel like a celebrity. Somebody knows me. Somebody’s familiar with my work.
And the thing is, he’s not the only one. I got an e-mail this week from someone who’d read my book and enjoyed it.
“I’ve been reading your blog for a year and half.”
And then you bought my book. That makes you think, doesn’t it?
I can’t count how many times this has happened to me. It’s always weird when you’re meeting someone for the first time and suddenly you realize from the way that they’re acting that they read your blog. And conversely, it’s a bit strange to meet someone and then realize you read their blog.
And I haven’t even written a whole book yet.
I’m trying to decide if it’s better to be a low-grade kind of sick for weeks on end, or to feel like death for four days or so and then be back on your feet. I’ve been on some kind of sine curve of ickiness for about three weeks - well enough, most of the time, to go to work (though staying home would probably be better for me, but, well, that’s adulthood for you), and well enough not to actually skip out on activities most of the time, but not well enough to actually enjoy them. Plus, a rotating palette of symptoms from headache to sore throat to stuffiness to runny nose to blurry sight (normal for the sick version of me) has been interesting. It’s a lot like that last month before mono finally, mercifully lifts, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have mono.
The Image blog is a must-read; the recent post on why reading Arthur C. Clarke is like going to church made me smile. I have not in fact read anything by Clarke, but I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey (watched on a whim, which I’m not sure I’d ever recommend to those without my apparently bizzare-o taste in film - this movie merits preparation) and I’m glad I did, if for nothing else than to recognize all the cultural references/indebtedness in things ranging from Battlestar Galactica to Sunshine and The Simpsons.
Have I mentioned how awesome the NPR Book Tour podcast is? Well, it is. The most recent episode is a fascinating look into the impulsive and often oddly dishonest things we do.
I don’t think I mentioned that we saw Jake and Kevin and co. on Tuesday night at the Bitter End, which I’d never yet visited, despite it being a legend in Greenwich Village history. Pretty much everyone we know was there, too. I had come from class but Tom had come from seeing Wong Kar Wai at the Apple Store (even though I really love school, I think he probably had more fun), and Angela was in town for meetings and was there too. Good times and folk music on a warm, damp Tuesday night in the Village. Who could ask for more?
I can’t be the only person who’s apprehensive about the just-confirmed Office spinoff being added to NBC’s fall line-up.
I don’t want things to chaaaaaaange . . . Although, who knows, it could be fun.
Google, as we all know, has the best April Fools’ jokes. The ones we ran across:
- Tom pointed out Gmail Custom Time.
- The Google Wake Up Kit.
- And, if you try to add an event to your Google Calendar, you can now click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which may schedule, say, a date with Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, or any number of dashing celebrity types.
Those are the two apps we use on a daily basis. Anyone find anything else?
I wrote a review of Shotgun Stories, which was released in New York last weekend. This was one of those wonderful films that greatly exceeded my expectations.
Plus, after laboring over it last week, we went to see “The Little Flower of East Orange” at the Public, and Michael Shannon was the lead - and he was great. And I was in the front row, about six feet away from the front of the stage. He could have spit on me (and nearly did). It was a little unreal. (Also, his mother was played by Ellen Burstyn.)