Tom & Alissa

Good grief, is it already the end of July?

My reading this month was entirely class-driven, but I read some good books. I rated them according to my enjoyment of them, rather than how good they really are, because they’re all enduring works of literature for a reason.

The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
I found it hard to get through this book, but that was mostly my fault; I read it on scattered subway rides and the bus to and from D.C., and I was too tired to make the most of it. It is rather good. Though it’s essentially a nineteenth-century novel, and written that way, it’s the satirical tale of a secret agent, an explosion, anarchy, and a woman. [3/5]

Tono-Bungay - H.G. Wells
Another satirical work, this time on advertising. It’s clunky and bulky, but Wells is flat-out hilarious in places. I think one might rightly call it a “condition of England” novel, as well. [4/5]

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
Greene is a little hard to get into, but this is stylistically outstanding. It’s kind of a murder mystery, kind of a commentary on mercy (and an interesting one, from a Catholic novelist famously outside the Catholic mainstream of his time). Pinkie is one of the more intriguing protagonist-villains I’ve ever read. [3/5]

The Collector - John Fowles
Truly disturbing and completely absorbing. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s written from two perspectives and really gets inside the head of a dangerous psychopath. It’s not gruesome, just psychologically chilling. And a very fast read. [5/5]

The Memoirs of a Survivor - Doris Lessing
Finished this last night, and haven’t talked about it yet in class. It’s very well written and takes place in roughly the same post-apocalyptic (or is it pre-?) world as P.D. James’ Children of Men. On the other hand, I was too absorbed in trying to finish it for class that I’m pretty sure I missed the underlying metaphor - but then again, that’s why I am taking the class. A good read, but highly unconventional. (By the way, Lessing was interviewed in the NY Times magazine this week. Kind of a crochety lady, but brilliant.) [3/5]

I am reading Crash right now, by J.G. Ballard. It was apparently adapted into a movie (no, not that highly commercialized Oscar-winner), directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Spader, which is an inspired and truly disturbing combination if I ever heard one. I am not liking the book at all - it is, well, highly graphic and deals with really disgusting stuff, sort of like a British Chuck Palahniuk - but I have to get through it.

But after next week! Freedom, for three whole weeks! I don’t know what to do with myself! And then classes start again.

My first real internet-beats-the-news experience. I read about the California earthquake on a couple of friends’ Facebook status messages, then went to a few news sites to read more - and it hadn’t been reported yet. Oh, the internet.

Thanks to SuperFastReader, I’ve been stifling giggles for the last ten minutes. Why?

I give you Cake Wrecks.

Please enjoy.

The Curator is the web-based magazine I’ve been busily working to launch all summer; we’re hoping to have the first “issue” published at the end of August. Become a fan on Facebook to get updates and information as we near the launch date!

So, I’ve been an iPhone owner and user for two days now, which, you know, makes me an unmitigated expert, by blogosphere rules. Here’s my observations so far:

Good:
- The design is great.
- I like the headphone/microphone combination.
- Data download is fast and reliable, and I seem to have 3G pretty much everywhere that I go.
- Very easy to download new apps.
- I set up four email accounts, using POP, IMAP, and Exchange, and they all work brilliantly.
- Once it has encountered your usual wireless networks, it connects seamlessly (unless the network is a stupid one, like the one we have at work).
- Favorite apps: Major League Baseball, Wordpress, Twittelator (like Twitterific, but with no ads and better design), and Evernote. Pandora is pretty cool, too.
- It’s not going to cost us much more to have the AT&T family plan with unlimited data and 1400 minutes than it did to have just the voice plan at Verizon. Buh?
- Browsing the web is a pleasure. I can do pretty much everything I could do on a normal computer.

Bad:
- There isn’t really a way to set my podcasts to download wirelessly. This is a bummer. I don’t like to have to plug it into my computer.
- Apparently you can only really sync music and video with one computer, which is not true of the iPod.
- No Skype capability (well, I suppose you can probably hack it to work, but it would be nice if it worked out of the box).
- Have had some crackling on the line - rare occurrence when I was a Verizon customer - but Tom tells me AT&T is adding towers in NYC, so I’m hoping that will be cleared up soon.
- It took a phone call today to AT&T to get my number officially ported over (I could make calls, but not receive them). To their credit, they immediately took care of it with no hassle.

Overall, it’s a nice little device, and definitely a step up from the Blackberry.

My review of Brideshead Revisited is up at Christianity Today - which, incidentally, makes this my first review for CT.

I thought this film was rather good, despite all the people who were ready to jump down the filmmaker’s throats, and so far Rotten Tomatoes is agreeing with me. Don’t trust the trailer - which is mightily awful and sensationally misleading - and just go see the film (but don’t take the kids).

I post to you from my iPhone and its nifty Wordpress app!

I don’t have too much to say - I’ve been busy writing. I got most of a paper done last night, and am hoping to draft an article due next week. Plus, oh yeah, I have a job!

Interesting article on the “monoculture”.

Netflix is shutting down Red Envelope Entertainment, their small production unit. This is sad. They’ve put out some good films.

Wearable art at the Guggenheim.

The LA Times continues to disintegrate - now they’re folding their book section.

It was kind of a weird weekend. I left work on Friday to buy tickets at the Angelika for Transsiberian, then spent a couple hours wading through a bunch of journal articles for my upcoming “midterm” paper (a bit of a misnomer, since it’s due two weeks before the final, but whatever). Thankfully, the Angelika’s cafe is large and has much seating, and I got an Orangina and sipped happily for a couple of hours.

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

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

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

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

You know, I just updated my reading list for this year and was pleasantly surprised when I read over the list. As of today, I’ve finished 29 books, and while I’ve rarely been able to choose what I wanted to read without influence from either a publisher or a professor, I have read some really great books.

Somehow, that’s encouraging.

Oh hey, my article on One Million Monkeys Typing from the July issue of Paste made it onto the website. You can read it here.

The Philharmonic concert last night was brilliant. Perfect weather, sixty thousand people, and fireworks. The music was ideal for a summer night on the lawn. Tom made delicious tabouli and brought some thinly-cut prosciutto to eat it with, and big, juicy strawberries for dessert, accompanied by a bottle of New Zealand pinot noir (apparently a new thing for the Kiwis). It was fabulously relaxing, and I felt rather pampered as I nibbled strawberries and listened to Beethoven.

This, folks, is why we live here.

I do have to say that I am looking forward to iPhone updating its own podcasts automatically. I just can’t keep up with daily podcasts (read: The “Writers’ Almanac”) otherwise. Because when am I ever really thinking far enough ahead to plug my iPod into my laptop every day?

That is all.

Well, I’m back at work today, after a not-nearly-long-enough vacation at home. We went to the Coney Island beach and ate mangos; finished Six Feet Under; watched A Streetcar Named Desire, Lust, Caution, Hellboy 2 (apparently I just don’t like Del Toro), and a lot of The Simpsons; ate at home a bit; did our laundry; and basically tried to stay as low-key as possible. I also had H.G. Wells’ Tono-Bungay to read for class on Monday night, which I finished just in time.

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

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

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

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

A few collected links:

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

- New rules about shooting on New York City streets.

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

- Why more authors should be blogging.

- The aesthetics of buzz in the dining room.

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

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

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

I interrupt this brief stay-cation to mention that I have an article on Slow Food and buying local at Comment today.

Actors union ratifies deal with Hollywood studios

I know most of you don’t make your livelihood through the entertainment and media businesses, but if you don’t mind sending up prayers and/or good thoughts that this all gets sorted out soon, the rest of us would appreciate it. Nobody really wants to deal with this again.

I arrived without incident in DC around 2pm on Thursday. Let me now recommend Bolt Bus; we were a little late, but the ride was direct, the bus was pleasant, and there was free Wi-Fi on board. Oh, and it was cheap.

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve returned to New York, but I don’t have time to outline all of our pursuits over the past weekend right now. Perhaps later.

There was almost no traffic on this blog yesterday, which was confusing until I realized the server was down. Thanks, Dreamhost. We’re back up today.

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

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

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

An exceptional month for books.

Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
You know why I read it. Frankly, though I was glad to put it down, this is really an amazing book - not in the life-changing way, but because it’s so insanely layered. I still don’t know what it means, but it’s worth reading, preferably with a biography of Melville or some kind of commentary in hand. [5/5]

Home - Marilynne Robinson
Not to succumb to hyperbole, but this is an amazing book. If you’ve liked Robinson’s earlier work (Housekeeping, Gilead), you’ll love this; if you found it a little hard to follow, you’ll love this one even more. It’s more narrative, but has some of the same characters from Gilead. Home comes out in September. Don’t miss it. [5/5]

It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music - Amanda Petrusich
I am not much of a reader of music journalism, but I really enjoyed this book. Petrusich chased Americana’s history on a road trip and ended up with a highly engaging portrait of a country that continues to survive turmoil, change, and growth. If you’re into country, rock, blues, folk, or any of the alt-variations thereof, you’ll really enjoy this; even if you aren’t, I think you’ll still like it. [5/5]

Howards End - E.M. Forster
This is for my current class. Unfortunately, I read it in fragments on subway rides and didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have, though I recognize that it’s a great work. More when we discuss it in class next week. [4/5]

This month: a lot of reading for class, and not much else. It’s okay, they’re good books. I’m in the midst of The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, right now.