I have to admit, this perplexes me a bit:
Available on Amazon?!
(That was my maiden name. Not that it’s me, but it’s so . . . specific.)
It hasn’t been a long week, obviously, and it hasn’t been that busy, but I feel like I’ve been too exhausted to really deal with the days and their many frustrations as they come. Oh well. There’s always next week.
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.
Conductor:
“This is Jay Street - Borough Hall. Transfer is available to the letter A and letter F trains. Have a good morning, and thanks for riding the C train, the best damn train in the world.”
I am headed to the Upper West Side for The Moth, at Symphony Space, for Science Week. The Moth is an event where people (like, uh, Malcolm Gladwell) get up and tell true stories without notes for about ten minutes. And they’re generally great. So far I’ve only experienced The Moth via the weekly podcast, but it’s been a great experience.
Sadly, Tom can’t go. Boo! Hiss!
I suppose I should mention that we saw Indy 4 last night. Honestly? I have very few expectations for any movie that has both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas attached to it - not that it will be a bad movie, per se, but I don’t expect it to be a work of art, and I generally expect an uneven script (thank God George Lucas didn’t write it). So it was exactly what I expected: the cinematic equivalent of an amusement park ride. I was not at all disappointed. It’s pure fun, and there are weird creatures and a pretty awesome “car” chase sequence, and a lot of inside jokes.
Also, Tom’s ringtone is the Indy theme, so I hear it a LOT, and it’s nice to hear some variations!
Akismet tells me it currently has 7,777 spam comments in the queue. Is that ominous or auspicious?
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!
I love long weekends, though this one is a little too busy for my taste. I have forty chapters of Moby-Dick, half of a biography of Melville, a John Winthrop sermon, and a long article on Calvinism to read for class on Wednesday, and a paragraph to draft on one of the Moby-Dick chapters for Tuesday night, plus a screener of an Iranian film to watch and review. There are also a stack of publisher’s catalogs next to my couch that I need to wade through to find books for the Sept/Oct issue of RELEVANT. Oh, and Indy 4 out this weekend. I’m not complaining, exactly; I’m just a little tired and the weather is too lovely.
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!
Short article about The Cult of Sincerity in the printed version of WORLD Magazine this week, which you can see most of online. Note the photo credit. :)
I skim a lot of blogs relating to arts and culture during the day, and things catch my eye, but I hate to repeatedly blog little links here. I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr and I think it’s the right way to do it, leaving this blog for stuff that’s actually about us (hence the name, right?).
Ergo, I give you Culture Log.
I’ll be blogging several links and quotes and things per day that I find interesting. It’s all completely subjective. Tumblr doesn’t provide commenting features, which I’ve fallen progressively more out of love with anyhow, and it makes it very easy to quickly blog all kinds of media. Culture Log has an RSS feed, so feel free to subscribe . . . or not. This is mostly for my own edification and for anyone else who wishes to look over my shoulder and see what I’m reading.
We, well, once again find ourselves living sans curtains. I think we’re reluctant to put them up now - we have gorgeous windows, and since we’re on the eighth floor we’re already higher up than anyone around and just have a beautiful clear view of east Brooklyn, which is strangely European-looking (kind of a mix between a small village in the UK and some kind of Greek-looking township).
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.
Hats, Coat, and Thick Skin Only - an excellent article on being a writer and developing a healthy attitude toward criticism from editors.
This will be my fourth summer living in New York - oh, my word - but you might be shocked and mildly appalled to know that in all that time, I’ve barely made use of the wonderful free things that go on here in the summertime - just a Philharmonic in the Park concert in 2006, and some of Midsummer Night’s Swing last year in Lincoln Center (which was not free).
So, I’ve put a lot of the more amazing things I’ve found going on around town, from classical music to free film screenings to rock and folk and readings. Highlights include:
• Readings by Richard Price and Junot Diaz
• Several free NY Philharmonic concerts, in Prospect and Central Parks
• Chris “formerly of Nickel Creek” Thile’s amazing band, Punch Brothers
• Lots of great outdoor movies
• The Philip Glass ensemble, Ailey II, and Beth Orton in Prospect Park
• Wilco in McCarren Park (sadly not free)
I’ll be constantly updating, so feel free to bookmark!
We have watched two real classics in the last two evenings - Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Groundhog Day. Yes, I am catching up with all kinds of 80s-90s-era comedies. Andie MacDowell, where did you go?
I also grilled lamb skewers from Whole Foods yesterday, which ended up being slightly less awesome than they should have been (the cut of meat was a little fatty), and also some portobello mushrooms, on our cute smokeless electric grill. But alas, we had no rice, so risotto it was. This seemed far more interesting when I started writing this paragraph.
Meanwhile, my class is small (four students) and seems like it will be interesting. Any class that ends with watching a segment from Animaniacs is bound to have a sense of humor. Plus, we don’t have class on Monday (I become more and more grateful for national holidays each year) and so after tonight it’s already 1/6th over. There was a fairly copious amount of reading to do, but thankfully about twenty-five chapters of it were from Genesis and Jonah, and so it wasn’t overwhelming.
And in related news, grades were posted for last semester, and I got an A. Yay! Auspicious!
Happiness is: ducking out of work on a rainy day for sublime French-Moroccan-style chicken and sausage couscous and cherry blossom green tea at Cafe Gitane with your husband.
I have never received a paper newspaper in my life, except for a mystery three months when I lived with Katie in which we got the Times every day. It wasn’t long after I moved to the city, and I have happy memories of pilfering the Arts section and reading it with coffee on Saturdays. I felt very urbane, and I suppose that technically is.
But now I read the Arts section obsessively, if online, and my recent subscription to Audible came with six months of the New York Times hour-long audio daily digest. So I started listening and realized, man, I love that newspaper.
So after some careful consideration, and the discovery of a 60-percent-off discount because I’m a student, I subscribed to the Saturday & Sunday editions of the Times for home delivery, for the summer (and I’ll see if it’s worth it in the fall). And happily, it was very cheap. Because, frankly, cuddling up with a cup of coffee and my laptop on a Saturday morning just doesn’t cut it. And my newish-and-not-yet-announced ventures are making me feel a need to be up on what is going on in the ever-so-broad world of Culture And The Arts.
To be honest, I’m really excited.
As the Brits say, or at least the televised ones, this was a fab weekend.
We brought visiting globe-trotting Canadians to Lou Lou for brunch on Saturday. Amanda, having been in cuisinely-dubious Scotland for a while, was thrilled to find non-fried things on the menu. The whole meal was great (my veggie burger was made of vegetables of discernable shape and color!), and we brought them by our wee abode before they took off to explore the city more.
We watched the last two episodes of BSG Season 3 (yeah baby) and then headed off to the Zoae Series at the Bowery Poetry Club, which I have to say was one of the more enjoyable Series we’ve been to; the Kevins delighted with a kind of comedic poetry patter act, and we enjoyed Caleb’s music so much that we bought the CD and then went out for a very late, very dark, very Aussie dinner with a herd of people.
Sunday morning’s service included the baptism of some wee ones, and we ducked out a little early to go to an engagement party in Riverdale for our dear friends Alexandra and Dan. Though we had a mix-up and ended up waiting in the rain a bit for a car, we got there and were duly amazed that we were still in the Bronx; beautiful, large, gorgeous houses on amazing plots of land, as if you were tucked away into the country homes you find in New England. Sunshine, greenery, trees, a tiny babbling brook, flowers, colonial architecture, and front porches. It’s heartening to know you can go to these places and then be back in Grand Central in half an hour on the Metro North train, which, incidentally, follows the river the whole way and is sublime in the sunset.
In the continuing Moby-Dick saga, I got an email yesterday with an outline of the class and I think it shall be fascinating. It’s going to include an exploration of the uses of new media in teaching and scholarship, and though that sounds fabulously incongruous, it’s not, as I’m discovering as I actually read the book. Editors have been tweaking and changing Moby-Dick over the years, much as you might tweak, say, a wiki. Also, something about religion in American cultural studies. I can’t believe I almost didn’t take this class. It will be work, but hopefully good work, and I am all about all of the above.
It’s a grey day - so grey, in fact, that I had a cup of coffee when I went out for my break instead of tea. It’s almost the weekend. It wasn’t very good coffee, though. What is Starbucks’ issue with brewed coffee? I tried the Pike Place roast and it was not yummy. I should always stick to Kenyan coffee at Starbucks - granted, I always drink it black, but I maintain that you should not have to add milk to your coffee for it to be drinkable. Milk is for sops.
We watched Enchanted recently and enjoyed it, though I suspect our favorite part may have been seeing all kinds of familiar names in the credits (Tom’s current project is also Disney, and also includes many of the crew). I watched Spellbound last night - oh my word, I am so glad I am not an eighth-grader any more. Actually, come to think of it, I skipped eighth grade. Anyhow, all the braces just made me wince at the remembrance of being a tall, retainer-and-lip-bumper-laden, gawky teenager who talked too much and used big words and got quizzical/patronizing looks from adults. We have only two episodes left in BSG Season 3, which we’ll probably watch very soon. And I’ve been watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on Hulu whenever I can, and man, I am way too in love with that show.
We may get to see Altman’s Thieves Like Us tonight over at Film Forum (love Film Forum!), and tomorrow is brunch with the lovely Amanda, who is in town for a few days from Aberdeen, and the Zoae Series at night. And after church on Sunday, we’re off to an engagement party for two of our favorite people. And then, on Monday, I start the summer session. That was all too short of a break, but then again, I’m kind a junkie for school. Okay, so I’m still a nerd.
Lovers of good film and music: there’s a great article on Largo, the Los Angeles music/comedy club beloved of people like Sean & Sara Watkins, John Brion, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, and Paul Thomas Anderson, in this week’s New Yorker. The whole thing isn’t online yet, but keep an eye out.
Lunch with Tom at Momofuku Noodle Bar: steamed pork buns, smoked chicken wings, the special of the day (homemade soba noodles with crab, ramps, and snow peas in a spicy broth), and a tiny cup of salty peanut butter ice cream.
Perfection.
Ann Conway writes about venturing outside your own kind at the Image Journal blog. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
Friday night was great fun, listening to Michel Gondry talk about his work (he is kind of hilarious), watching a couple of his music videos - the Rolling Stones, Bjork, and the White Stripes - and hanging out with friends old and new. After a champagne reception with the Man Himself, we ate in Times Square, at a place that I think probably specializes in giving the “authentic American experience” to tourists. Not so much, but eating in Times Square is basically an exercise not unlike eating at one of the “authentic” places in Disneyworld. Suspend all disbelief, ye who enter here. And it was good chili.
I got home around 1:30 am, which was kind of a bad idea since I had to be up before six to pack and shower and catch a train. But we did all of the above and made our train with a few minutes to spare. By eleven we were in Albany with my Mom.
We went to the Tulip Festival in Albany’s Washington Park. I have to say that I lived in the general Albany area for twenty-one years, but had never really gone to the Festival except once to see my aunt dance, and we didn’t stay past the performance. Oh, my. Mom says the paper reported that 30,000 people were there; you could have fooled me, and I walked around in a bit of a daze, saying I had no idea there were that many people in Albany, period. There were street fair-style food vendors (we had gyros and split a funnel cake), booths for all kinds of crafty pursuits, bouncing castles, a petting zoo, two stages with bands, and a whole bunch of artists, which we enjoyed very much and even bought a Japanese-style cherry blossom painting by an artist from Massachusetts. We wandered about for a bit - the weather was sunny and warm and perfect - and then headed back to the house.
We spent the afternoon sitting around and chatting with Mom, mostly about politics (yes! us!), and then headed to Marmora Cafe, on River Street in downtown Troy. Now, I went to school in Troy for four years, and there wasn’t much to eat there, it seemed. A good Chinese restaurant and a loosely middle eastern restaurant, plus some pizza joints and the local brewpub (which, admittedly, was great), seemed to round it out. So I’m always a tiny bit dubious of Troy when it comes to eating, mostly because everything that’s sprouted up there in the three years since graduation is in areas of town I’ve never managed to be able to find very easily.
But, hurrah! We walked into Marmora and the owner said he was out of food. Disappointed, we started to turn away, but he said he thought he had a little bit left and could probably make us a nice platter. We almost left, but then decided to go for it, and fifteen minutes later there was a huge platter with tabouli, a lot of different kinds of hummus, baba ganoush, cheeses, strawberries, some kind of falafel ball with a sweetly spiced beef inside, and pita wedges. We ate like kings and thanked the owner profusely before driving out to the Colonie marina for a boat ride with the Womers. All in all, a perfect Saturday.
On Sunday we got to go to Terra Nova - always a treat - then went to my aunt’s house for Mother’s Day chicken and some time with the family. We had to leave pretty early to catch a train back, which got us home by 7:30 or so. Naturally, I cooked up some dinner and we watched The Machinist, which neither of us had seen, though we both distinctly remembered watching the trailers when it was coming out. It was less creepy than I thought it would be, but more than Tom thought. Whatever the case, it was beautifully shot and very solid. It was also very hard to watch Christian Bale, who lost something like 60 pounds for the role. He looked so emaciated. And to think, he did it again for Rescue Dawn. That man is one committed (and brilliant) actor.
I stayed home from work today with sore sinuses and head, venturing out only to buy groceries. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon watching eight (count ‘em) episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Season 3, which is of course brilliant. We have one disc left and then will probably start watching Season 4 on Hulu. We love the show, but I think we’ll be glad when it ends so we can finish Six Feet Under and start a new drama (The Wire? Sex and the City? The Sopranos? the possibilities are endless).
I’m hoping to be back on my feet tomorrow. Tom has a long, but relatively simple week this week (so far - schedules seem to change maniacally on this project), and I have nothing in particular planned but work until this weekend (which is very full). This is my last week before summer classes start, and I am very much hoping to have finished Moby Dick by Monday night. I’ve made a good dent in it already. Tom is also reading it, and we have two copies so we can both bring it along during the day. Thankfully, it’s none of the stuffy Victorian novel we were expecting. Actually, it’s hilarious and quirky and messy, and we are greatly enjoying it. Good thing, since I’ve got six weeks of studying it up ahead.
Iron Man: the review, in far too few words. As Tom summarized over dinner last night and I briefly mention in the review, the genius of the film is that Stark has no real superpowers except privilege and wealth. Tom pointed out that he’s a prototype for what we all want, for those with power and privilege (that’s us, folks) to stop pointing fingers and take responsibility for righting wrongs.
I read the always intriguing Malcolm Gladwell’s article on simultaneous discovery and some other stuff this morning on the way to work. I always find this phenomenon fascinating. Though he does make a distinction between artistic and scientific discoveries, it does happen in Hollywood, too, and I wrote briefly about it at WORLD a few weeks ago in the midst of a film review. It’s simultaneously comforting and unnerving to think that if you’re on the brink of a big idea or new discovery, someone else probably is, too.
I am happy to find myself with no more articles to write this week, though I really need to make a dent in Moby-Dick. I looked for it this morning, but I think Tom brought it with him to work in the wee hours. :) I have plenty to do at work but not too much, and the prospect of Friday night’s soirée, followed by the weekend’s trip to Albany, is keeping me smiling.
We saw Iron Man on Monday night - review, of course, forthcoming. We greatly enjoyed it. Stay past the credits. Tom had to be at work at 3am on Tuesday (after a full day on Monday), so he was getting home right about when I was leaving work yesterday, so I stayed out and browsed the mall-that-is-Soho, escaping with exactly one pair of fishnet tights (who knew they were so hard to find?) and a very inexpensive, surprisingly well-made summer dress from H&M.
Not much else to say right now, except that we were watching The Simpsons last night after I got home, and as it turns out, Grampa Simpson was “voted the best-looking boy in Albany”. Who knew? He’s a homeboy.
I never actually mentioned it when I talked about the New York Times Reading Room book blog, but Kathleen Norris - one of my very favorite authors, and whose little book The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women’s Work I finished yesterday - is one of the people blogging about the great novel Housekeeping by one of my other favorite authors, Marilynne Robinson. That is such an inspired combination that it should forgive the Times of any of its faults for at least a couple years to come.
Thank God there are still papers out there that believe in literature.
Also on the Times, Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts, is taking questions on the health of the arts in New York City this week. It should be an intriguing discussion.
I left work early on Friday to have lunch with the lovely Liz, who I’ve known through a couple different mutual friends for a while but hadn’t met. She was on her way from DC to visit her brother and had a stopover between bus and train in town, so we ate dutiful salads at a random Europa Cafe (oh, NYC lunch chains) and shared a kahlua brownie and talked for a couple hours. It was splendid.
I then went to see Made of Honor for a review which should be in WORLD (print!) soon. It was not very good, but it wasn’t painful. That’s about all I can say. Afterwards I headed downtown and jotted down the substance of my review before heading to a ukelele extravaganza at the Bowery Poetry Club, then the Half Pint with a horde. Definitely one of the better Fridays I’ve had lately.
On Saturday our dear Colleen came over; she was in town for a few days after moving home to Anchorage last year, and she’s headed Dublin-ward to Trinity this fall, and I am very excited for her. We had burgers at 67 Burger and then picked up some groceries. Alisa came by later on, and we ate copious waffles and drank rosé and discussed good books before everyone went home.
After church on Sunday, we had a lovely relaxing brunch in the garden behind Palma, and dinner at the Stone Home Wine Bar around the corner from us, all with friends. I also finished Brideshead Revisited and started Saturday, which is amazing.
Today I had one triumph - I convinced the university that I am properly immunized and managed to register for the Moby-Dick class. I’ve already bought the books, so I’m glad there were no snags. I am very excited for this class to start. I’m playing at being a grad student in the English department this summer, what with Moby-Dick and the British novel class, and I have to say, I think it’s a good way to spend the summer.
A relatively open week for me, besides work. I don’t even have class. On Friday I’m going to An Evening with Michel Gondry at the Museum of the Moving Image, and perhaps a tiny féte afterwards, and Saturday brings an Albany-bound train for Mother’s Day. I haven’t been home or seen my mom since January, and I’m very much looking forward to it. She tells me the Tulip Festival is brightening the pretty part of downtown Albany, and maybe we’ll get to see it this year.
Lastly, my review of Harmony Korine’s newest, Mister Lonely, is in this issue of Paste, but it’s also online. I tried, but I wasn’t a huge fan.
In case you’re interested in (part of) what I do to pay the bills, the magazine I edit and publish just came back from the printer and is now up on the web as well. It’s available as a webzine, which I don’t design (I’m in the process of revamping it, in fact), and a print version, which you can download as a PDF. This is our “green” issue. Happy browsing.
All the Sad Young Literary Men - Keith Gessen
I read this for a review (forthcoming, RELEVANT July/August issue), but I was wonderfully surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s the intertwined stories of three young men as they overthink college, then pursue their ambitions. It reminded me a lot of Jonathan Franzen, who is in fact quoted on the back cover. If you like slightly dark, sardonic literature with a hint of hope, this is a good one. [4/5]
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch
Also for a RELEVANT review; I can’t recommend this book highly enough. As someone who grew up in the kind of Christian environment that delighted in being critical of culture, this was a great encouragement to move on and create culture - and not just art, but law, cities, and omelets. A must-read. I think it comes out in August. [5/5]
Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture - Heather Hendershot
A really great ethnographic/sociological look at evangelical culture (pre-2004) and media, by someone from the “outside”. It’s one of the main sources for my term paper. Everything in it was (sometimes painfully) familiar, and it was interesting to get a more academic take, especially on how certain emphases within evangelical culture can contribute to common psychological problems that pop up (especially eating disorders). It’s very gentle and very balanced, and I have to say, I agreed with pretty much everything she talked about. [4/5]
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
I started reading books for my Modern British Novel course in July; this was the first. I have always enjoyed Orwell’s books, but I hadn’t read this one, and it was great (though the main character is frustrating, on purpose). A gentle satire of socialism - or really, more of certain types of socialists. Very redemptive in the end. [4/5]
I was going to plow through a bunch of my other books for class this month, but now that I’m taking Moby Dick, I know what I’ll be reading. I’m also in the midst of Brideshead Revisted right now, as well as The Quotidian Mysteries. I kind of want a month off to read!
After realizing that I am going to have a lot of time to myself in the next two months while Tom does the whole production thing and I had no classes, I figured I should just knock out a few more credits (because, well, the more credits I have, the sooner I can graduate and move out into the big bad world, or at least onto more school). So I’m taking a class on Moby Dick (and literary criticism) in the English department. I’ve never actually read it, though I am pretty sure I read excerpts in high school, so I’m looking forward to it.
We have an awful lot buzzing and brewing, but nothing much to report. Stay tuned.