tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-166541702024-03-18T21:25:19.638-05:00Julia SweeneyHi, this is my blog.Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.comBlogger243125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-92183183957496879092013-04-01T10:14:00.000-05:002013-04-01T10:14:03.370-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Hey, I have a new website. It's at <a href="http://www.juliasweeney.com/">www.juliasweeney.com</a></div>
Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com444tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-15417720464821050992013-02-14T10:22:00.000-06:002013-02-14T16:21:46.295-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Jill Sobule, in my office, with her iPad, and her thinking cap on. We were figuring out our show order for the Jill & Julia Show which we did at Space, in Evanston, IL on January 26th. We filmed the show and we're making a Jill & Julia website (should by up by the end of March.) We have several shows booked for July, and even one coming up, March 16th in Hartford, CT at the Mark Twain House. <b><i>The Mark Twain house! </i></b>That's awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. (Jill is an amazing rock/folk singer and musician, see her website jillsobule.com)<br />
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Well, I'm gearing up for my book release, April 2nd. I have several appearances and book related events. I will be getting the information up soon. Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm also going to have my own website, which will help promote the book, up in a matter of... well, probably several weeks. But still! Things are in motion.<br />
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Okay, books read in January 2013:<br />
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1.) "In the Shadow of the Banyon," written by Vaddey Ratner.<br />
2.) "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," written by Maria Semple<br />
3.) "This Book Will Make You Smarter," a compilation of essays edited by John Brockman<br />
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I enjoyed all these books. Reading "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" was especially sweet because it was written by a friend of mine, one who I greatly admire and am deeply inspired by. Sweet because I had taken so long to read it - it came out last June and I had followed it's success with joy, and yet - I think I was afraid to read it! In fact, Maria read my book even before I read hers - and that was a very good thing because I was so blown away by "Where'd You Go" that I wonder if I'd have even sent her my book if I'd realized what a great and funny and skillful writer she's become. I mean, I knew it before, I loved her previous book, "This One is Mine" but "Where'd You Go...." Wow. I laughed so hard while reading this book, once I laughed so friggin hard that Mulan asked me to leave the room because she was trying to practice piano and my cackling was interfering with her concentration. Let me tell you something, Mulan practices piano LOUDLY. So this just shows how loud I must have been laughing. I was completely surprised by what was happening in the book, how it turned out, how nutty it got - and yet how understandable and justified and quirky and odd and meaningful. Poignant, even. When I finished the book, it stayed with me for a long time. I kept thinking about Bernadette - I still think of her like an actual person, and not a character in a book. <br />
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"This Book Will Make You Smarter" is one of those John Brockman edited books - he runs this organization called The Edge. He runs the website for it, edge.org. And he puts out a book every year with essays by influential big thinkers, mostly scientists. "This Book Will Make You Smarter" is the perfect bedside book - the essays are short, but thought provoking. A couple of the essays are still banging around in my head - one by Brian Eno, the musician, and recording producer entitled "Ecology." In this essay he beautifully distinguishes between old world thinking: religious, pyramidic, hierarchical, with new world thinking: complex, web like, "an infinity of nested and co-dependant hierarchies." It's not something I hadn't thought about before, in fact, for the last ten years it's all I have been thinking about! But I love how succinctly Brian Eno describes it, how starkly, and elegantly.<br />
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The other essay in this book I keep turning around in my head was written by Gloria Origgi, a French philosopher who works at the Insitut Jean Nicod. She wrote an essay called "Kakonomics." She posits that most economic theory is based on the idea that people want to provide lower quality goods and receive higher quality goods. This is logical, right? People want to give less and receive more. But in practice, people are wily. People practice mutual un-spoken agreement to each provide lower quality goods. One example she gives is one about Italian builders, "Italian builders never deliver when they've promised to, but the good thing is, they don't expect you to pay them when you've promised to, either." The idea is that if you talk the talk about exchanging high quality work, but in fact understand that you will both actually deliver mediocre work, then the pressure is relieved on both sides and therefore both sides gain. But of course, this behavior has an - as she puts it - an "overall worsening" effect on our society and culture. When I read this essay I couldn't stop seeing examples of it everywhere. I'd never thought about that before!<br />
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"In the Shadow of the Banyon" was a brilliant book too! Wow, so many good books out there. It's about a Cambodian family during the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Which - I didn't even realize that the Khmer Rouge means Cambodians, Red! Communists. I mean, I knew they were communists. But I never thought about the name before. Jeez. Anyway, it was a beautiful written book, really tragic and compelling. I recommend it highly. <br />
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Can I just say that reading about insane historical episodes, like the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia - people can be so crazy, whole groups of people can get so frighteningly nutty. There are so many examples of it, not just the Nazis (the ubiquitous and overused example) but everywhere. I used to have such a benevolent view of humanity, but as I get older, I just get more and more jaded, and frankly scared. Scared of big crowds. It even extends to football games, all those people cheering, it just gives me the willies. <br />
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Okay, before I drag this blog post into the mud, let's move on to movies. During January, I had my friends Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy and Jim Emerson come for five days of movie watching. Many of the films listed here were watched with them, a delightful group of fellow film enthusiasts. We had a lovely little winter film festival among friends.<br />
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Films watched in January 2013:<br />
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1.) On the Waterfront, 1954, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
2.) The Devil's Envoys, (french title: Les Visiteurs Du Soir,) 1942, directed by Marcel Carne<br />
3.) My Summer of Love, 2004, directed by Pawel Pawilikowski<br />
4.) Searching for Sugar Man, 2012, directed by Malik Bendjelloul<br />
5.) Open Range, 2003, directed by Kevin Costner<br />
6.) Canyon Passage, 1946, directed by Jaques Tourneur<br />
7.) The Gatekeepers, 2012, directed by Dror Moreh<br />
8.) Celeste & Jesse Forever, 2012, directed by Lee TOland Krieger<br />
9.) Assault on Precinct 13, 1976, directed by John Carpenter<br />
10.) Silver Linings Playbook, 2012, directed by David O. Russell<br />
11.) Martha Marcy May Marlene, 2011, directed by Sean Durkin<br />
12.) Me and My Gal, 1932, directed by Raoul Walsh<br />
13.) Coriolanus, 2011, directed by Ralph Feinnes<br />
14.) The Beaches of Agnes, 2008, directed by Agnes Varda<br />
15.) Housekeeping, 1987, directed by Bill Forsyth<br />
16.) Panic in the Streets, 1950, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
17.) Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008, directed by Woody Allen<br />
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Whew. Lotta good shit. Where to start?<br />
<br />
I'd never seen <i>On The Waterfront</i> before, but I'd watched so many acting-class renditions of the seminal scenes, the ones with Brando and Eva Marie Saint, the ones with Brando and Rod Steiger - I felt I <i>had</i> seen it. I have to say, it's probably unfair to the film itself, to be a person who'd never seen it, when it's such an iconic film. A film that gave birth to so many cultural references. It's inevitable that it both lived up to my expectations -- even exceeding them -- and also disappointed me at the same time. I didn't realize that the film was a big mea culpa about flirting with communism - for Kazan and for Schulberg (the writer.) That seemed to scream out all over the place, making it more of a "message" movie than I feel comfortable with. Brando is unbelievably fantastic, you can see how he changed acting forever with his natural, animalistic, intelligent, realistic performance. <br />
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I watched <i>My Summer of Love</i> two more times! I showed it to Richard, Kathleen and Jim, and then when Jill came for her show, we watched it too. I love that movie. One of the actresses, Natalie Press, gives such a believable and delicate performance. Emily Blunt (her film debut) is delightful too, but I'm not going to go on because I wrote about how much I loved this movie before.<br />
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<i>Searching for Sugar Man</i>! I've seen it three times now. I begin to cry the moment we first see Rodriquez. This film must win the Academy Award! (Even though I have not seen the other nominated documentaries, so that is unfair, but still, I say it!) <br />
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<i>Canyon Passage</i> is a wonderful western. Someday I'm going to hunker down and force myself to list my ten favorite westerns. <i>Canyon Passage</i> is going to be on that list.<br />
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Oh, <i>The Gatekeepers</i>. That's probably nominated for an Oscar too - in the documentary category. So, I have seen another nominated doc. Okay, I have to say - it's very very <b>very</b> good. It's a doc with interviews from all the surviving former heads of Shin Bet - the Israeli security agency (like our CIA.) They basically say that the whole war with the Palestinians is deeply flawed and will only lead to things getting worse and worse. This aligns with my own thinking already, but it's was riveting and nice to see people who were in the position of waging this war saying the same thing. <br />
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OMG, <i>Assault on Precinct 13</i>. So brilliant! Pulp film making at it's very best. The director, John Carpenter is so good - the movie is really compelling, full of action and campy seventies acting styles. GREAT. Just great. And the star, Austin Stoker, never had his career take off after starring in this wonderful film. He went back to his job being a union driver for other films. Somehow this makes this film even more important. God, I have to see <i>Escape from New York</i> again.<br />
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I liked <i>Silver Linings Playbook</i>, but didn't love love love it. It was okay. I really thought about <i>Martha Marcy May Marlene</i> quite a bit afterwards. Elizabeth Olsen (little sister of the Olsen twins) is quite amazing. She's going to be a major actress, I think.<br />
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<i>Me and My Gal</i>, I watched with Jill Sobule. We liked it. A lot. The film is the first-time pairing of Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett - who have palpable chemistry (they went on to star together in <i>Father of the Bride</i>.)<br />
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<i>The Beaches of Agnes</i> might have changed me forever. I really didn't know who Agnes Varda was. Now I am all over her. I loved this documentary she made about herself. It hits exactly the right tone. Now I have all her other other films, I got a box set and I'm making my way through them. How was I not turned onto Agnes Varda before? She is so up my alley! Right now I'm idolizing her, I'm in an Agnes Varda thrall. But more on her next month after I've seen everything she's done. I have seen so many of those French New Wave films, and never really knew anything about Agnes Varda - only recognizing her name. Now, to me, she is the greatest of all those filmmakers! Her worldview, her way to seeing, is very close to my own heart - how I try to see the world.<br />
<br />
I am smitten with Agnes Varda. St. Agnes, that's what the next pope should do, canonize Agnes Varda.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, what about the Pope resigning???? My mind is reeling. I think there's a scandal embedded in it somewhere - something smells fishy about this resignation. And, if the Church can break with a 700 year old tradition of Pope's serving until their death, why not reverse some other antiquated things? Their views on birth control, for example. Do you think that the Pope saw "Letting Go of God"? Did he see the part where I play out my fantasy for the Pope to make a big apology for all the unnecessary suffering the Church has caused? <br />
<br />
But seriously, I am hungry for more information. Did the Pope read "The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder & the Mafia"? Or "In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul 1"? Did he quit because if he didn't quit he'd be whacked? I know, I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But when it comes to the Catholic Church, I think many of those theories have some truth in them....<br />
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Lent just started, and although I am no longer a believing Catholic (by a very long stretch) I do love Lent. I gave up alcohol and chocolate, which I do every year, and have since I was 21. 46 days without alcohol, people. Can you stand it? And chocolate! It's hard, I tell you, it's challenging. And speaking of fish, (above, re: the Pope's resignation) I try to eat fish on Fridays during Lent too. Just a part of the Catholic gal inside me that must be satisfied with some good old-fashioned denial.<br />
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I'm going to end with a cute picture of Michael (the husband) and Mulan (the daughter) which I took recently. Mulan wanted to paint one wall of her bedroom with blackboard paint so she could draw all over it. I love this pic because we had such a fun day doing this. Also, I like that Michael is wearing a "Jetpack" T-shirt - which is a Jill Sobule song. <br />
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Ta Ta until next month!</div>
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Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com161tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-54771224619023395452013-01-10T09:25:00.002-06:002013-01-10T09:34:16.630-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
A New Year<br />
<br />
The above picture was taken by Michael at the Lincoln Park Zoo in mid-December.<br />
<br />
We saw many more primates later in the month, in Costa Rica, where we went on vacation. But this picture is my favorite. Looking at her expression causes me to relax. <br />
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What is new? Well, we just returned from a two week vacation in the Yucatan and Costa Rica. We went to many ruins in Mexico. We didn't realize that we'd be there with the crazies - the people who thought the world would end on Dec. 21st. But we didn't have any run-ins and we mostly avoided those people. My favorite time in Mexico was in Valladolid, a small colonial town with a great folk art museum, which is actually just a guy's house who opens it up every day for an hour or so for people to look at his amazing collection of Mexican art. <a href="http://www.casadelosvenados.com/">Casa de los Venados │ Oficial Site</a> It's really worth the trip to see this house, with it's perfectly chosen collection of art. Some of the art was commissioned just for them, be sure to check out the dining room table with each chair back depicting the image of a famous Mexican historical figure. I had a fantasy of going to this city for a month and just writing and reading every day while mosing around in the afternoons. <br />
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Then we went to Costa Rica, and joined a group. It was a family-active-travel-vacation kind of thing. Every day we did some different active thing: surfed, zip-lined, hiked, biked, white water rafted, kayaked. It wasn't too exhausting, but kept us on the move. We all had a fabulous time. Mulan didn't want to come home.<br />
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Jill Sobule and I are getting ready to do a little tour in the summer with our Jill & Julia show. We have a show here in Evanston at Space on January 26th. I will get the rest of the schedule up soon. <br />
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I'm having a website designed, and it will be launched in a couple of months, maybe sooner - we'll see how it goes. <br />
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I'm also getting ready to start promoting my book, "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother" which will be published on April 3rd by Simon and Schuster. I will have a schedule soon for that too. I want to do as many book store readings as possible, I'm so excited to do that. I know I'll be at the 92nd Street Y in NYC on April 2, and then I'll be doing a week of publicity there. More on that soon.<br />
<br />
But for now, I thought I'd list the books I read in December 2012:<br />
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1.) The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, written by Steve Coll.<br />
2.) Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, written by Steve Coll.<br />
3.) In Praise of Messy Lives, written by Katie Roiphe<br />
4.) The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, written by David Sloan Wilson<br />
5.) Miss Minimalist: Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify, written by Francine Jay<br />
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Of all these books, the Bin Laden book was the most fun, the most informative, the most engrossing, and maybe even the best written (Although they were all very good.) I saw Steve Coll on "Up With Chris Hays" - my don't miss political show, and they were talking about his ExxonMobil book. So before we left on vacation, I got that and the Bin Laden book which he'd written in 2008 and loaded it onto my Kindle, along with the Miss Minimalist book. I was so absorbed with the Bin Laden book, and after each chapter I had to tell Michael and Norma (Michael's mother who was travelling with us) what I'd just read. God, that book, that story - the story of the Bin Laden family - it really should be a mini-series on HBO or Showtime or something. Just astonishing. I had no idea! So many interesting characters. I only had the most rudimentary understanding of that family, how they came to power, how friggin' many of them there are! I didn't know that the family had basically disowned Osama for years before 9/11. It's a complicated story, and Coll is a magnificent writer - so clear and stark and dispassionate, and letting the facts speak for themselves. Salem! Salem is the oldest son, who died years before 9/11 in a plane accident (the father died in a plane accident too - lots of exploding planes in this family's history) and Salem is such a bigger-than-life character, he seems fictional. He is obstinate, silly, smart, insightful, indulgent, superficial, but a great person-manager. I mean a wonderful connector. Anyway, I would recommend this book above almost all others for the month. <br />
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The ExxonMobile book was enlightening, I mean, I know nothing about the oil business. It's not a take-down, just once again, Coll dispassionately relating the facts. I found myself much more sympathetic to ExxonMobile, and more angry at ExxonMobile after reading it. I really was an idiot when it came to this area of our world. It was a long, often boring slog however. I think Coll made it as interesting as possible - and he did a good job. There is actually a lot of intrigue and action - and I'm thankful I have this understanding now, I think reading this book has made me a much more aware and informed person... But I didn't go gaga over this book like I did the Bin Laden one.<br />
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Katie Roiphe is a very good writer, and I enjoyed her essays so much. I love the title. I also enjoyed "The Neighborhood Project." I read David Sloan Wilson's book "Darwin's Cathedral" and even heard him speak at Cal-Tech in Pasadena several years ago. That's a good book too...<br />
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"Miss Minimalist" became this wonderful way for Mulan and I to have several great talks on our trip. Mulan finished her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird" about halfway through our vacation and didn't have another book. So she began nabbing my Kindle and reading Miss Minimalist. The book is just a 99 cent Kindle single - but it's so much more than a how-to guide. It's really about morality, about a whole world-view, and getting away from the consumerism that can encroach on our lives and shape our expectations, and ultimate enslave us. I love Francine Jay - I am really a fan. I already read "The Joy of Less" by her - her hardback book. I have a ways to go to get where I want to be with my "stuff" but she is helping to show me the way towards where I want to go. What struck me about this Kindle Single was that it went beyond stuff. It was about keeping our lives simple in general. Not having such complicated "to-do" lists, and accepting the fact that the most valuable thing we have is time, and spending that time mindfully means not being able to "do" as many things as we might want to. The book was perfect for Mulan to read at age 13. And it was perfect for me to read as well. We had a great time discussing this book all through Mexico and Costa Rica.<br />
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Okay, movies I watched in December, 2012.<br />
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1.) Big, 1988, directed by Penny Marshall<br />
2.) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, 2009, directed by Werner Herzog<br />
3.) The Bakery Girl of Monceau, 1963, directed by Eric Rhomer<br />
4.) Suzanne's Career, 1963, directed by Eric Rhomer<br />
5.) Sunrise, 1927, directed by F.W. Murnau<br />
6.) Letter to Elia (documentary about Elia Kazan) 2010, Martin Scorsese<br />
7.) Gilles Wife, 2004, directed by Frederic Fonteyne<br />
8.) My Night at Maude's, 1969, directed by Eric Rhomer<br />
9.) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
10.) Boomerang, 1947, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
11.) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, 2011, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylon<br />
12.) Gentleman's Agreement, 1947, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
13.) Pinky, 1949, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
14.) A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
15.) Viva Zapata, 1952, directed by Elia Kazan<br />
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Oh, what a great movie month. As you can see, I got the box set of Elia Kazan movies, and I'm making my way through them. In fact, the other day I watched On The Waterfront (but that's a January movie...) for the first time. The box set is quite nice and has a lot of tantalizing extras. Frankly, I think Kazan's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is his best film so far! I watched the movie twice, and the then with the commentary. Even with the commentary going I cried my eyes out when the dad dies. Of course that movie resonates deeply with me, the alcoholism, the Irish stuff, the daughter who loves a dad who is tragic. The whole thing just gets me. I hadn't seen it as an adult. It's even better than I thought it was.<br />
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The one thing that I have to get <i>over</i> (and over and over again) is that Kazan casts women who don't fit in the part they're playing, sometimes to a hilarious degree!! Dorothy McGuire did a great job in the part of Katie Nolan in "A Tree" but she does not seem Irish working class in any way whatsoever. In Pinky, Jeanne Crain is supposed to be playing a mulatto woman and she's hilariously Nordic looking. It's just ridiculous. Even in "On the Waterfront", Eva Marie Saint's character seems like a WASP Connecticut waif with perfectly straight teeth and a patrician bearing and it's very hard to accept that the nun's boarding school really took every wisp of lower working class mannerisms and vocal tone out of her. But once I get past that, I enjoy the movies a lot. <br />
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Speaking of commentaries, on "Sunrise," there is a lovely commentary by John Bailey, the renowned cinematographer. Now that I've watched so many movies with commentaries, I realize there is a big range - some of them are just people rambling on and on about almost nothing. Some are really informative and enlightening - John Bailey's commentary on "Sunrise" is FANTASTIC. Really a don't miss.<br />
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I watched "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" AGAIN. Oh god I love that movie. I could watch it several more times. Andrew O'Heir at Salon described it as a CSI episode written by Anton Chekov. That is the most perfect description. This movie might have changed my life, I don't know. I love it SO MUCH. I've seen it four times now...<br />
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I saw "My Night At Maude's" in college, but was glad to see it again. It was both better and worse than I remembered it. "Viva Zapata" is great! Marlon Brando - I'm kind of obsessing about Marlon Brando right now. God he was so good. The way he behaves in film - it's like he knew how to mainline heroin - what I mean is, he does not get in his own way. He really seems like he is the person - he just takes your breath away - even when he's playing a Mexican revolutionary!<br />
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I have to write a shout out to "Gilles Wife" - a lovely nuanced film. I hate the ending, however. It doesn't belong with the film. A subtler ending would have made the film absolutely perfect. But the film is still wonderful - great performances. <br />
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Okay, I am getting ready for my friends Jim Emerson, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy - who all live in Seattle - to arrive this afternoon so we can commence our annual winter film festival here in my house. For five days we will be watching at least AT LEAST two movies a day. I can't wait!<br />
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Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com81tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-55570951033542601522012-12-02T09:48:00.003-06:002012-12-02T10:30:56.783-06:00Arden, RIP<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My dog Arden died.<br />
He died about three weeks ago.<br />
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I'm still getting used to him not being around. I will blame my tardy blog entry on this event. It's only partially true. But still, I'll allow Arden this one last gift to me. <br />
My world is very different. No more walks every day. This is both terrible and fantastic. No Arden to greet me when I come in the house. For at least a week, after he died, when I came in the door, I could hear the jingling of his tags. Auditory hallucinations embedded by repeating situations. I hear his familiar click along the hardwood floors. I still wake up at night and think of his last moments alive, which I witnessed, and for which I'm deeply thankful. We knew he didn't have long, he had a tumor on his heart after all, but he'd lived so much longer than anyone expected he would (in that sense, he was like my brother Bill.) <br />
One night Arden was breathing particularly quickly. Maybe even hyperventilating. He wouldn't sit down. Michael and I stayed up with him. It was hard to tell if he didn't want to sit down or he couldn't sit down. I figured if we went to bed, he would lie down. We went to bed, and then I got up at 11 p.m. and he was still panting and standing. I went back to bed, but got up at midnight, he was still doing the same thing. I called the emergency 24 hour vet and they said to bring him in. Michael and I got dressed, Arden happily got his leash on, jumped into the car, looked out the window with expectation. I was in the backseat with him. Then he wanted to get down off the seat. I helped him get down. He died right there in the car. He did not look like he was in any pain, he just laid down and put his head to one side, but all the muscles in his face relaxed in this very final un-alive way. I said to Michael who was driving "I think Arden just died." Michael put his hand back behind the driver's seat, stroking Arden's fur. "Yes." he said. "I think he's dead, too." <br />
It was so dark outside, I could only see Arden when we went under a street lamp. It created an eerie otherworldly effect. But yes, he was dead. They took his body at the emergency vet's office. They were very kind. There were many tears.<br />
Now, as I type this, his ashes are sitting on my desk.<br />
I am very sad. In shavasana, at the end of yoga class, I am often crying - thinking about Arden. <br />
On the other hand, I am deeply relieved. I was tired of worrying about him, tired of all the responsibility. I don't want another dog. That was my dog. I had a dog. I had the best dog I could imagine for me. I have ten years of memories about him to enjoy for the rest of my life. I wouldn't be surprised, when I reach the end of my own life, to see images of Arden running towards me. His existence is so deep inside me.<br />
<br />
But let's move on, people.<br />
<br />
My book is done, done, done! It is coming out April 3rd. I am very happy that it's over and I'm already onto two more projects. I am writing a screenplay named "Fork." This is something I am going to try to direct myself, here in Wilmette. It's a small delicate story about a couple and their two kids graduating from high school. I can shoot in my own house.<br />
<br />
The other project is my next book, "My Beautiful Loss-of-Faith Story." This is the book that goes along with "Letting Go of God." I am <i>finally</i> writing this book, something I've threatened to do for so long. I feel productive and able to accomplish things at the moment. I didn't realize that just completing my mother book would give me such confidence in finishing other projects. I heard someone say once about their father, "He was a great finisher of projects." Wow, what a great phrase. I struggle so mightily with that. I have no problem starting things! But isolating the specific act of <i>finishing projects</i> is helpful when thinking about it. It's an act unto itself, the finish. Just the idea of being "A great finisher." I love it. I want to be a great finisher. I must say, at the moment I'm optimistic. <br />
<br />
I haven't listed my movie watching for three months now.<br />
<br />
Here are the movies I watched in September, October, and November of 2012<br />
<br />
1.) Melancholia, 2011, directed by Lars von Trier<br />
2.) An Unmarried Woman, 1978, directed by Paul Mazursky<br />
3.) My Summer of Love, 2004, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski<br />
4.) Alice: Darkness, Light, Darkness, 1988, directed by Jan Svankmajer<br />
5.) Grapes of Wrath, 1940, directed by John Ford<br />
6.) Another Country, 1984. directed by Marik Kanievska<br />
7.) La Havre, 2011, directed by Aki Kaurismaki<br />
8.) Lady From Shanghai, 1947, directed by Orson Welles<br />
9.) How Green Was My Valley, 1941, directed by John Ford<br />
10.) I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With, 2006, directed by Jeff Garlin<br />
11.) Drums Along the Mohawk, 1939, directed by John Ford<br />
12.) Great Expectations, 1946, directed by David Lean<br />
13.) The Earrings of Madame Du, 1953, directed by Max Ophuls<br />
14.) And Then There Were None, 1945, directed by Rene Clair<br />
15.) Wee Willie Winkie, 1937, directed by John Ford<br />
16.) Judge Priest, 1934, directed by John Ford<br />
17.) Jolene, 2008, directed by Dan Ireland<br />
18.) Man on Wire, 2008, directed by James Marsh<br />
19.) Lincoln, 2012, directed by Steven Speilberg<br />
20.) Street Angel, 1928, directed by Frank Borzage<br />
21.) History is Made at Night, 1937, directed by Frank Borzage<br />
22.) The White Ribbon, 2009, directed by Michael Haneke<br />
<br />
Considering this is three months of movies, it's not very many. I usually watch more. But wow, now that I've typed them out and looked at them all, what a wonderful group of films! I couldn't honestly say which one had the deepest impact. <br />
I only saw one movie in a movie theater, and that was "Lincoln." I loved it, I ate it up, I think this is one of Spielberg's best films. (My personal favorite is "Munich") <br />
The biggest surprise: "My Summer of Love." This film got so little attention. It is Emily Blunt's film debut. I think this is a perfect film. Really, there is not one moment, not one frame that I would change or that doesn't work. It's plot is inevitable and yet surprising. When my friends come in January (I have three friends who come here every January for a little four or five day film festival - we watch movies in our basement home theater) I am going to show this film to them. It's gorgeous and horrifying - a story of two girls and their friendship. One of them is wealthy and one is very poor. Emily Blunt is great, but the other girl - oh my god, Natalie Press, she is incredible - astonishing. This film is creepy and puts you on edge. It also breaks your heart. And makes you angry. And - god, just get this film and watch it.<br />
One day Mulan was sick and home from school with a fever. We watched Alice, Darkness Light Darkness, a bizarre surrealist film by a Czech filmmaker. It was the perfect kind of hallucinatory experience to have when you are a little bit sick. Mulan loved it. We talk about it together all the time. It's a version of Alice in Wonderland that Salvador Dali would make.<br />
"Great Expectations" exceeded my expectations. I think it's David Lean's best movie. I watched it twice, once alone, and another time with the whole family, including my mother-in-law, Norma. We all enjoyed it thoroughly. I think it's time for me to finally read Dicken's book. I have read so little Dickens. Like none. And he was one of my father's favorite authors. In fact he called me Pip when I was little (he also had a dog named Pip, but to be honest, I never thought of this as an insult.) <br />
I watched "Wee Willie Winkie" with my own mother and Mulan one afternoon just before Thankgsiving. I wanted Mulan to know who Shirley Temple was. This is her least cutsie-singing-tap dancing role and directed by John Ford. It's pretty good. I was glad that Mulan liked it. That's another one we've spoken of several times since viewing it.<br />
"Street Angel" - oh God! I am discovering Frank Borzage, he directed at Fox along with Ford and Murnau. Janet Gaynor is so entrancing in "Street Angel" - a classic, maybe THE classic Whore-Madonna story. A lush, gorgeous silent film. I'd seen Borzage's "History is Made at Night" many, many years ago. It has the most ridiculous plot, it just proves that if the actors have chemistry (and Jean Arther and Charles Boyer really combust) it doesn't matter how ludicrous the story is. You just want to watch them together. <br />
When I finished the book, I gave myself a present: the "Ford at Fox" box set, 50 movies he directed while at Fox. I got it on sale for $250 (regularly $300) and now I see that it's $187. You have to get it people! The documentary that goes along with it is quite good, and there's wonderful commentary by Joseph McBride, and others, on some of the films. "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Grapes of Wrath" both have incredibly insightful and informative audio commentaries that I watched right after seeing the films. <br />
"The Earrings of Madame Du" is possibly the best film ever made. The DVD I got has extras too, great commentaries and even the original short story.<br />
I am still digesting "White Ribbon." I had wanted to see this film for a while, since it won the Palm d'Or in 2009. But I put it off. I thought it was going to be a long, long film about child torture and molestation. Children who all become Nazis later. And, well, that's true. But it's so magnificent. And the film leaves so much unanswered, expertly unanswered, it's not dogmatic or manipulative. It's not just about kids turning into sadists from being used sadistically either. It's about the legacy of pain and how it plays out, it's about the half-life energy from oblivious land-owners and the desperation of migrant workers and the deep psychosis in the underbelly of religion and about the gossip and claustrophobia of small towns. God, it's so magnificent, this film. I watched it twice. <br />
<br />
Now, onto books. I actually have no idea what books I read in the last three months. I know that at this moment I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behavior: A Novel." It's breathtakingly well written. In fact, I want to stop writing this blog so I can go read more.<br />
I do have my Kindle in front of me, so I can tell you what I've recently read from looking at that: "Writing in Pictures" by Joseph McBride. This is the best screenwriting book I have ever read. It is head and shoulders above any other one. I have it both on my Kindle and I got the hardcover version. "Drift" by Rachel Maddow and "What's The Matter With White People" by Joan Walsh. They are both political pundits with whom I feel have a great deal of important things to say. I recommend both books heartily. "Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church" by Jason Berry. Of course I am obsessed with the Vatican and money. I shouldn't say "of course" because I tried for many years to keep my disgruntled feeling towards the Church concerned mainly with their dogma. I tried to look the other way when it came to the sex abuse and the money scandals. But now I'm ready to know, and jesus (ha!) there is so much to know! "The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder & the Mafia" by Paul Williams is good too. <br />
What else? I will say I am not so into the Kindle anymore. I like an actual book. My need to flip through pages, glance at the back, see how far it is until the chapter is over - all these things are annoying or impossible on the Kindle. Actual books I read? I did read Ayelet Waldman's "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits" which I thought was fantastic. I still have images in my mind, scenes from this book, that I feel were directed - they were so film-like. I love her details. I read "Sense and Sensibility" again - I think I have to read all of Jane Austen's books again. As you get older, they just get better.<br />
Oh, I forgot. I read, "Carry the One" by Carol Anshaw. Brilliant. Just a wonderful narrative and it all takes, well it mostly takes place here in Chicago. She is one hell of a writer. Great details, like Ayelet Waldman. <br />
<br />
All right people, that's all I can think about for right now.<br />
<br />
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Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com81tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-92187100406929048892012-09-14T09:01:00.002-05:002012-09-14T09:09:49.765-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm baaaaaack.<br />
<br />
I just turned in my second draft of my book on Tuesday afternoon. I have put everything off until I could finish it. It's not even that long, and I can't believe it took me six months longer to write it than I thought it would. I hope the publisher is happy. It's still supposed to come out in April. I'm going to New York to meet with my editor next week, and I'm also going to stop by Joe's Pub and do a story during each of Jill Sobule's shows, Tuesday and Wednesday.<br />
<br />
I really hated that I have missed two monthly blog entries. One thing that I love about writing my blog is that it forces me to remember what I watched - movie-wise - and what I read - book-wise. <br />
<br />
The picture above was taken by Michael on Decatur Island, which is an island in the San Juan Island chain, just off the coast of Seattle. We went there for a family vacation at the end of July. I could live there. I loved it so much.<br />
<br />
I have a busy month ahead. After going to NYC, I'm going to attend, on Oct 12 - 14, in Portland, the annual Freedom From Religion conference. In fact, I am going to speak on Saturday night. I love that organization and I'm really excited to be part of it. <br />
<br />
So, let's get onto the books. <br />
<br />
July was the first month in my life where everything I read was on a Kindle. And I have to admit, even though I was soooooo reluctant, I liked it. I like that you can change the font size. I like the cover with the little light. I have the cheapest black and white one, and I will never want one with color. I like it just as it is. But I learned something, there are some books that are good for a Kindle, and some that aren't. <br />
<br />
Books not good on Kindle for me:<br />
<br />
1.) Difficult books. This is a large swath of the books I read, and actually, the book I finished as July began, The Glorious Art of Peace, is a good example. When a book is dense with ideas, ideas that are challenging to me, I need to flip back a page, skim over a page, look at the index, put it down, pick it up, highlight and make notes. These are not easy things for me to do on a Kindle. I need to have a sense of how much more book there is, physically. Sometimes in frustration or in overwhelm, I need to flip through the chapters in a way that is impossible on a Kindle.<br />
<br />
2.) Classics. There's something about holding "The Brothers Karamazov" or even an Orhan Pamuk book that makes the Kindle seem, well, unseemly. <br />
<br />
3.) Kindle popularity makes it impossible to know what people are reading. For example, if you board a plane, it's nice to see what people are reading. Yes it can be depressing, but it's also interesting. I do remember being on a cruise once and 80% of the people on the boat were reading "The Purpose Driven Life." That was really an eye-opener. But I've started random conversations with people after seeing what book they're reading, standing in line for something, for example. It's nice. I wouldn't ask someone what they were reading on their Kindle. (i don't go around starting conversations with lots of people just because they're reading a book I am familiar with or curious about, but it does happen from time to time and the Kindle is not making that better!)<br />
<br />
Okay, the books I read in July and August, 2012<br />
<br />
1. The Glorious Art of Peace, From the Illiad to Iraq, written by John Gittings (finished it)<br />
2. Ali in Wonderland, written by Alexandra Wentworth<br />
3. Girl Walks into a Bar, written by Rachel Dratch<br />
4.) You're Not Doing it Right, written by Michael Ian Black<br />
5.) Love Child, written by Allegra Huston<br />
6.) Lizz Free or Die, written by Lizz Winstead<br />
7.) Radical Acceptance, written by Tara Brach<br />
8.) The White Castle, written by Orhan Pamuk<br />
9.) Wired for Culture, written by Mark Pagel<br />
<br />
I guess I read a spate of comedian's memoirs (why would I do that?) and I have come to realize that my book is not a comedy in the way these are. And I wish it were! I loved every one of them. I wanted to befriend Rachel Dratch, Ali Wentworth, Liss Winstead and Michael Ian Black as soon as I put their books down. I probably laughed the most at Michael Ian Black's book. But they were all good. Each one had at least one chapter where I laughed out loud, very hard, and in public.<br />
<br />
I read Allegra Huston's book "Love Child" in the three or four days before I went to her house (she's a friend and I went for a night's visit after a few days in another city close by) and I was gobsmacked at how well written and insightful it was. What an amazing thing, to know all this stuff about a friend I have known for some time, but didn't know everything, not at all, and not by a long shot. Really compelling and her writing style is an inspiration.<br />
<br />
Orhan Pamuk is like drinking a special drug. I fall into his books and have a hard time in the real world afterwards.s <br />
<br />
"Wired for Culture" is so fantastic! Ohmygod, you have to read it immediately. We humans are all just idea creators and digesters and propagators. I became a little preoccupied with the author, Mark Pagel and watched every video I could find on the Internet. He has a pretty good TED talk, and other things on You Tube. <br />
<br />
Okay, movies watched in July and August 2012:<br />
<br />
1.) Ted, 2012, directed by Seth McFarlane<br />
2.) The Great McGinty, 1940, directed by Preston Sturges<br />
3.) Christmas in July, 1940, directed by Preston Sturges<br />
4.) The Man I Love, 1947, directed by Raoul Walsh<br />
5.) Margaret, 2011, directed by Kenneth Lonnergan (the long version, and twice)<br />
6.) The T.A.M.I. Show, 1964, directed by Steve Binder<br />
7.) Daisy Kenyon, 1947, directed by Otto Preminger<br />
8.) The Princess Comes Across, 1936, directed by William Howard<br />
9.) Barbary Coast, 1935, directed by Howard Hawks<br />
10.) Experiment Perilous, 1944, directed by Jacques Tourner<br />
11.) Midnight Mary. 1933, directed by William Wellman<br />
12.) These Three, 1936, directed by William Wyler<br />
13.) Outward Bound, 1930, directed by Robert Milton<br />
14.) The Ice Harvest, 2005, directed by Harold Ramis<br />
15.) Mirror, Mirror, 2012, directed by Tarsem Singh<br />
16.) 50/50, 2011, directed by Jonathan Levine<br />
17.) Tuesday, After Christmas, 2010, directed by Radu Muntean<br />
18.) Hope Springs, 2012, directed by David Frankel<br />
<br />
Okay, we're about to leave on a camping trip in Door County, so this will be brief. As far as the movies "Ted" and "Hope Springs" are concerned.... these are the only two movies I saw in a movie theater. When I left the theater after seeing "Ted" - and Seth McFarlane is a really wonderful guy, and I am an admirer of his, I'm so happy whenever I see him on TV, I just.... I can't even begin to form words for this film. It wasn't that I thought it was bad, it was like going to a fast food restaurant and then being asked to weigh in on it's value as an ocean liner. "Hope Springs" - well my friend Nancy said it best according to me, "Meryl Streep's character was so disturbing in that film that I was afraid for her." <br />
<br />
Of the newish movies I saw, I will say that I really liked "50/50" so much more than I thought I would and so much more than I thought I would even fifteen minutes into the film! Mulan had actually seen it before and liked it, and encouraged me to watch it. I'm glad I did.<br />
<br />
Of the old movies I saw for the first time, the standouts are "The Princess Comes Across" with a great performance by Fred McMurray. And "Midnight Mary," a story of a woman with a difficult past, who becomes part of a gang, who tries to get out. Loretta Young stars in a magnificent performance, probably my favorite from her. "Barbary Coast" - we watched it twice, actually. Howard Hawks - early Hawks. Miriam Hopkins stars along with Edward G. Robinson as a swashbuckling gambling establishment owner with an earring! Fantastic. <br />
<br />
The foreign film I saw, "Tuesday, After Christmas" is a Romanian film - a really nuanced study of a bad marriage. Very inspiring (as I'm working on a script about a marriage falling apart...)<br />
<br />
And "Margaret." I was so overwhelmed and amazed at "Margaret" - I can't even begin. I loved it, I was profoundly disturbed by it. After I saw it the first time I was up all night thinking about it, unable to sleep. I can't even get into all I have to say about "Margaret right now." It's not a movie for everyone. Two of the people I watched it with, when I watched it the second time, didn't care for it much. I think the movie goes out of control like the main character is going out of control, but it's a controlled out-of-control feeling, but it's so successful at doing that, that I think most critics - a lot of critics anyway - felt it was Lonnergan's fault. But I think it's exactly the frenetic feeling he was going for. He succeeded by being so good he caused many people to think it was the storyteller and not the story. Anyway I really think it's a masterpiece.<br />
<br />
I have to run.<br />
Please if you can, come to the Jill Sobule shows in New York City at Joe's Pub. She's so great, and it's going to be a wonderful time, I'm sure. I'll do a little bit, she'll do a lot of singing.... Until Oct...<br />
<br />
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Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-54146744458417061492012-07-03T21:49:00.004-05:002012-07-03T21:49:53.827-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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That Summer Feeling</div>
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Jonathan Richman with his drummer Tommy Larkins at the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago on June 4, 2012<br />
<br />
I met Jonathan when I was on SNL and the cast was asked to participate in writing an entire issue of Spin Magazine. I was told I could interview any musician I wanted, anyone at all. I said, "Johnathan Richman!" The editors told me he didn't do interviews, hadn't for years.<br />
<br />
Oh. I was so sad. I love his music so much. It made me laugh. His music made me get emotional. It was awkward and weird. And it was melodic and complicated. I loved his music soooo much. How could he say no? They had to beg him, just absolutely beg him!<br />
<br />
In the end, I <i>was</i> able to interview him and we immediately became very good friends. We hung out constantly and even appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien a couple of times singing songs together that Jonathan wrote about my life. I traveled with him and sometimes did shows with him. <br />
<br />
(If you don't know Jonathan, I suggest the following songs: "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso" are probably his most famous songs from when his band was called The Modern Lovers. My personal favorites are "That Summer Feeling" and "To Hide a Little Thought" and "When I Dance" and "Abdul and Cleopatra" and "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" and "Vampire Girl" and I have to stop because I could go on and on. (Also there's a pretty good cover album called, "If I Were A Richman," my favorite covers on that are "Government Center" by the Underhills, and "The Lonely Financial Zone" by Kowtow Popof) <br />
<br />
Oh, yes, another great song that I always think of whenever anyone refers to me as a wife is "When I Say Wife" <i>Wife sounds like your mortgage and wife sounds like laundry.... </i><br />
<br />
We have fallen out of touch in the last few years. Even though Jonathan tours around a lot. <u>Partly this is because he doesn't have a cell phone or a computer</u>. This makes things difficult. <br />
<br />
In any case, this time we were able to connect and he and Tommy played a great show downtown and afterwards they crashed here at our house before driving on to Detroit.<br />
<br />
It was a highlight of the month.<br />
<br />
So.<br />
<br />
So, thank you for all the lovely comments to the blog entry I wrote about my brother Bill dying. I am still processing everything. Even though we expected this, somehow his death is a big surprise and it has effected me much more than I thought it would. I am really sad and discombobulated by it. The world is off kilter, the earth is not firm beneath my feet. It's like a physical wound where I think I'm pretty much over it and then I'm suddenly overcome with pain and grief. I almost feel as if I'm limping. Like when I told Jill Sobule about it. I suddenly remembered that when Jill and I did a show in Spokane together last year, we'd had lunch with Bill. Bill had later told me he loved Jill - just loved her, had a crush on her even, and he wanted all her music. He was really so enthusiastic about our show. He loved discovering her music.<br />
<br />
Telling Jill about Bill made me remember that. Then I was a mess for an hour or so.<br />
<br />
I've felt really skittish and I'm finding it hard to concentrate. I tried to go to a lot of yoga, and its helped. But the classes seem fifteen hours long, just excruciatingly long. My mind is hopping from thing to thing. I'm doing a short mindfulness meditation session regularly, and that is helping. In fact, I read a wonderful Mindfulness book this month.<br />
<br />
On that note, let's go on to books:<br />
<br />
I read the following books in June, 2012<br />
<br />
1.) "The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times"by Arlie Russell Hochschild<br />
2.) "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebees, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table" by Tracie McMillan<br />
3.) "Fully Present: The Science, Art & Practice of Mindfulness" by Susan Smalley and Diane Winston<br />
4.) "The Glorious Art of Peace: From the Illiad to Iraq" by John Gittings<br />
<br />
I really like Arlie Russell Hochschild. I recently read "The Second Shift" and was astonished at it's clarity and even-handedness and the raw truth it revealed about the politics of home management in homes with two working parents. I was eager to read this new book of hers. I really enjoyed it. She makes no big negative judgements about how we are outsourcing some of our most intimate jobs - care for our elderly parents, care for our children, and even gestating our children. I laughed hardest at the Catholic priests in India who say masses for Americans who've paid for a mass to be said in some person's honor (in the Catholic culture, this is a common practice when someone dies.) There aren't enough American priests to do it, and the Indian priests need the money and it goes farther there. So they say masses all day long for people in the U.S. I thought of this again as my mother has told me about all the masses that have been paid for by people sending her condolence cards about my brother. Now I know that someone in India is likely to be saying a mass for my brother Bill. <br />
<br />
Tracie McMillan wrote a very good book about food production in the U.S. I liked the parts best when she goes and works as a peach picker and a garlic cutter in California. <br />
<br />
"Fully Present" the mindfulness book is probably the best book I've read about mindfulness so far - and let me tell you this is a big compliment cause I've read an enormous number of them. Very scientific and fact based. Really useful information and ideas for a lot of different ways to meditate. <br />
<br />
I've read only half of "The Glorious Art of Peace." <b>ADORE IT.</b> I was a European History major in college and I'm astonished at how history is taught, even at the university level, very war-centricly. When you view history through the lens of peace, it looks different. Of course defining peace is another thing. But still. I'm looking forward to the rest of this book.<br />
<br />
I realize I read all non-fiction this month. I hate that. I just find certain types of non-fiction books completely irresistible. <br />
<br />
Here are the movies I watched in June.<br />
<br />
1.) Moonrise Kingdom, 2012, directed by Wes Anderson<br />
2.) Ladykillers, 1955, directed by Alexander Mackendrick<br />
3.) Your Sister's Sister, 2011, directed by Lynn Shelton<br />
4.) The Angel and the Badman, 1947, directed by James Edward Grant<br />
5.) The Bitter Tea of General Yen, 1933, directed by Frank Capra<br />
6.) Paul Williams: Still Alive, 2012, directed by Stephen Kessler<br />
<br />
For me, it was a very light movie month.<br />
<br />
I did like "Moonrise Kingdom" and I think Wes Anderson is a talented filmmaker who I am very glad is able to make movies, and I hope he continues to be able to make movies. But... Well, I just don't get emotionally involved in his characters in the way that I wished I did. I liked the kids, especially the boy, but... I wish - I want to like his films more than I end up liking them. I guess that's it. Even though I am decidedly on the side of liking them. But it feels cerebral, and not emotional. Hmmm....<br />
<br />
I found out my brother died and within five hours I was at the Evanston Cinemas watching "Your Sister's Sister" which starts with a brother's memorial. I almost left the theater - I didn't know that that was part of the film. But I was glad I stayed. I'm a growing fan of Lynn Shelton. It was the exact right movie to see at the exact right moment. I cried and cried. It was about sisterness and brotherness. And it was filmed in my neck of the woods, the Pacific Northwest.<br />
<br />
I forgot how great "The Bitter Tea" was - I hadn't seen it since college. <br />
<br />
On SAturday night I went to the Gene Siskel theater and saw "Paul Williams: Still Alive." It's a very good film, and really powerful for me to see considering my last month. Paul Williams is sober, but was an alcholic for many years. Steve Kessler, who is a friend of mine, directed a documentary about him. Both of them were there on Saturday night. In fact, I'll post a picture of us with my friend Gino Salomone, even though I'm so shiney I can't believe I'm going to post this picture (it's been very hot in Chicago, I don't know why everyone wasn't all sweaty!) <br />
<br />
Paul Williams is such an interesting mix of personality and truly a survivor. The film is not what you expect. It's mostly about a relationship, the relationship between Steve Kessler and Paul Williams. But it's also a harrowing story of success in Hollywood, and about a man who was able to overcome his destructive behavior to lead a happy productive life. Paul Williams is such a unique person too - a wonderful songwriter - his songs are on the order of Burt Bacharach in brilliance and certainly competes in the pop culture marketplace, maybe even ahead of Burt - but he's got this showman inside of him that needs an audience and wants to be in front of the stage. He succeeded against all odds and crashed, and then survived in a hard won and beautiful way. I highly recommend this film to you.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8WcKXzV9orE/T_OtPNO4G_I/AAAAAAAAANA/IxWzMCiK8hY/s1600/noname.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8WcKXzV9orE/T_OtPNO4G_I/AAAAAAAAANA/IxWzMCiK8hY/s320/noname.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Steve Kessler, Paul Williams, me & Gino Salomone</div>
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Okay, bye bye. </div>
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I'm very glad about the health care bill being upheld by the Supreme Court</div>
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I'm still really scared of the Supreme Court</div>
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I love Chris Hayes' Show, "Up with Chris Hayes"</div>
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I don't miss it.</div>
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<br /></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-39052464391281373602012-06-22T16:22:00.001-05:002012-06-24T11:58:33.896-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g7RA0w9LKJE/T-TgJPdJW1I/AAAAAAAAAMY/2GJOnTBUWLs/s1600/00000001_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g7RA0w9LKJE/T-TgJPdJW1I/AAAAAAAAAMY/2GJOnTBUWLs/s320/00000001_2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bill Sweeney 1961 - 2012</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is my family (my mother must have been taking the picture) circa 1972, having cheese fondu after skiing. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm in the orange, and my brother Bill is in the striped pajamas. He died on Wednesday. </span><br />
<br />
******<br />
<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two weeks ago
today, on June 8, my brother Bill and I were downtown in Spokane. We’d just run an errand and both felt
hungry for lunch. He was feeling
weak, and I said I’d grab something quick for us to eat. He could wait for me in the car.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I noticed a Pita
Hut across the street. Inside, I
found that the line was long. I
phoned Bill and asked what he wanted, reading a list of menu items. “Well, the chicken souvlaki, of
course.” he replied. We both laughed simultaneously
at the memory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You see, in the
summer of 1981 Bill and I spent about three and a half months travelling around
Europe backpacking. We ended up in
Greece, where we spent nearly a month on the island Santorini, almost totally
broke. We found a family that
would house us for a week if we helped them with their grape harvest. We worked picking grapes and we even
helped them stomp on the grapes – barefoot – on top of a big ancient-seeming pit, with long intertwined
twigs underneath us (somehow) and the grape juice flowed into a big vat below. One night, one of the patriarchs of this family, who had only one arm, deftly made us scrambled eggs with feta
cheese for dinner. Then he poured ouzo from a big white jug. Bill was smiling from ear to ear. We were <i>really</i> far from home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in Athens
for a few days, we decided to take a bus to London that cost $50 a person. The bus would take over 32 hours of driving. It was also so packed, there were so many people crowding to get on, some people made bargains with others to stand in the aisle and trade places with a seated person now and again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we were
waiting in line for the bus, I looked in my backpack and saw a wrapped food
item. It was some chicken souvlaki I’d
bought on the street the day before, or maybe it was even two days before. I was going to toss it out, but Bill
said, “Hey, I’ll eat it.” (Yes, at age 20 & 21 we were both idiots.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We got on the
bus, and began the journey. First
Bill broke out into a sweat. Then his head started to sway. Then
he leapt up and weaved and bumped his way down the aisle, making it to the one toilet in the back just in
time. He felt sick and extremely queazy for the rest of
the trip. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, I
gave Bill my seat and I stood in the aisle. It
was very hot, and with no air-conditioning, inside the bus it was hotter. A handsome guy was in the seat next to
Bill, a guy who eventually insisted that I sit for part of the ride. It was a very long travel to London, seemingly interminable. Bill recovered and then
flew home to Spokane, our long summer as brother and sister in Europe
over. I stayed in London a few
more days with the guy on the bus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that’s
another story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that Bill is
dead, (from excessive alcohol and drugs) I’m flooded with memories of his better times. Bill at his best.
Many of my happiest memories growing up were with Bill. When we were young, we skied together almost
every weekend in winter – him pushing me to take harder and harder runs. When we were adults, we went to Aspen
together and he forced me down a black diamond run, far above my ability. I cursed him all the way down, side
stepping with my skis for much of the way. But when he suggested we try it again, I did, and then it
all became much less daunting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think of Bill
with his six-pack abs, which were sadly eroded from drinking actual
six-packs. But I don’t want to
remember that. I’m remembering him
lean and taught as can be, throwing himself onto his bike. His great long muscular legs, his
unique hunch over the handle bars, his smile of enticement, “Come on,
Jewels. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">go</b>.”
God, his under-bite – those teeth, gleaming. His ability to persevere
physically seemed supernatural. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He rode his bike from Spokane to Seattle several times. He hiked through the Olympic Rainforest. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I woke up last
night remembering Bill waking me up, - so many times - in the wee hours of the
morning, having already made a couple of sandwiches and a thermos of hot
chocolate and coaxing me out of bed so we could get to the mountain and ski, or
go on a hike as early as possible. Or get on a bike. Bill liked to stay active. He loved the early morning. He liked to be outside before anyone
else. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, Bill’s
downhill run – the one his life was on – didn’t go as well as the ones we
conquered on the slopes. He was
really already an alcoholic at age 20.
In his early thirties, he was lifted out of his chaotic vodka-fueled
stupor by an amazing woman, Sandy, who he made his wife. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He had about
five good years, and fathered two amazing children, Nick and Katie. When the kids were young, he began to
drink even more heavily than he had before. He became angry and cold. Sandy turned him out, and we all knew she was doing the exact
right thing. Bill couldn’t save
himself, and if you threw him a life raft, he’d pull you down with him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sandy heroically
saved a world of hurt from her children, who Bill was not able to emotionally
damage as much as if he’d been there.
They’ve grown up into resilient, thriving young adults. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like most
addicts, Bill felt deeply. He
numbed himself, yes. But he also
imprisoned himself in his emotions, never fully able to get beyond the sting and the heartache. He couldn't get to a perspective that was measured or thought through. He never fully moved past Michael’s death – our other
brother who died at age 33 – and I could see that the alcohol and other drugs both
delivered him from, and kept him inside a nightmare of constant emotional pain. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He caused an enormous amount of turmoil and sadness for our family. For his own children, too.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the other hand he had a deep caring and joyfullness about him that drew people in. He was eager and interested. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Weirdly, one of
Bill’s best times was when he was in jail. He was imprisoned several times for driving while
drunk. Fortunately he never hurt
anyone, he was just pulled over by the police for swerving all over the road. After three times, they sentenced him
to nearly a year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, in
jail, Bill thrived. He was put in
the kitchen and cooked. Bill
needed supervision and regimentation.
I had some of the best conversations with Bill from prison. While a big part of Bill’s
personality was a deep defiance of authority, it seemed like in the prison system –
when it was clear there was no way out – he let his resistance relax, he followed
the rules, he helped his fellow prisoners. He was lucid and articulate, and he read
constantly: Richard Dawkins, David Quammen, I think Quammen was his favorite.
The last book we discussed was one I sent him, “The Great Hunger” by Cecil
Woodham-Smith, a book about the Irish famine, actually a book I haven’t yet
read. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In April I was
in Spokane and Bill was in the hospital.
He had acquired MRSA, a staph infection that's resistant to most antibiotics. He had hepatitis C, late stage
kidney disease, and cirrhosis.
He’d also broken his wrist (which he did several times over) from
falling. He was lying in a
hospital bed, really out of it, only a few teeth, emaciated, orange from the
cirrhosis – even his eyes – his stomach enlarged, and strapped down to a hospital bed. Dying of alcoholism is a grizzly way to
go. He looked at me and said, “Hey
Jewels, let’s go on a hike while you’re here.” I held his gaze.
I blinked away the tears. “Sure,” I replied. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So unaware, so
childlike, so wanting to just be outside.
That was Bill. I never
thought he’d leave the hospital, but he did. My mother was at the end of her rope. Bill was out for 12 days before he went
back in. Mulan and I took him back into the hospital for the last time. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, when I think
of him in the emergency room, cordoned off with partially pulled beige curtains for a little privacy, the flickering image I have of of Bill - sliding off his pants and shirt to get into the gown, I
think about how that was the last time. His last time to pull off his pants. When I think of him sliding himself
onto the hospital bed, I think about how that was his last time to slide himself onto a
bed. He had an impish way about
him, light on his feet, youthful even.
When he got on the bed, Mulan and I were standing right there. He looked at up at me, his eyebrows raised, “Well?”
he said with a half-shrug. Then he smiled at me with his lips closed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He died ten days
later. He was 51 years old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yesterday I was
able to say “My brother died yesterday.”
But now time is going to pull me away from him, each day will be a day
with our hands farther apart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t blame
Bill. He couldn’t conquer this
demon. Who knows what kind of fate
was written for him in his genes and in his experiences? Frankly I don’t think he had a
choice. I don’t know why some
people are able to change their destructive behaviors and why some people
aren’t. And I don’t think anyone
does. I think we are played rather
than players, and Bill played his part as well as anyone who had to play a part
as painful and as difficult as his. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He’s going to be
buried in the same plot with my brother Mike at Holy Cross Cemetery in
Spokane. When my mother told me
that was how it was going to go, I was surprised. I hadn’t thought of that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But of course,
Mike and Bill, together in the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In closing, I'll post this pic of Bill holding Mulan sideways at the Spokane airport, some years ago. Mulan looks about five. </span></div>
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<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's another one with Mu. </span><br />
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<br /></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com144tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-69954319210290465942012-06-06T12:02:00.000-05:002012-06-06T12:07:21.799-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
The Vatican has had it with the nuns. You know those sisters, so radical. They've been spending their time working on behalf of the poor and fighting economic injustice! An outrage. Well, now they've been reprimanded. They were told they've not been sufficiently outspoken against contraception, abortion and gay marriage. <br />
<br />
Just when the Catholic Bishops and the Vatican seem like they've done themselves in, they do something even worse than I would've imagined. <br />
<br />
They seem to think <i>now</i> is a good idea to come down on the nuns, just when the cases against the priests about sex abuse is ramping up again, and there are more and more outrageous examples of the higher ups covering up, not reporting the abuse to the proper authorities, and generally behaving heinously. <i>This is the time they've chosen to go after the nuns. </i><br />
<br />
And... Oh yeah. Plus <i>the contraception matter!</i> They're refusing to comply with the health care mandate that requires employers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. They're saying it's a "religious freedom." Yes, freedom. They want the <i>freedom</i> to force their dogma on people who don't want it.<br />
<br />
Do they ever wonder why their married, child-bearing-age employees don't have a baby every single year? <br />
<br />
I mean, it's actually kind of funny. It's like a guy who tripped, and then fell on his leg and broke it off, and while in pain and trying to recover, decides to distract people from watching him, so arranges for an anvil to drop on his head. The Catholic Church as... Bugs Bunny!<br />
<br />
Personally, I think they've made a serious miscalculation. <br />
<br />
My friends Annie Laurie and Dan at the Freedom From Religion Foundation asked me to do a little ad for them about the contraceptive coverage issue, and I did it on Monday. When it's put together I'll post it here on my blog.<br />
<br />
But enough about that for now. I'm just about to take off on a two week trip - a week in Spokane, and then a week in Los Angeles, so this is gonna be short....<br />
<br />
Let's get onto books and movies for the month of May 2012<br />
<br />
I read three books last month.<br />
<br />
1.) The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, written by Stephen Goldblatt<br />
2.) State of Wonder, written by Ann Patchett<br />
3.) In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, written by Erik Larson<br />
<br />
I loved all three, especially <u>Swerve</u>, which made me want to write a monologue based on the book so I could perform it. It's all about a poem by Lucretius, who was a follower of Epicurus, and how a medieval antique book hunter came upon it in an out-of-the-way monastery in the 1400s and basically saved it for all humanity. It really underscores the haphazardness of what was saved and what was not, at the same time that it shows us how much art and wisdom there was and how important it is for us now to hear the voices of the ancients who, while they did not have our scientific information, had great insights into the true nature of life and how it could best be lived. <br />
<br />
Bottom line seems to be: let go of superstition...<br />
<br />
<u>State of Wonder</u> was a wonder, and I even got to go to a lecture by Ann PAtchett, put on by my local library. She was articulate, funny, smart, and her talk gave me even more insight into her novel, which manages to be pulpy and high literature all at the same time.<br />
<br />
<u>In the Garden</u> was good too - god, I love Erik Larson. And the story took me to the heart of things when Hitler was just gathering the forces that would come to full frightening fruition in his dictatorship. <br />
<br />
Here are the movies I watched last month:<br />
<br />
1.) Tiny Furniture, 2010, directed by Lena Dunham<br />
2.) In the Land of Blood and Honey, 2011, directed by Angelina Jolie<br />
3.) Love Letters, 1945, directed by William Dieterie<br />
4.) Kind Hearts & Coronets, 1949, directed by Robert Hamer<br />
5.) Humpday, 2009, directed by Lynn Shelton<br />
6.) The Wizard of Oz, 1939, directed by Victor Fleming<br />
7.) My Effortless Brilliance, 2008, directed by Lynn Shelton<br />
8.) Portrait of Jennie, 1948, directed by William Dieterie<br />
9.) Come and Get It, 1936, directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler<br />
10.) Ministry of Fear, 1944, directed by Fritz Lang<br />
11.) Lake Tahoe, 2008, directed by Fernando Eimbcke<br />
<br />
Wow. A pretty good month for movies. <br />
<br />
Most memorable prize goes to "Come and Get It." I'd seen it in college, but it was just as good if not better than I remember it. "Tiny Furniture" caused me to have a more complicated relationship with Lena Dunham's show "Girls" on HBO. I didn't like it as much and it was weird, like "Tiny Furniture" let me see how the sausage is probably made on "Girls." Which made me not like "Girls" as much. I have very mixed feelings about it all. I mostly love the show. But I kinda wished I hadn't seen "Tiny Furniture." Odd. I'm still not sure why I feel this way.<br />
<br />
Mulan watched "The Wizard of Oz" with me on Mother's Day. We had a really fun afternoon watching it. <br />
<br />
Angelina Jolie's movie also stayed with me a long time - it's grim, very very grim. She's ambitious as a director and I appreciate that. The actors are very good. <br />
<br />
Oh Lord, I've got to go. A cab is coming in an hour and I have to pack. Well, I suppose the summer has really really started now. Until next month...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-11274577655806034192012-05-01T13:13:00.000-05:002012-05-01T13:58:01.128-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Out of a month of deeply memorable literary and cinematic experiences, two stand out.<br />
<br />
(I include TV shows in my cinematic experiences...)<br />
<br />
One is that, after thirty years, I reread "Lucky Jim," by Kingsley Amis. I was predisposed to think I'd overrated it. (My father's favorite book - read it a long time ago when I was still in the thrall of his opinions about everything) But I was surprised to find that it was, in fact, even more of a masterpiece than I'd originally thought. I guess I'm now old enough to really appreciate it even more deeply. I had to put the book down several times because I was laughing so hard. (This has only happened to me - well, to this extent - while reading "Catch 22" and "A Confederacy of Dunces.")<br />
<br />
But I did another thing. Another thing that kicked the whole experience up a notch. I downloaded the audio version of the book from from Audible - read by Paul Shelley - a wonderful English actor. I read the book while I listened. I can read much faster than the narrator can narrate. And while it was excrutiating at first, when I gave in to it - I was forced to slow down, way down - and savour each page - each word. Because of the excellence of Paul Shelley, many conversations in the book jumped into life in a different way than if I were conjuring it in my own head. I got much more nuance. For example, there are several different accents by characters from around the British Isles. One major character is Scottish. Jim Dixon, the main character, sometimes slips into a northern English accent - sometimes manipulatively, sometimes accidentally. I understood this - experienced it, is a better phrase, much more deeply than if I'd just been reading it. <br />
<br />
I have to admit that the whole endeavor was one of the most satisfying experiences with a book, ever.<br />
<br />
Great experience #2. I began reading Muriel Sparks' "The Girls of Slender Means" about fifty pages ahead of watching all three episodes (so far) of "Girls" on HBO. I'd heard about "Girls" of course. I wondered about it. I figured I probably <i>wouldn't</i> like it. From what I'd seen about it - looking sideways out of my eyes - grazing across pages of various publications and online, I just thought, "Eh." Another HBO show about four young women in NYC. I couldn't be - frankly - less interested. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, after I was all up in arms over how little time I have left to live to read everything I wish to read (see last month's blog entry) I had looked over <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction">1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list | Books | guardian.co.uk</a>. And I was particularly picking my way through the comedy novels. I was astonished how few I'd read - about fifteen to twenty out of 150. My mother-in-law, Norma, was visiting - and she was surprised I hadn't read any Muriel Sparks - being a Catholic and all. (Culturally! Culturally!) <br />
<br />
In any case, I got "The Girls of Slender Means." I'd just finished "According to Queeney" by Beryl Bainbridge - and while I thought it was mildly funny, it was not even close to the level of writing and humor of "Lucky Jim." I wondered, "Who is the female Kinglsey Amis?"<br />
<br />
After only ten pages of "The Girls of Slender Means" I felt I'd found a new best friend. Muriel Sparks! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? I was so giddy reading this novel that I had to just put it down from time to time just to compose myself. <br />
<br />
Then, yesterday, I coincidentally dug into "Girls" on HBO. <br />
<br />
I think it's one of the best things I've seen on HBO. <br />
<br />
I'm completely hooked. <br />
<br />
I can't believe Lena Dunham exists. I love her, and I love the show. I love every scene. I love the characters. It's so uncomfortable and it makes me uneasy. Which is GREAT. It breaks taboos, but is realistic - I believe every character completely. It strikes me as honest and refreshing and accurate. From my experience, this is very true and real. And painful, so painful. And funny, so funny. <br />
<br />
To be reading "The Girls" and watching "Girls" at the same time - how serendipitous! It's so perfect! These stories do not change. Women do not change from generation to generation. And yet, both of them feel very fresh and as if working in untrodden territory, while simultaneously dealing with perennial issues.<br />
<br />
Wow, I feel so deeply lucky this month. I feel I practically stumbled upon gems which became much more magnificent, even magical, with a little adjacent other-art. <br />
<br />
That's not very articulate - but you get what I mean.<br />
<br />
So, the books I read last month are:<br />
<br />
1.) Hedy's Folly, The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamar, the Most Beautiful Woman In The World. Written by Richard Rhodes<br />
2.) The Joy of Less, a Miminalist Living Guide. Written by Francine Jay<br />
3.) Unstuff Your Life: Kick the Clutter Habit. Written by Andrew J. Mellon<br />
4.) Lucky Jim. Written by Kinglsey Amis<br />
5.) According to Queeney. Written by Beryl Bainbridge<br />
6.) The Girls of Slender Means. Written by Muriel Sparks<br />
<br />
Notes on the above... <br />
<br />
"Hedy's Folly" was a nice read. It's actually about Hedy <b>and</b> her scientific collaborator, composer George Antheil. It should've had a title that included both of them. The book alternates chapters - in the beginning - about Hedy's and George's early life, and since I didn't know the book was about both of them, it was severely confusing. But still - very interesting.<br />
<br />
I didn't read every word of "The Joy of Less" or "Unstuff Your Life." But I'm trying to reduce the amount of stuff I have, and these books were inspiring. I also got "Unstuff Your Life" on audio book and listened to it while I walked the dog. They both have a lot of good ideas. If I had to recommend one over the other, I think it would be Francine Jay's book - "The Joy of Less," but only by a smidge. And try to get the books at your library so you don't have the book added to your stuff. (I actually bought the "Joy of Less", "Unstuff" came from the library...) Today I'm thinking about one idea that seems useful, which is: have a uniform. What's your basic <i>uniform</i> for clothes? That eliminated a lot fo extra clothes for me. And of course, former Catholic Girl that I am, I love a uniform.<br />
<br />
I'm currently about half way through "The Girls of Slender Means." I guess I'll try to get to her other, more well known books soon, like "The Prime of Miss Jean Brody." Wow - there are few things in life sweeter than finding a new author you love.<br />
<br />
Now - on to movies...<br />
<br />
Movies watched in April 2012:<br />
<br />
1.) Holy Matrimony, 1943, directed by John M. Stahl<br />
2.) Mysteries of Lisbon, 2010, directed by Raoul Ruiz<br />
3.) The Smiling Lieutenant, 1931, directed by Ernst Lubitsch<br />
4.) This Gun for Hire, 1942, directed by Frank Tuttle <i>watched it twice</i><br />
5.) Children of Heaven, 1997, directed by Majid Majidi<br />
6.) Chimpanzee, 2012, directed by Alastair Fothergill & Mark Linfield<br />
7.) Head On, 2004, directed by Fatih Akin<br />
8.) The Ghost Goes West, 1935, directed by Rene Clair<br />
9.) The Reckless Moment, 1949, directed by Max Ophuls<br />
10.) The Exile, 1947, directed by Max Ophuls<br />
11.) Dance With a Stranger, 1985, directed by Mike Newell<br />
12.) Barcelona, 1994, directed by Whit Stillman<br />
13.) The Hard Way, 1943, directed by Vincent Sherman<br />
14.) Jesus Christ Superstar, 1973, directed by Norman Jewison<br />
15.) The Spy in Black, 1939, directed by Michael Powell<br />
<br />
So many great movies. I can't comment on all of them, I'd be writing for days. <u>The Mysteries of Lisbon </u>is a 5 1/2 hour extravaganza from Portugal. It's as if Gabriel Garcia Marquez made love to Barry Lyndon and they had a child - this film would be it. Very soap opera-y, very grand, very <i>historical-period-piece-y</i>. I watched about an hour a day for a week in the early afternoon, after I'd finished my work. It was like reading War and Peace - long and languid and funny and weird.<br />
<br />
I wanted to rewrite <u>Holy Matrimony</u> and <u>The Hard Way</u> immediately for today's audiences. Both were a surprise. <br />
<br />
We went to the movie theater to see <u>Chimpanzee</u> at the first possible showing. I really enjoyed it, in spite of it's bad reviews. Yes, Tim Allen's narration is a bit ridiculous, and the music is TERRIBLE. But maybe more people will see it with those elements. I dunno - for me, it didn't get in the way and I loved it. Anyone who thinks we, as a species, are any different than chimps, is crazy. Yes, we can talk, and yes we can share knowledge and cooperate on grander scales, but basically, we are chimps. Plus, what is cuter than a baby chimp? Nothing.<br />
<br />
<u>This Gun for Hire </u>was a great film noir, had to watch it twice. Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, they were so good! <u>The Reckless Moment</u> was fantastic. Joan Bennett and James Mason, god what a great team. <u>The Exile</u> was funny, and a surprise. It stars Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. - who also wrote it. It's about the English king, Charles the 2nd, in exile in Holland, falling in love with a farm girl. The film slowly drew me in. I watched it with my mother-in-law, Norma. Part of the plot involves the Roundheads - a English political group that was opposed to the monarchy - they were very religious and wanted to push for many more conservative restrictions. Norma said, "The Roundheads... You know, the Rick Santorum supporters - that's <i>our</i> Roundheads." And that's so true. So many movements and issues do not change, just the people promoting them.<br />
<br />
<u>Head On</u> was really good too - I loved Fatih Akin's <u>The Edge of Heaven</u>, so I wanted to see his earlier work. There are similar themes, including women who cut their hair and big dramatic moments. And people murdering each other and then changing quite a bit while in jail. The film made me want to go back to Istanbul.<br />
<br />
<u>Dance with a Stranger</u> - Oh! I can't believe I hadn't seen this film. Miranda Richardson is luminous, and the story - of a creepy love triangle - is seriously depressing and sad. And it's true too. Richardson plays the character of the last women executed by hanging in England - Ruth Ellis. Gorgeous movie.<br />
<br />
<u>Jesus Christ Superstar</u>: Mulan and I watched it. I thought maybe it was a good way for her to learn about Jesus. HA. She was so bewildered. I realized that since she hasn't been inculcated with religious behaviors, everything just seems weird to her. Things I would have never had the naive open-mindedness to even ask. For example, at one point she asked me, "Why do those sick people want to touch Jesus?" I said, "Because they think he's magic and can heal them." Mulan said, "Why would anyone think that?" Me: "Because they didn't have very much scientific information." Mulan: "That's crazy." Then I had to stop the film and tell her that lots of people in the world <i>still believe</i> things like that. <br />
<br />
Later she asked, "Why are all those women putting oil on Jesus' head, and sort of leaning on him like that?" I said, "Well, one - Mary Magdalene, is like Jesus' girlfriend. The other women - well, when you're a cult leader, or actually this can be true of any very high status man - women fawn all over you." "Creepy." Mulan said. Then she fell asleep and I didn't wake her up.<br />
<br />
Frankly the movie, while interesting - and with good music - and - yes, with some creative visual ideas (although oddly awkwardly realized, I felt) - was, to me, surprisingly boring. I could hardly wait until it was over. I hadn't seen it since I was 13 or so, and figured it would be a fun ride down memory lane. Also, Jesus - Ted Neeley - is so hilariously blond. Jesus' followers are all black, white or Asian. The Jewish Pharisees are all middle eastern, well Jewish looking. And then, the Romans, (played by Barry Dennen and Josh Mostel) are literallly mincing - really offensively so - exaggeratedly homosexual. <br />
<br />
When I saw Jesus Christ Superstar when I was a kid - I thought it was so modern and open-minded. That part of watching it was funny, how <i>NOT</i> modern and open-minded it actually is.<br />
<br />
All right - I've blathered on long enough. </div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-63151278232760598842012-04-04T08:26:00.002-05:002012-04-04T15:52:46.986-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gmKjQBz0564/T3pWQysj1fI/AAAAAAAAALQ/wYIzAoF1fHU/s1600/panda.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gmKjQBz0564/T3pWQysj1fI/AAAAAAAAALQ/wYIzAoF1fHU/s320/panda.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
A panda ponders.<br />
<br />
This photo taken by Michael on Thursday, March 29, 2012. We were at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.<br />
<br />
Is this panda thinking, "I only have 5.4 tons of bamboo left to eat in my lifetime."?<br />
<br />
Because that is what I've been thinking about lately. So little time, so much bamboo to eat, and yet it doesn't feel like it's enough bamboo. Or something like that more analogous to my own personal bamboo-like necessities.<br />
<br />
I've run this metaphor into the ground.<br />
<br />
Last week was Mulan's Spring break at school. We (Michael, Mulan and I) went to D.C. The weather was sublime, the cherry blossoms were blossoming, and I could happily live there. We spent a day at Gettysburg too. It was excruciating, because Gettysburg really needs two days - at least. We spent a long time in the museum. Then, we only began the driving tour, did about 1.5 hours of it. I guess I imagined Gettysburg as a small area, but it's very large, so many things went on, so many different factions of troops. I thought of Gettysburg as more of a meadow. Anyway, I have to go back. We listened to a CD of civil war songs while we drove around. I didn't realize how many of them were re-worded Irish songs. I loved them all.<br />
<br />
We went to the Capitol Building, and took the tour in the new underground Welcome Center. We spent a very short amount of time at the Library of Congress. We went to the National Portrait Gallery, to the Postal Museum (very informative!) and to Textile Museum (Mulan insisted - she's very interested in looms.) We hung out outside the Supreme Court while the health care law was being challenged. There were many more supporters of the Affordable Health Care Act than detractors, but the media honed in on the crazy tea partiers (they were dressed up, and more interesting to look at.)<br />
<br />
We went to the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial at night - all lit up, full of people (but not too many) and it was very romantic. We spent time at the National Cathedral. We took pictures of the Washington monument shining at night. We didn't have time to do soooo much. <i>PAINFUL! </i> No Newseum, No Ford's Theater, No Corcoran Museum, and on and on. <br />
<br />
Let's change the subject, shall we? <i>(btw, my spell check on blogger isn't working, so please excuse any misspellings in advance...)</i><br />
<br />
<div>
I read one book this month.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1.) <u>Middlesex</u> by Jeffrey Eugenides. I fell into this book like it was an ocean and I floated along on the waves until it was over. A complete delight. Eugenides writes in a very particular detached and yet intimate style. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I read two books on my new Kindle, while on my road trip. One book I'd read before, but I wanted to read it again. The other was one of my self-help impulse purchases.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1.) <u>Bossypants</u>, by Tina Fey. Fantastic, hilarious, smart, funny. <i> Again</i>. </div>
<div>
2.) <u>18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get The Right Things Done</u> written by Peter Bregman. I found this to be a <i>very</i> useful book. Bregman is a blogger for the Harvard Business Review and he has hundreds of thousands of followers. <a href="http://peterbregman.com/">Peter Bregman — Organization Change, Leadership, Communication and Productivity</a> One of his basic premises is that you can't get everything you want to do done and most books on this topic are about organizing yourself so you can be more efficient and do more. But he suggests, (and this is definitely what I've come to as well) that you <u>should acutally do less</u>. Much of the book is about explaining how little time you actually have, and how unpleasant working hard and really efficiently is, in day-to-day practice. It's not particularly enjoyable. <br />
<br />
He says we should only have three to five areas of focus, and really three is better than five. My three: 1.) mother and house manager and wife and friend (to a very few people.) 2.) writer of books and screenplays 3.) exercise enthusiast. That's it. Everything else should fit into 5% of my effort. <br />
<br />
Yes, I lumped a lot of things together. But I realized that, for example, performing is not on my list. I'm less interested in that right now. It's not on my list. Gardening, not on my list. (My husband has sadly come to realize that I want to enjoy the garden, not work in it.) Volunteering, not on my list. (I know, not nice.) Socializing in a general way with larger groups of people, not on my list. Big craft projects, not on my list. Unless I do that with Mulan and then it's back on the list because if falls under mothering. I put watching movies and reading under the heading of writing. This might mean that I spend a lot of rather passive time doing things - watching, reading - and then excuses it by putting these... efforts (?) under the heading of "writing." But I feel that <i>input</i> is justified and necessary.<br />
<br />
But the point is, "18 Minutes" got me off and running on a deeply existential theme - I really can't do everything I want to, and I just have to accept it, because railing against it is time and energy consuming and doesn't change anything. <br />
<br />
For example: books.<br />
<br />
On average I read between 500 and 1000 pages of something a month. But sometimes it's much less. 250 pages of something. Also, I'm not including my magazine reading, which I really, <i>really</i> enjoy. (For example, I cannot wait to sit down tonight with my new issue of Skeptic Magazine, the cover of which promises to be about Scientology.) But if I say I read two books a month, on average, and I live to be 90 years old, (I know this is optimistic, but let's just say...) this means I can read about another 1000 books in my lifetime. <br />
<br />
This startling realization rocked my world. <br />
<br />
I want to read so many more books than that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To take another example, on average I watch about 15 movies a month. 180 a year. This means I will be able to watch about 7000 movies. Okay - I'm<i> fine</i> with that. 7000 seems like so many, it's too many for me to imagine. My mind registers this number as: a lot. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But only 1000 books. This is a tragedy. I can imagine 1000 books. I was overwhelmed with sadness when I realized that I could only expect to read another 1000 books. Now, I could increase the time I spend reading. Right now I'd say it averages an hour a day. And this does not include magazine and internet reading. It's really hard for me to get in an hour a day reading. I really have to remember to do it. Frankly. I do not think I can increase this amount. Yes, a day here and there - vacations, weekends - I can do more, but honestly, I think this is a realistic goal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1000 books. Let's divide this between non-fiction and fiction. This means only 500 fiction! 500 non-fiction! Terrible! It's so finite. Jesus, I probably have a thousand books I haven't read in my house right now. It feels like such a small number. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have to start reading the classics. I haven't read Dickens. I need to read Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim" again. "Lucky Jim" was my father's favorite book, a copy was next to his bedstand his whole life. I haven't read it since I was in college. It's a masterpiece. I have to read it again! I totally plan to read Dostoyevsky again, and Tolstoy, and Jane Austen. Just the books I've read and want to read again will take up at least 100 books! This is a disaster! What about Evelyn Waugh? "Scoop" and "Black Mischeif" must be read again. If I were going to suddenly die in the next year and I realized I'd never read "Scoop" again, it would make my final moments more excrutiating. Okay, Lucky Jim next. Followed by Scoop. <br />
<br />
Oh, except there are other books I want to read. I have a book about Heddy Lamar and her inventions next to my bed, and it's calling out to me.<br />
<br />
I am circling downwards in panic. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Okay. This is getting silly. <br />
<br />
Let's move on to movies...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These are the movies I watched in March 2012.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1.) "Climates" 2006 directed Nuri Bilge Ceylon</div>
<div>
2.) "Shepard of the Hills" 1941, directed by Henry Hathaway</div>
<div>
3.) "Three Monkeys" 2008, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylon</div>
<div>
4.) "Anvil! The Story of Anvil!" 2008, directed by Sacha Gervasi</div>
<div>
5.) "The African Queen" 1951, directed by John Huston</div>
<div>
6.) "Last Train Home" 2009, directed by Lixin Fan</div>
<div>
7.) "Carlos" 2010, directed by Olivier Assayas</div>
<div>
8.) "Game Change" 2012, directed by Jay Roach</div>
<div>
9.) "Distant" 2002, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylon</div>
<div>
10.) "Babies"2010, directed by Thomas Balmes</div>
<div>
11.) "House of Flying Daggers" 2004, directed by Yimou Zhang</div>
<div>
12.) "Ruby Gentry"1952, directed by King Vidor<br />
<br />
Well, I wrote a bit about "Carlos" last month. It's really worth watching, and I'm still thinking about that film. <br />
<br />
A note on my Nuri Bilge Ceylon month. He's a startlingly talented Turkish director. "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" was my favorite film of last year. It rocked my world, that movie. It got so under my skin, and images from this film still seep into my days - every day, in fact. It won't let up. That film seriously haunts me. <br />
<br />
So, this month, I watched all of Ceylon's previous movies. Each one was a delightful discovery. ("Anatolia" is his crowning masterpiece, however.) Of the three I watched this month, I think "Distant" is my favorite. His films are slow, very arty, but yet - not at all pretentious. The characters are believable and the situations mundane and life changing. The cinemtography is exquisite. I just cannot say enough about this director. He's my favorite working director right now (well, as long as I don't think about this too much.) He's the film director I've got on my mind, the most. I want to write more screenplays, and this director has inspired me and inflamed my desire to write. He's moved the bar up, and yet somehow makes writing like he does seem within reach.<br />
<br />
"Last Train Home" is an impecably made documentary about a family in China. The parents migrated to the city to find work in factories, and their children are being raised by the grandparents. It's heartwrenching, but the film is done without pity or sentimentalization. Documentaries are getting better and better, and this is a good example of one done very, very well. <br />
<br />
But aside from the Ceylon films, the film that had the most impact on me last month was... Anvil!<br />
<br />
Yes, "Anvil." I watched it twice. I love that movie so much, I could watch it again right now. In fact, there is a moment in "Anvil" that relates to my current ruminations on time. The film is about a hard rock band that didn't make it back in the 80s when they seemed like they were going to explode. (It seems like it's a mocumentary, much like "Spinal Tap" and many critics wondered if it wasn't all fake, but these guys are real, and for me, this film is much funnier and much more profound than "Spinal Tap" - and I really loved "Spinal Tap"!!) Anyway, Anvil - the band - had many fans. The music they play isn't my cup of tea, <i>at all</i>. But that's not the point. The point is the dedication these two guys (Robb Reiner and Steve "Lips" Kudlow) have about their band, and all their particular personality issues and family issues and performing issues. <br />
<br />
At one point Lips says, "You know there isn't that much time in the arts - 30 years and then it's over." I'm reciting this from memory and I think he says it more eloquently and desperately and poignantly than I just paraphrased, but it broke my heart. Because that is what I've been thinking about too. When you are young, you don't know how little time there is. And when your career is ascending, you don't realize how fragile that is, and how instantaneously it can go away. The film had me laughing both <i>at</i> and <i>with</i> these two guys, sort of like how I laugh at and with myself! I was just bowled over by this wonderful little movie. You've got to see it, if you haven't already. <br />
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Ta Ta until next month...<br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-64066932478077305102012-03-15T10:54:00.001-05:002012-03-16T09:46:45.717-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUmN37_zGYA/T2IAvxlT0vI/AAAAAAAAALI/Xy4E11uxBLs/s1600/Meg's+B-day+Quilt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dUmN37_zGYA/T2IAvxlT0vI/AAAAAAAAALI/Xy4E11uxBLs/s320/Meg's+B-day+Quilt.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
I suppose if my sister, Meg, reads this blog entry, she will have her birthday present revealed before she actually sees it in the flesh...err, I mean... fabric.<br />
<br />
From time to time, I've bought vintage quilt tops on Ebay and then had them actually quilted and finished. I have a special attraction to quilt tops made in the 1930s, and this one pictured above is one of them. I love the peach color and all the fabrics from that time - some are even feedsack cloth. I bought this especially for Meg, and sent this off to her. She lives in Tokushima, Japan. I sent it on the slow route (I imagine barges and old shipmen loading boats.) Meg is a quilter herself (and a knitter, and an embroiderer, along with many other craft skills...) <br />
<br />
Before I get into the movies I watched in February, I have to mention my odd film watching on Sunday. I've been giggling here and there over the serendipity of life's random events, even when it comes something as mundane as what back-to-back movies one watches.<br />
<br />
I wanted to watch all 5 1/2 hours of "Carlos" - a 2010 French film by Olivier Assayas. It was made for television, <i>and</i> as a full feature film. I wanted to see this film because, after the Academy Awards, which were so dull and mostly depressing, I was thinking about how wrong the Academy so often is. I wondered how long we'd be talking and thinking about the movies that won many of the awards in the coming years. I was also thinking how the National Society of Film Critics is SO MUCH BETTER at giving accurate awards. So I was tooling around their website, thinking about how <i>they should have a televised show!</i> I looked at the past awards and was reminded about "Carlos" - it got Best Feature and Best Director in second place for films of 2010 (Second after "The Social Network.") <br />
<br />
I got the film. I should add that I really loved "Summer Hours" the film Assayas made just before "Carlos." (And which won best Foreign Film for 2009 by the National Society of Film Critiics.) <br />
<br />
So - this is a lot of lead up to explain my weird, weird Sunday. I finished the film on Sunday afternoon, and was sort of thrown into a reverie by it. I think it's a masterpiece. "Carlos" is about a terrorist - a left wing, PLO (kind of) associated terrorist - he was born in Venezuela and spoke many languages and masterminded several horrific terror plots, including the kidnapping of the entire OPEC conference in 1975 (I have very vague rememberances of that - I was a high school debater then - the topic, "Should OPEC be Abolished?" :) <br />
<br />
"Carlos" is incredible, and I recommend it heartily. But then, Sunday night, Michael and I decided to watch "Game Change." The Sarah Palin HBO film. I had extremely low expectations for this film. But I was surprised at how even handed and accomplished the film was. The peformances were so good. I loved that they took the high road, didn't even get into family or anything other than the basic facts. I liked that they didn't villify or ridiculous-ize Sarah Palin, they made her seem somewhat saner than I thought she was from watching her live on TV. But how this cumulatively dealt a much darker and subversive blow - how out of control things were and how no one was really responsible and how frightening the outcome was. In many ways Sarah Palin is a victim. <br />
<br />
BUT. BUT. BUT. <br />
<br />
There were so many unsettling parralels between Carlos and Sarah Palin! That's what was so wild. No - Sarah Palin is not a terrorist and didn't murder people. But I realized that the emotional impact of both films was exactly the same, which is - here is this charismatic person - with these outspoken ideals - who feels there is deep wrong and claims to want to change the world - who's attractive and dynamic. But who - in the end, is basically an empty shell. There's no true idealism. There's definitely a desperate need for attention and a deep drive to feel as if they stand for something, but in the end, they stand for nothing. There's no there there. <br />
<br />
Social pathology is so subtle. Not in these two cases. These two cases are not subtle<i> at all</i>. But there is such a huge gray area in people - when is this type of drive and behavior meaningful and accurate and when is it all smoke and mirrors? <i>God, I love thinking about this.</i> And I would not have guessed that it was Carlos the Jackal that made me understand better the essential void in the mind of Sarah Palin.<br />
<br />
That was quite a Sunday.<br />
<br />
Okay, now on to February movie watching....<br />
<br />
<br />
I have watched these movies during the month of February, 2012<br />
<br />
1.) Iron Lady, 2011, dir. by Phillida Lloyd<br />
2.) Garden State, 2004, dir. by Zach Braff<br />
3.) Ordet, 1955, dir. by Carl Dreyer<br />
4.) A Better Life, 2011, dir. by Chris Weitz<br />
5.) Hollow Triumph, 1948, dir. by Steve Sekely<br />
6.) The Bridge on the River Kawai, 1957, dir. by David Lean<br />
7.) If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, 2011, dir. by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman<br />
8.) Drive, 2011, dir. by Nicolas Winding Refn<br />
9.) Rango, 2011, dir. by Gore Verbinski<br />
10.) Pina, 2011, dir. by Win Wenders<br />
11.) Jane Eyre, 2011, dir. by Cary Fukunaga<br />
12.) Hell and Back Again, 2011, dir. by Danfung Dennis<br />
13.) Of Time and the City, 2008, dir. by Terrence Davies<br />
14.) Anonymous, 2011, dir. by Roland Emmerich<br />
<br />
Looking at this list, here is what is still resonating: "Ordet." "Bridge." "Pina." "Jane" ; and all three docs: "Of Time," "Hell," and "If a Tree."<br />
<br />
"Ordet" is something I've wanted to see for some time. I'm a fan of Dreyer's, "The Passion of Joan of Arc" is a film of his that still thrusts it's images into my concious mind from time to time. But when I saw "Everlasting Moments" and read that the story line and the style was heavily influenced by "Ordet," and knowing that "Everlasting Moments" would be having it's way with my mind for some time, I decided to put "Ordet" in my Netflix queue. The film was both difficult and difficult not to watch. It's style is very stilted and can seem almost awkward. It's point of view is decidedly religious, even though the plot is about bickering religious people. But the film gave me shivers. I really recommend it. I might have to watch it again soon.<br />
<br />
I did the particpation accounting for "Bridge on the River Kwai" when I was in my twenties, when I worked at Columbia Pictures in their accounting department. I have wanted to see it since then! It's an odd film, odder than I thought it would be. Alec Guiness (so young, so handsome!) is an officer who is willing to die as a prisoner of war over this: that officers should not have to do the physical work that the rank and file soldiers - soldiers who are also prisoners of war - are required to do. I simply could not let go of this insanity. I felt the point of view of the filmmaker was that we were to see this stance as an indication of his staunch defense of rules, which was a good thing. Huh? Or that he was completely mad. To me, it was just creepy. The film goes on from there. It's such a good idea for a story - the main plotline, the bridge and the men building it and then it getting destroyed and everyone having such conflicted attitudes. It's long and I felt trapped with everyone. The performances are great. What a wonderful, but odd movie.<br />
<br />
Well, now that the Academy Awards have come and gone, I feel happy that I can delve into movies that were not necessarily released this last year. I felt I had a lot of homework. And when I watched the awards, which was only fun becasue I was following several people on twitter who I think are funny, many of whom are friends too, and it almost felt like we were all together watching. It was a sort of sad broadcast, and the only truly funny bit was the Wizard of Oz audience testing bit with Fred Willard and everyone else who is hysterical. That is absolutely the only time I genuinely laughed. On the other hand, I don't need to laugh. But I do want to feel the awards mean something, and I have to say I began to feel I was losing that sense. <br />
<br />
"Pina" is staying with me too. I don't know a lot about dance, but Wim Wenders caused me to understand how great dance is through this documentary. I want to see this film again. <br />
<br />
Books read in Feb. 2012:<br />
<br />
Only two this month, and both by the same astonishing writer.<br />
<br />
1.) In Zanesville, by Jo Ann Beard<br />
2.) Boys of My Youth, by Jo Ann Beard<br />
<br />
Reading her books, it makes me want to stop even trying to be a writer. In Zanesville is a lovely romp with a 14 year old girl. I surrendered to her fiction so deeply, I couldn't pull myself out and had to get to the library to get her earlier book of essays, which is also heart-stoppingly lyrical and breathtaking. I love this woman. I want more books from her.<br />
<br />
Okay. That's all folks. Back to my own writing slog....<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com334tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-51531188604114787112012-02-07T14:21:00.000-06:002012-02-07T14:21:12.844-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a-4gpzH7lxA/TzAQa6Wgg9I/AAAAAAAAALA/eQPMSbAZjtU/s1600/mom+with+iron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a-4gpzH7lxA/TzAQa6Wgg9I/AAAAAAAAALA/eQPMSbAZjtU/s320/mom+with+iron.jpg" width="319" /></a></div>
These are my parents, in 1958 just after a wedding shower where my mother had apparently been given an iron. I love the way my mother has her hand behind her back, my father's hipster glasses, and my mother's somewhat genuine and somewhat fake smile. Ah... the smile of marriage. <br />
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Get ready to do some ironing!<br />
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<br />
Okay, allow me to list the movies I watched in January 2012.<br />
<br />
1.) Sweet Grass, 2009, directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor<br />
2.) Silent Light, 2007, directed by Carlos Reygadas<br />
3.) Casablanca, 1942, directed by Michael Curtiz<br />
4.) Kenny, 2006, directed by Clayton Jacobson<br />
5.) Four Feathers, 1939, directed by Zolton Korda<br />
6.) Deep End, 1970, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski<br />
7.) Carnage, 2011, directed by Roman Polanski<br />
8.) Poetry, 2010, directed by Chang-Dong Lee<br />
9.) The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, 2011, directed by David Fincher<br />
10.) Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, 2011, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan<br />
11.) Five Came Back, 1939, directed by John Farrow<br />
12.) A Separation, 2011, directed by Asghar Farhadi<br />
13.) The Artist, 2011, directed by Michel Hazanavicius<br />
14.) Last Year at Marienbad, 1962, directed by Alain Resnais<br />
15.) Ugetsu, 1953, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi<br />
<br />
<br />
Hands down, the film that had the most effect on me was "<b>Once Upon a Time in Anatolia</b>." It's a long movie, 2 hours and 40 minutes. Not only that, it's a very, very, VERY slow movie. There are long-shots that are long. Really long. Almost-to-the-point-of-parody long. But it's necessary - you begin to feel you're with the characters in real time. In the middle of the night. Driving around the countryside of Turkey. Looking for a dead body. With little or no information about who it is, how he died, why it's important, and who the hell everyone who's looking for him is, exactly. And guess what, it turns out that it actually isn't all that important - the who, how, and why. <br />
<br />
Okay, I suppose it's a bit existential. In fact, I wasn't really all that into this movie until after the two hour mark. I was a little confused by it's tone, it's lack of forward movement, but I was also enjoying surrendering to the film. Then suddenly: BAM. Okay, oh dear, oh yes, oh no, oh wow. This movie is like wading in water near the shore - with it's calm little waves, rhythmically lapping at your feet. And just when you start to decide to maybe get out - a monster waves hits you from behind. But even this analogy is misleading - it's not that anything particularly startling happens, it just suddenly has this cumulative effect. <br />
<br />
<i>I cannot stop thinking about this movie</i>. <br />
<br />
In fact, I invited a couple of friends over this Friday to see it again. This time I'll be able to savor those fleeting moments that in retrospect mean so much. Ceylan lets these moments occur like they would in real life: maybe not important, maybe completely important. This is the best movie I saw out of the 2011 crop, maybe the most personally impactful movie I've seen in years. I have Ceylan's previous films in my Netflix queue. I'm suddenly a big fan. To me, just from this one film, he's the filmmaker equivilent of the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. There's something so distinctly Turkish about their work, and I barely know what that means. It's just... Turkish. If I had to label the feeling it would be: hope with surrender, fatalistic, traditional, yearning, dissapointment, quiet promise.<br />
<br />
I felt that way about "Deep End" as well. This movie was shot in England, but by a Polish director - Jerzy Skolimowsky. (And starring Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's former gal pal!) It's in english, but it's a completely Polish movie. And there's something so Polish - so distinctive. I cannot eloquently explain it, I just can feel it. Let me try, Polish movies are: thick, saturated, inevitable, darkly comic, a dirge with a tinge of the oblivious.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to "Carnage." Wow. I really love Polanski. I can even see why he responded to the play "God of Carnage." I think he thought it was really funny. I think there's something about how broad and silly and ridiculous that play is that, through Polish eyes, IS funny. But I must say it: <u>not funny</u>. A weird marriage of sensibilities. I think the actors were having fun. I wish I was having as much fun watching it as they looked like they were having playing these completely cartoonish characters. Sadly, I think the premise is brilliant. But ugh. It made me glad I didn't see the play. It wasn't for me.<br />
<br />
But I want to concentrate on what I loved watching.<br />
<br />
Last month I had the pleasure and honor of hosting three of my dearest friends from Seattle. Jim Emerson, Kathleen Murphy, and Richard T. Jameson are all close close friends who I've known for over thirty years. They're all film critics. Last year they also came for a few days in January, and we had a mini film festival in my basement. We did it again this year, and added an extra day - five days in all - of film watching. Such a treat! Many of the films I watched last month I got to watch along with them. There is just about no greater delight in my opinion. I didn't offer a film for my contribution, I just made them all sit and watch all seven episodes of "Episodes" - which is a masterpiece of comedy!<br />
<br />
Other notes on films from January: I saw "Casablanca" in downtown Chicago, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's playing the score. I forgot how wonderful that movie is, how well written it is. It was a little distracting, to be honest, having the orchestra there. But still, a good experience and worth the effort.<br />
<br />
"Silent Light" was another movie that has stayed with me a long time after seeing it, like "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia." It's a Mexican film, but about German speaking Mennonites in Mexico. The entire movie is made in their dialect with non-professional actors from the community. I had no idea these people existed. The film is slow and unwinds at it's own pace, but it's beautiful and haunting. Since I read it was a remake of Dreyer's "Ordet" (at least partially) - I ordered that movie from Netflix and watched it this month (Feb.) I actually like "Silent Light" better. Well - they're really so different. Both were good experiences.<br />
<br />
I did not expect to like "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" as I've never read the book(s) or seen the original movie. In fact, I felt I had to go see it (my friends wanted to go) and I considered it homework. To my surprise, I love, LOVED it. Rooney Mara is enigmatic, disturbing, and you can't take your eyes off her. The film was quick and yet expertly paced. I was completely engrossed, actually riveted. I hope there'll be sequels.<br />
<br />
Dare I say it: I think "The Artist" is overrated. <i>I did like it</i>. In fact, I liked it very, very much. But it seems thin. Also, I got tired of how depressed the main character got. (The actor George Valentin, played by the actor Jean Dujardin) It was too much. And it was also too much, the girl (The actress Peppy Miller played by the actress Berenice Bejo) saving him over and over and OVER again. <b>(Spoiler Alert)</b> I wanted to yell at her - stop trying to save this guy - he needs to save himself! He tries to kill himself too many times. By the time he was putting a gun in his mouth I wanted him to just go ahead with it. This film started to feel too much like a male show biz executive's fantasy. Let's take a moment and think of a comparison: What is the reverse-sex version of this story? Well, it's "Sunset Blvd." Imagine Joe Gillis trying to save dear sweet Norma Desmond's life over and over and OVER again. And the movie ending with a delightful career-saving tap dance? HA. All I'm saying is.... Well, I dunno. I guess I'm saying that men in that situation often get saved by young women, and women in that situation aren't saved at all. There's my feminist rant on "The Artist." But okay - this kind of thing does happen for many men. So <i>all right</i>. The film is beautiful - and some of the images - one of which I see is being used in advertising - when Peppy puts her hand through George's jacket and then puts her own arm (as his) around herself - god that was GREAT! And it was shot all over L.A. and that part made me miss Los Angeles so much it hurt.<br />
<br />
I wholeheartedly recommend "Poetry." It's a Korean movie about an older woman who's a little silly and very sweet and genuine. She has a lot of bad things happening in her life and she's overwhelmed. For example, she has a horrible teenage grandson who lives with her. She takes a poetry class and it's just heartbreaking and transcendant and whole-life -justifying all at the same time.<br />
<br />
Oh, and "Kenny." What a delight. And a surprise. I'm not even exactly sure how I came upon this film. It's an Australian comedy - very improvisational - about a port-a-potty salesman. At first I thought it was going to just be scatalogical jokes about, well, about shit. And yes, it is that. But it has a lot more to it - lots of good performances. I laughed a lot. <br />
<br />
I laughed a lot during "Last Year at Marienbad" too. It's really the epitome of an experimental art film. It doesn't make much sense as a narrative film. I think I was laughing <i>at</i> the movie, not with it. But I would hope that when the Renais and Alain Robbe Grillet (the novelist and the man who wrote the script) got over themselves (or actually maybe this is what they intended) they would laugh too. I both hated and liked the film. And yet I felt no quandries about feeling that way. I get how stylistic it is. I see the composition, the beauty, and even it's oddness. But it's also ridiculous. There's some great extras on the Critereon DVD, I especially loved the interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau - she goes into the history of the film and it's influences. In fact, you could skip the movie and just watch her. <br />
<br />
Now, let's move to books.<br />
<br />
I read these books in January 2012:<br />
<br />
1.) <u>2666</u>, volume 1. Published in Written by Roberto Bolano.<br />
2.) <u>The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home</u> Published in 1989. Written by Arlie Hochschild (with Anne Machung)<br />
3.) <u>Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives</u> Published in 1999. Written by Dalma Heyn.<br />
<br />
I've been wanting to read <u>2666</u> for a long time. For the first half of the this first volume (which is in three books, which are sold all together) I was happily in love with this book. The characters and the set up is delightful - four academics in four different european countries who all study the same mysterious author. But by the end of the first volume, I felt I'd lost it. I had this same feeling I had reading Orhan Pamuk's "The Museum of Innocence." I started to seriously think the author had lost it, not just his characters. I began to feel the author losing himself in his own book, and not in a good way. As in losing perspective. And I was willing to go there with Pamuk. But I don't know. I don't know if I'm in for the other volumes of <u>2666</u>. <br />
<br />
I've been meaning to read <u>The Second Shift</u> for a very long time. I have read references to it for twenty years! But I never had any overriding reason to read it. I knew the basic idea: in families where both partners work, it's still the women who do the "second shift" at home - 80% of the domestic work of child caretaking, cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc. And yes, that Is the premise in a nutshell. And I'm sure it's as true today as it was 20 years ago. But I was unprepared for how compelling and well written and gut-level astonishing - I would even say astounding - the book was. I recognized myself, I recognized my marriage, I saw what I was doing to perpetuate inequitable patterns. I read this for my own book I'm writing - I have a chapter on housecleaners and housekeeping and I just wanted to cover my bases. Oh Lordy! I saw that an updated edition was issued on Jan. 31, 2012! I must get that to see what's different. I won't go into it all here, I'm trying to write something deeper for my book. But god - anyone who's in a situation like this - two working parents - should read it. It was both embarrassing and enlightening for me to read it.<br />
<br />
<u>Marriage Shock</u> - that was pretty good as well. Her basic idea is: women become demure after they get married. They edit their pasts, they don't act as aggressively, or as ambitiously, and they assume the mantle of purity and love. They do this but they sublimate their resentment at doing this. It pops out. And I can see that this is true. But Heyn only concentrates on marriage, and not on marriage with children. Possibly this is because she herself doesn't have children. In any case, I kept thinking that the book only pertained to a small percentage of women and that group didn't include me. On the other hand, she is one hell of a writer. God, some of her paragraphs literally took my breath away. Again, I plan to write a bit about this in my book, so I'll leave this topic for now...<br />
<br /></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-5035086149547064622012-01-23T10:57:00.014-06:002012-01-23T15:40:19.574-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9f5t_Wsh1Q0/Tx1waTgyxsI/AAAAAAAAAK4/oz4rk-cstKw/s1600/ArdenDec2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9f5t_Wsh1Q0/Tx1waTgyxsI/AAAAAAAAAK4/oz4rk-cstKw/s320/ArdenDec2012.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Arden, my dog, continues to live and love.<br />
<br />
Arden was diagnosed with an extremely large tumor last June. The tumor is growing between his lungs and heart. The vet suggested I alert my daughter (who was away at camp at the time) and let her know that Arden may not be alive by the time she got home. I took Arden to a specialist and after a better X-ray they told me that, indeed, there was a massive tumor. There was nothing that could be done about it. He'd probably have a heart attack, or suffocate to death as the tumor got larger and larger. I was told to expect him to possibly faint, or I could possibly wake up one morning and find him dead, having perished in the night. It was suggested that he could not go on walks, or rather, on only very short walks. I was given a medication for him to take to reduce his coughing.<br />
<br />
Well, now it's late January. Arden and I still go on our 2.4 mile walk almost daily (down from our old 3 mile-r) and he's feeling pretty good. He seems happy and relaxed. He must've had that tumor for a very long time and it must be very, very slow growing. He <b>is</b> having problems here and there - every once in a while a limb seems to get numb. His breathing is weirdly erratic from time to time. He's a lot more subdued. A LOT. But overall, he's in good shape. I think he'll live for quite some time. <br />
<br />
Even though all those above-mentioned possibilities still loom like a dark sky.<br />
<br />
I'm very late posting my December lists, and I do feel guilty about that. I'm promising myself that my January lists will get written up more promptly. I'm not exactly sure why posting these lists causes me to feel so organized and in control. But somehow it does. And so, without further adieu...<br />
<br />
Here are the movies that I watched in December:<br />
<br />
1.) <u>Stage Coach</u>, dir. John Ford, 1939<br />
2.) <u>J. Edgar</u>, dir. Clint Eastwood, 2011<br />
3.) <u>Young Adult</u>, dir. Jason Reitman, 2011<br />
4.) <u>The Help</u>, dir. Tate Taylor, 2011<br />
5.) <u>A Dangerous Method</u>, dir. David Cronenberg, 2011<br />
6.) <u>The Descendants</u>, dir. Alexander Payne, 2011<br />
7.) <u>War Horse</u>, dir. Steven Spielberg, 2011<br />
8.) <u>Moonstruck</u>, dir. Norman Jewison, 1987<br />
9.) <u>Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close</u>, dir. Stephen Daldry, 2011<br />
10.) <u>Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy</u>, dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2011<br />
11.) <u>Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</u>, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010<br />
12.) <u>The Shop Around The Corner</u>, dir. Ernst Lubitch, 1940<br />
13.) <u>Days of Heaven</u>, dir. Terrence Malick, 1978<br />
14.) <u>Tree of Life</u>, dir. Terrence Malick, 2011<br />
15.) <u>Blossoms of Fire</u>, dir. Maureen Gosling & Ellen Osborne, 2001<br />
16.) <u>Contagion</u>, dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2011<br />
17.) <u>How The Grinch Stole Christmas</u>, dir. Chuck Jones & Ben Washam<br />
<br />
<br />
It was a big month for movies, many which I loved, and others which I not only didn't enjoy, I would go as far as to say I detested them. So, among this list, of these particular movies which were released in 2011, I would give my <b>best movie</b> award to: <u>Tinker, Tailor</u>. Second best is a tie between <u>Contagion</u> and <u>The Descendants</u>. <br />
<br />
Even though I mostly had no idea what was going on in <u>Tinker, Tailor</u>, I was still enthralled and filled with a deep happy wonder at the unfolding story. The look of the film, how the scenes built on each other, the performances, the subject - I drank it all up - as if I'd been thirsty for this drink, this taste precisely. And yet, I hadn't known I was so thirsty for it! I want to see the film again, especially now that I know what the basic story is. Gary Oldman must be nominated for an Oscar. Sadly, I wonder if he will be. <br />
<br />
There are movies that are impossible to fully experience the first time around. I think <u>Tinker, Tailor</u> might be one of them. I have no idea why everyone is ignoring it for awards - so far anyway. <br />
<br />
I felt <u>The Descendants</u> has been slightly over rated by critics, but only slightly. It definitely grew on me. The movie got better in the week after I saw it, frankly - as I reflected and turned scenes up and back in my mind. I appreciated how Hawaii was presented, as a real place where real people really live. I think <u>Contagion</u> is very good too, why isn't it being nominated so far? I don't get it.<br />
<br />
The worst movies (of the 2011 releases) that I saw in December are: Worst of all: <u>Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</u>. Tie for second worse is between: <u>War Horse</u> and <u>J. Edgar</u>. Now, as far as <u>Extremely Loud</u> goes - frankly I have such deep contempt for that movie, I feel to explain why gives it more attention than anyone should ever give to this film. The kid was so annoying, kids like that are not endearing to me, they're just oblivious jerks. I know he was supposed to have Aspberger's Syndrome, but then he also showed startling emotional intelligence and insightfulness which is not a characteristic of Asberger's and I felt this was in the film just to cheat, to make the audience <i>like </i>him. I also did not buy Tom Hank's character and wondered why he thought up absurd mysteries for his son to solve when there would be such joy in investigating things that were real - and when I say real, I just mean that make logical sense and adhere to actual physical rules instead of the gobbeldygook that we were to watch and I guess, admire. <br />
<br />
<u>Incredibly Loud</u>: Award for Most Manipulative.<br />
<br />
Well, wait. <br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
I take it back.<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u>War Horse</u> gets the award for <b>MOST</b> openly and clunkily manipulative. And from a director who knows better. This is the same guy who made <u>Munich</u>? (My personal favorite Spielberg movie.) I felt the play was also overly sentimental and manipulative, but it was also haunting and beautiful and complexly sad. The film was not. <br />
<br />
Here's an example: In the play the boy's father is an erratic alcoholic who, for mostly egoistic and impulsive reasons buys a horse he cannot really afford, nor take care of. His son does. Bad things happen.<br />
<br />
But in the movie, we are treated to "why" the father's an alcoholic. <i>He was hurt in a war. He's wounded. </i> <i>In fact, he was a hero! Who has medals hidden away! </i> So now we're supposed to <i>understand</i> why he drinks. <br />
<br />
To me this greatly diminshes the impact of the boy taking over the care of the horse. He's not giving the horse guidance and protection that he was not given himself, he's now a boy who just doesn't get that his father really is a good guy. Plus, Spielberg left out the mournful, lone Gaelic singing (which was in the play) and I feel that was a mistake.<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u>J. Edgar</u> missed by a mile for me too. I kept thinking of the movie that could have been made. It was excruciating to watch as well. Oh where is that wonderful director of <u>Unforgiven</u> hiding?<br />
<br />
I have to say, "<u>The Help</u>" is not worth even considering amongst the list of terrible movies. <br />
<br />
Wow. I'm cranky about movies today. Cranky and a bit inarticulate.<br />
<br />
Fantastic.<br />
<br />
Okay, I didn't hate "<u>A Dangerous Method</u>." But I didn't love it either. Many of my friends, friends who mostly have a similar film sensibility as myself, just loved it. I dunno. Maybe it was the time I watched. I may need to give that film another go.<br />
<br />
Also, not a fan of "<u>Young Adult</u>." Even though I think Patton was fantastic and should be nominated for an Academy Award. And Charlize Theron was great too. But, I don't think I'm ultimately a fan of Diablo Cody. I want to be! There's so much about her spunk and drive and insightfulness that I really enjoy. But I feel she took the easy way out with this script by making the Theron character so completely unsympathetic. I felt she was just trying to shock people with her <i>brutal honesty</i> and <i>unforgiving candid eye</i>, but truthfully - in the end she just wrote about an underdeveloped, unlikable character that somehow we're supposed to...<br />
<br />
wait...<br />
<br />
to what? <br />
<br />
I'm not in any way averse to unsympathetic characters. In fact, I like them. I just felt that there was so much more she could have mined. I felt she hadn't done her homework. Here's an example: in the final scene where Patton's character's sister gives her this speech about how small town life is so dumb and boring and Theron's character's life is so wonderful and great - why couldn't it have been more realistic and insightful? Why didn't the sister character say something like: "You don't get to have it all. You got a life that's exciting in many ways that life here is not." But instead Cody's written a speech that makes everyone in the small town seem like rubes. And Theron, although unlikable, is still cool and hip and successful. To me that was the take-away from <u>Young Adult</u>. Cody is telling us: "I have a great career that doesn't require that much effort. So fuck you all in small towns everywhere. I may be depressed and mean, but I'm really cool while I do it!"<br />
<br />
This is too much time in the negative, let's go positive.<br />
<br />
Let's turn to some movies that have - by any standard - stood the test of time. First of all "<u>Stage Coach</u>" is a masterpiece. In fact, my daughter Mulan is home from school today, sick, and I just may insist that we watch "<u>Stage Coach</u>." I think that's the finest movie, overall, that I watched all month.<br />
<br />
Well, "<u>The Shop Around The Corner</u>" is a perfect movie too. Yes, it's perfect. We watched it on Christmas day with my mother (who was visiting) and my dearest friend Gino who also spent the day with us. For me, to watch T<u>he Shop Around The Corner</u> on Christmas Day is a great Christmas Day. In fact, I think it's required Christmas viewing. For the record, I've never seen "<u>You've Got Mail</u>." I'm just too afraid that my beloved movie has been mangled.<br />
<br />
I wasn't enthralled with "<u>The Tree of Life</u>." But there were parts I did love, many many parts. Jessica Chastain is great - along with Brad Pitt. But the film is a confusing mess to me. I felt that the point of view of the director was: "We are all part of a plan, a plan we don't understand but naturally yearn for." I think it would've been much more powerful and poignant if I got the sense that the film's creator felt this slightly (okay greatly) tweaked and different way: "Evidence shows that the world has no plan, and it's a tragedy of human existence that we keep yearning and seeking a plan, or reasons, or meaning when there ultimately may not be any."<br />
<br />
I still think you could have kept most of the movie the same! Lose the ending with dead people in heaven walking on a beach. The dinosaur scene were I guess we are supposed to witness the beginnings of compassion was weird and wrong. In fact, in keeping with Malick's theme, he could have done a scene with the beginnings of love in humans - motherly love! <i>That truly is the alpha and omega of love</i>. We're bonded because we give birth to completely helpless beings who get their evolutionary advantage through culture which is transmitted by doting and caring parents, most of whom are the mothers of those helpless beings. That would've still been in the theme of his film! Oh!<br />
<br />
Why don't directors like Malick consult with me before they begin shooting? Honestly!<br />
<br />
:)<br />
<br />
I will say that watching "<u>Days of Heaven</u>" I expected to love it - I loved it when it came out. But really - that movie is truly a masterpiece. That is a perfect film. Not one frame, not one word is off, in my not-exactly-humble-I-admit opinion. <u>Days of Heaven</u> is sublime. Much better than I remembered, and I have such happy memories of that film. I saw it when I was in college. I sat in the movie theater for some time afterwards, just absorbing what I saw. And yet, the film was even better than I could have understood at the time. (Come to think of it, <u>Day's of Heaven</u>'s directorial theme is the one I articulated above, the one I wished Malick still held.)<br />
<br />
I suppose that makes three perfect movies for last month: <u>Stage Coach</u>, <u>The Shop</u>, and <u>Days</u>.<br />
<br />
Now on to books, and finally I'll write a word or two about Victoria Jackson.<br />
<br />
I only read three books last month.<br />
<br />
1.) <u>A Mother'sWork: How Feminism, The Market, and Policy Shape Family Life</u>, written by Neil Gilbert<br />
2.) <u>Shockaholic</u>, by Carrie Fisher<br />
3.) <u>The Sexual Paradox</u>, by Susan Pinker<br />
<br />
I enjoyed all these books tremendously. Fisher's chapter on spending Michael Jackson's last Christmas with his family was riveting and insightful and hilarious as only she can be. Gilbert's "A Mother's Work" was enlightening. I have such a different view of how our culture should be helping frame the idea of motherhood in our society than I ever did before and much of it is in alignment with Gilbert's views. But I won't go into this here, because I'm putting this in my book. <u>The Sexual Paradox</u> is full of good information as well. But, again, I won't get into that here. <br />
<br />
Now, onto Victoria Jackson. Many people, more than I would have ever expected, have written me to ask me if Victoria Jackson is for real. The way she appears, the views she espouses, and how she espouses them, is very confusing.<br />
<br />
It's true. I've felt this way from the beginning. Imagine if Steven Colbert were actually the character he plays: Steven Colbert of "The Colbert Report." Would that not be highly confusing? We enjoy Steven Colbert because we see there is a genius inside him that can see all the hypocrisy and inanity of our political system as well as the media, and he's so focused, smart and funny that he plays with it all - he's like Mozart playing tunes from notes out of our deeply dysfunctional system of government and media. But Victoria. Victoria.<br />
<br />
So, to answer the question that many have asked me.... Yes. She is for real. She really does believe all the things she says. To my knowledge, there will not be a day when she says: the jig is up. It was all a performance piece. <br />
<br />
What bothers me is that she wants to have it both ways at once. She wants to get the laughs that are there for characters who are kooky and dimwitted, but then she also wants to use this persona to make real points and arguments. Points and arguments that are <b>not ironic</b>, they are completely naked and honest and forthright. But she'll take the laughs. I don't know why those on the right let her be part of their media-pushes. To me it would be like, like if there was a "comedian" who's character was a Marxist-Leninist. He wears a beard and small round glasses and all black and he says things like: The Government should own all the land! People should not be allowed to own any money! Free Enterprise should be stopped!<br />
<br />
And then he has a soap box that he carries around with him, and he puts it out there - and it even says "Soap Box" on it, and he gets on top of it and yells and gesticulates like a cartoon of communism.<br />
<br />
And he's on talk shows and everyone laughs at how nutty he is.<br />
<br />
<i>Only he really believes what he's saying</i>. He may be somewhat confused about why people are laughing. But he doesn't care enough to analyze it, he really just wants the laughs. He hears the laughs, and he'll happily take the laughs. <br />
<br />
Now, wouldn't you have a certain contempt for this person? Wouldn't you think: if they know people are laughing at them, doesn't that reduce their credibility? Doesn't it make it seem as if the point of view they have is being compromised by the very laughs they're receiving?<br />
<br />
I suppose it comes down to a demarcation in comedy. You are laughed at, or you are laughed with. Most comedians dabble in both ways of getting laughs. In fact, it's a good exercise. The next time you watch a comedian, just say out loud, as they get the laugh - "at" "at" "with" with." It's very educational. <br />
<br />
But you expect that when a comedian is getting an "at" laugh, that they know they're getting it. More specifically, they know WHY they're getting it. They are the wiser. Their act is planned out in this way. <br />
<br />
This is the thing: I don't think Victoria's act is planned out that way. It's for real.<br />
<br />
She's not Andy Kaufman (as many emailers have asked me.) The "there" you think is "there" is not "there." <br />
<br />
As far as I know.<br />
<br />
I had someone forward me a song that Victoria has recorded and is up on You Tube, about - well, I suppose it's about me. It's about a fellow cast member who's an "atheist" (I personally prefer the term: non-believer) and she wrote a song about it. Here's her complaint with me: <i>I talk about it all the time</i>. There's a chorus where she sings, "And she goes blah blah blah about it ALL DAY LONG." <br />
<br />
That's a very weak argument. This is an argument that my own mother might've used. <i>Did use, come to think of it</i>. "Why do you have to talk about it?" <br />
<br />
Seriously, what kind of argument is that? That's not an argument. You may as well say, "She's a non-believer and she wears poorly constructed shoes." What do the shoes have to do with anything?<br />
<br />
But, really, what is that argument? <br />
<br />
This is the argument of shut up. The argument of be quiet. The argument of why-are-you-talking-about-something-that-makes-me-uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
Personally I don't think I talk too much about religion. In fact, I seriously think I talk about it too little. But my talking more or less about it is not an argument in favor of, or against the quality of my arguments.<br />
<br />
I mean, duh.<br />
<br />
I am now feeling like I over ranted over this topic that is not consuming very many people. In fact, it may be extremely few people. But still, since some people had written and asked, I figured I'd explain a bit.<br />
<br />
Or something like that.<br />
<br />
Ha. <br />
<br />
Okay, that's all I have to say on this subject for now..... <br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-31543609499368761332011-12-16T06:21:00.002-06:002011-12-16T06:31:18.658-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S-s2U8513IM/TtzpykCUDgI/AAAAAAAAAKw/49Etrmp_FGQ/s1600/JSweeneySadChristmas1970.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S-s2U8513IM/TtzpykCUDgI/AAAAAAAAAKw/49Etrmp_FGQ/s320/JSweeneySadChristmas1970.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The sourpuss in the middle of this picture is me, 1970, at Christmas time. I'm 11 years old.<br />
<br />
Okay. Now, let's start with the movie list.<br />
<br />
Movies watched in November 2011:<br />
<br />
1.) The Parent Trap, dir. David Swift, 1961<br />
2.) Phantom Lady, dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944<br />
3.) Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture, dir. Mark Richard Smith, 2010<br />
4.) I Am Love, dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2009<br />
5.) West Side Story, dir. Ernest Lehman, 1961<br />
6.) The River, dir. Jean Renoir, 1951<br />
7.) The Goddess, dir. John Cromwell, 1958<br />
8.) Bridesmaids, dir. by Paul Feig, 2011<br />
9.) Hugo, dir. Martin Scorcese, 2011<br />
10.) The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, dir. Andrew Dominik, 2007<br />
11.) The Spiral Staircase, dir. Robert Siodmak, 1945<br />
12.) Moneyball, dir. Bennett Miller, 2011<br />
<br />
It was a glorious month for movies. I would say the highlight was "The River" by Jean Renoir. I've been wanting to see this movie for a very long time, and my mother-in-law gave it to Mulan for her 12th birthday. We all watched it together as a family, and then we watched all the wonderous extras on the DVD. Then, on Thanksgiving, we all watched it again along with our dinner guests. Our friends also have a 12 year-old daughter and I think this film was just the perfect after-dinner experience. One of the all-time great coming-of-age movies. It's like watching an epic poem. <br />
<br />
I'ld say the next standout movie of the month, for me, was "Bridesmaids." I'm embarrassed I hadn't seen it before. I know so many of the people in that movie - not really well, but I know them from the comedy world - and specifically through the Groundlings. I had no idea it was <b>so good.</b> Kristin Wiig is a master - funny, painfully poignantly funny. She's the female Bill Murray of our time. The script was so precise and loose at the same time - just the right combination for maximum laughs. And the actors - the actors! This film is my top favorite of all those Apatow-annointed comedies. This film and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" are my favorites. (<i>Well, and "Forty Year Old Virgin."</i>) It's so satisfying to see a comedy hit a home run. I think it's the hardest thing in the world to do. Great script, hilarious women, really damn funny. I was so astounded - just blown away - that I watched it again immediately! Maya Rudolph was so good too, and Melissa McCarthy is so versitile and her timing is impeccable. <br />
<br />
I loved "Hugo." I cried for fully the last half of the movie. I'm so happy Scorcese made this movie. It's absolutely in my top ten of the year. The best use of 3D that I've ever seen, maybe with the exception (or inclusion) of Zemeckis "A Christmas Carol" (2009.) <br />
<br />
What else really grabbed me??? Oh, oh, oh! "I Am Love" was soooo great. That's another one I watched twice. I also watched all the extras on the DVD. Lots of great interviews with the entire cast. Tilda Swinton is such an astonishingly good actress. It's a fantastic part for her.<br />
<br />
"The Goddess" I'd seen a long, long time ago. I forgot what an amazing actress Kim Stanley was. A really haunting movie about Hollywood actresses. Some fantastic performances...<br />
<br />
Now, on to books. I've been reading many motherhood oriented books while I write my book about motherhood. It's been very enjoyable and enlightening. <br />
<br />
Books read in November 2011<br />
<br />
1.) Blue Nights, written by Joan Didion.<br />
2.) Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species, written by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy<br />
3.) Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, written by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy<br />
4.) The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is the Least Valued, written by Ann Crittenden.<br />
5.) Cool, Calm and Contentious, written by Merrill Markoe.<br />
<br />
I've obviously been concentrating on books under the theme of "mother" since I'm finishing up writing my book. I loved the Blaffer Hrdy books - both of them are very good. But the book which really rocked my world was The Price of Motherhood. That book had a great and deep impact, along the lines of when I read Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal." This book yanked me out of my world and my cynical and uninformed views of motherhood. Ha - I know, big statement, but seriously, it did. It's hard to paraphrase the ideas in this book without using cliches and hacky sound bites. In fact, one of the reasons that parenting - mothering in particular - is so discounted in our culture is because it is over-the-top elevated with platitudes and pandering. For example, I want to write that after reading this book I realized that raising a child is the most important job in the world, but that sounds like we've heard it a million times and now we're supposed to look over to that sweatered, mild, sweetly smiling woman in the corner and gaze at her admirably for just long enough to feel good about ourselves before we rush off to do some "real" work that actually means something, earns something, and gets some respect. <br />
<br />
I think I lazily fell into a typical mindset of feeling two opposite things: that women who stay home with their children can't "do" anything really, and that women who work don't "care enough" to stay home with their children. Of course, now that I've written that down I am mortified - and I protest, I didn't think that! Okay, maybe a little bit. But after reading this book I have such compassion for all women out there - in the trenches. Also, I realize that my desire to be at home with my kid as well has have a thriving career is what pretty much every woman wants. Idealizing women who stay home with their kids while at the same time allowing our government to discount, overtax, and fail to help support our children is ridiculous at best and sinister at worst. I found a great website that is active in promoting laws that help mothers and children called: <a href="http://www.momsrising.org/">www.momsrising.org</a><br />
<br />
I'm still digesting everything I've read in all three of these mother books, so I won't go on here. More in the book!<br />
<br />
Now, I read Joan Didion's book, "Blue Nights" and it is extremely well written, and interesting. But I have to admit that Joan often leaves me impressed, but... cold. I felt compassion for her situation, and I learned a lot about her daughter, but I have to say, there's no -- well.... not "no there there" but god, I hate to write this but... "no heart there." Sorta. Kinda. God, I feel guilty writing that. Let me concentrate on what I did like - beautiful prose, sparse and elaborate at the same time. Astonishing writer, Didion.<br />
<br />
I have included a book I just finished, so that's cheating, but I have to! I loved this book so much. Merrill Markoe wrote another hilarious book, "Cool, Calm and Contentious." There are so many great essays in this book. One has the name "Jack Kerouac" in the title and I laughed so hard the book flew out of my hands and my family made faces at me because I was disrupting our reading time. The stuff about her mother is chilling and funny and insightful. The chapter called "Bobby" about her relationship with David Letterman - or rather, about what she's had to go through after her relationship and partnership with Dave Letterman, is so funny and awful and gets her point across without being harsh or mean. That is a difficult line to walk, and she does it. Did I mention it's funny. It's fucking hilarious. Luckily Merrill is a friend of mine so I could tell her all these things. Some of the essays are so funny they should be in collections of the funniest essays of all. Merrill should be writing for the New Yorker. GET THIS BOOK.<br />
<br />
Okay. I have to go. I'm writing away. I have my last workshop this Saturday and it's going to be a "Best of" so I'm psyched about it. Then the holidays will engulf me. I probably won't have read five books in December, in fact, I'll probably be lucky to get through one! <br />
<br />
Happy Holidays....<br />
<br />
</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-39810407249346102802011-11-10T09:48:00.001-06:002011-11-10T16:05:45.555-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y-QEf7F41yw/TrxKsdT8OtI/AAAAAAAAAKg/lYgcEY3BUJU/s1600/Novemberblog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y-QEf7F41yw/TrxKsdT8OtI/AAAAAAAAAKg/lYgcEY3BUJU/s320/Novemberblog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Anton Walbrook and Glynis Johns in "The 49th Parallel," directed by Michael Powell.<br />
<br />
Well, I've been writing more and watching and reading less, overall. But I suppose, with the glorious Anton Walbrook looming over my blog entry, I will jump straight to films.<br />
<br />
Films watched in October 2011:<br />
<br />
1.) The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1943, dir. by Michael Powell<br />
2.) The 49th Parallel, 1941, dir. by Michael Powell<br />
3.) Remorques, aka Stormy Waters, 1941, dir. by Jean Gremillon<br />
4.) The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, 1936, dir. by Henry Hathaway<br />
5.) The Age of Innocence, 1993, dir. by Martin Scorcese<br />
6.) The Last King of Scotland, 2006, dir. by Kevin Macdonald<br />
7.) Meek's Cutoff, 2010, dir. by Kelly Riechardt<br />
8.) The Fly, 1986, dir. by David Cronenberg<br />
9.) Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, 2008, dir. by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg<br />
10.) The Conspiritor, 2010, dir. by Robert Redford<br />
11.) Good Hair, 2009, dir. by Jeff Stillson<br />
12.) Three Strangers, 1946, dir. by Jean Negulesco<br />
13.) Big Fan, 2009, dir. by Robert D. Siegel<br />
<br />
So many great movies this month. I don't know if it's possible to choose a favorite. The one that got into my dreams - well four of them did: "Colonel Blimp," "49th Parallel," "Meek's Cutoff" and "The Last King of Scotland." I am so absolutely in love with Michael Powell's films. And I have recently watched "The Red Shoes" and realized how brilliant Anton Walbrook is, well... was. Sadly he died prematurely. But, what a presence. He plays such an against-type character in "49th" too, he's an Amish farmer in Canada. Still, when he is onscreen, hardly anyone else is. <br />
<br />
"Meek's Cutoff": I've been waiting to see this movie for so long. I'm a fan of Kelly Riechardt - I loved "Wendy and Lucy" and "Old Joy." When I heard about the topic for Meek's I got very excited. I think every western ever filmed (and I am a western fan, and there's been plenty of great ones) should be redone through a woman's eyes. This is what made me curious and excited to see "Meek's." Reichardt, you have to hand it to her, she does not pander to a mainstream audience. This film is slow, hypnotic, and doesn't tell you how to react. I think my favorite moment was when Michelle Williams loads a gun - it's realistic, takes an absurd amount of time, and barely has any authority over anyone once it's loaded. I actually let out a big laugh at the end - not because it was funny, but because Reichardt has such guts! Jesus! I am a huge fan of this woman. I cannot wait for her next movie, "Night Moves" which is in pre-production.<br />
<br />
I really loved "The Last King of Scotland," too. James McAvoy is so good, he should have been nominated for an oscar too, along with Forest Whitaker. <br />
<br />
I was so happy to see "The Fly" again. When I saw it the first time, I was so moved by it, I could not stop crying at the end. I wanted to see if I still felt that way. Wow, it was even better! God, Jeff Goldblum is so sexy, so funny, and so perfect in this role. And Geena Davis is great. I had a laughing, cringing, crying good time seeing it again. The extras on the DVD are pretty good too. Lots of interviews with people recently about their memories of making this film.<br />
<br />
I'd been wanting to see Chris Rock's documentary, "Good Hair," for a long time. It was directed by a fellow Spokane, Washington native: Jeff Stillson. It was really good - Rock is great at making a topic funny and serious at the same time. I learned a lot too.<br />
<br />
I felt "The Conspirator" (about the plotters to kill Lincoln) was so underrated when it came out. Why wasn't it nominated for tons of awards? Redford directing, a great historic epic, fantastic acting (James McAvoy again! It's my James McAvoy month!) I was surprised I hadn't seen it before or read more about it. Robin Wright was so good in her part as Mary Surratt. Why wasn't she nominated for an oscar? The part was really demanding and difficult and she pulled it off well. <br />
<br />
I was glad to finally see "Big Fan." I'm a huge fan (and glad to say friend) of Patton Oswalt's and yet I ahd never seen this film. <br />
<br />
Books read in October 2011. Only one. Yes, only one.<br />
<br />
"A Visit From The Good Squad," by Jennifer Egan. It was brilliant.<br />
<br />
But before that, I have to confess: I got off the book treadmill. Wait, that's not the right way to put it. I imposed these restricitons on my reading about two years ago and it's had the most fantastic results. Unfortunately it requires some discipline. My self-imposed reading rule was: only one book at a time. Take the book with you everywhere, christen it - it's the book you are currently reading. Stick with it until the end. Read at least an hour a day, then and only then can you move onto magazines and other reading material. This might sound sort of silly, these self-imposed rules, but it had dramatic results. You see, I was really lazy and promiscuous about my book reading. I would read a third of this book, lose it in the house, and then move onto a third of another book. It never added up to anything and I wasn't finishing anything. It all gave me this unfinished feeling that I did not like. There were tradeoffs, mostly in terms of The New Yorker. I wasn't reading it as much. I wasn't reading the paper as much. Nor the New Scientist, or Mother Jones, or any of the other magazines I like and subscribe to. But it felt good overall. I was reading the way I enjoy reading, the whole book, diving in and seeing it through. But then, this month, I lost a book I started, and then I grabbed another and lost it somewhere and then I bout "Goon Squad" and began it and I have to say it really took some force to get me to read it all the way through.<br />
<br />
Partly this is because the book is non-linear. It's a set of linked stories that draw you closer to a big set of characters. The chapters jump around in time and fling themselves into far-off characters you don't expect to know. It's really good - God the writing is astonishingly good, but the book itself has the feeling to it that I usually get from my haphazard reading style of yesteryear - a chapter here and there. So it was difficult to see it through. The book almost wants you to put it down. Except I didn't because I was laughing and gasping and digging into these people. It was a really good book. <br />
<br />
I'm doing a bit better now, but more on that in November's entry...<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I am not travelling, I'm hunkering down, and writing my "Mother" book. I've been doing the workshops on Saturdays. It's helped me, the workshops. I can see where I get stuck in the same old themes. But it's also excrutiating and I often wonder why I'm doing it. This week I'm going to read something I'm working on for The Guardian and a piece about nanny's. <br />
<br />
My new assistant Pam (oh how I love saying that) lent me a couple of DVDs, it's of a series on Showtime that I've not watched before: "Episodes." There are seven esisodes of "Episodes." I've watched four. They're so damn funny. I acutally woke up last night thinking about them. If you can watch get hold of them, please watch them. Matt LeBlanc stars. It's hilarious. So funny and well written. I think I'll watch the final three today. <br />
<br />
It looks like it's going to snow today. Here we go....<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-4461867852716318262011-10-15T09:48:00.005-05:002011-10-15T10:11:09.924-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jrqnHNoKBcU/Tpbgk08v_II/AAAAAAAAAJ4/c5TjmcpKC9Y/s1600/DSC01186.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jrqnHNoKBcU/Tpbgk08v_II/AAAAAAAAAJ4/c5TjmcpKC9Y/s320/DSC01186.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Michael took this picture when we visited the Chicago Botanical Garden a week or so ago.<br />
<br />
It's raining right now. It's getting colder. And I say hurrah. <br />
<br />
We've had ten days of startlingly perfect weather. A mid-western Indian summer, warm dry days and cool nights.<br />
<br />
And yet, a small voice inside me has been yearning for cold and wet. I think the outdoors (in which I walk for at least an hour a day) is a place simultaneously stimulating, invigorating, and then, possibly, overwhelming. <br />
<br />
I've read that Catholics distrust nature, and maybe a bit of that seeped into me.<br />
<br />
However, when it's cold and wet, suddenly, the inside of my house is much, much cozier. There's a reason to stay inside. There's a reason to go to the basement and watch a movie, or read a book by a fire in the living room. When thinking of wet, cold, or snowy weather, my instant physical sensation is: relief. <br />
<br />
Maybe part of it is that to brave inclement weather, a greater effort is required. Walking my dog, Arden (still alive, coughing incessantly, but active and tail-waggingly-enthusiastic for each day) in rain and snow is simultaneously more of a chore and more enjoyable. When I come in the door I feel I've accomplished something. And it's something not everyone would do! Ha. So, you see, my need to feel superior is massaged by an arduous walk. <br />
<br />
My husband might note that the dominant force is more accurately an overly-active martyr complex. Hmmm... touche. Yes, and that's perhaps another vestige of my Catholicism.<br />
<br />
What is true: martyr complexes emulsify nicely with a feeling of superiority.<br />
<br />
On to other things:<br />
<br />
I am grudgingly and yet hopefully back to my usual support of Obama. I think I might have been too hard on him last month. I like the jobs bill. I wonder if our government is too broken for anything substantive to get passed given this Senate and House. I am watching the Occupy Movement with a thrill. If I weren't so damn happy to stay inside, I would be there. It's very exciting.<br />
<br />
But let's get to the books and movies of Sept. 2011, shall we?<br />
<br />
Movies first!<br />
<br />
1. Daisy Kenyon, 1947, dir by Otto Preminger <i>saw it</i> <i>twice</i><br />
2. 3 Godfathers, 1948, dir by John Ford<br />
3. The Invention of Lying, 2009, dir by Ricky Gervais & Mathew Robinson<br />
4. Marely & Me, 2008, dir by David Frankel<br />
5. Shine A Light, 2008, dir by Martin Scorcese<br />
6. Cyrus, 2010, dir by Jay & Mark Duplass<br />
7. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, 1949, dir by John Ford<br />
8. Seeing Other People, 2004, dir by Wallace Wolodarsky<br />
9. Gates of Heaven, 1978, dir by Errol Morris<br />
10. Out of Africa, 1985, dir by Sydney Pollack<br />
11. Rope, 1948, dir by Alfred Hitchcock<br />
12. Harold & Kumar go to Whitecastle, 2004, dir by Danny Leiner<br />
13. The Secret Garden, 1993, dir by Agnieszka Holland<br />
14. Dr. Zhivago, 1965, dir by David Lean<br />
15. Fiddler On The Roof, 1971, dir by Norman Jewison<br />
16. Wagon Master, 1950, dir by John Ford<br />
17. Heat Lightning, 1934, dir by Mervyn LeRoy<br />
18. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, 2003, dir. by Errol Morris<br />
19. The Tom Lehrer Collection, various dates, TV footage<br />
<br />
Wow. I saw more movies in September than I thought. Here, already halfway through October, I can predict I won't get the time for as many. Poop.<br />
<br />
September was a great month for movies.<br />
<br />
Top of the list: <u>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</u> and <u>Wagon Master</u>. I am an uneducated fan of John Ford, and my friend Richard T. Jameson (RTJ) keeps sending me DVDs to watch, and this month I was completely knocked out. Yes, I did appreciate and enjoy <u>3 Godfathers</u>, but I was so deeply moved by <u>She Wore</u> - I actually cried - and then seeing <u>Wagon Master</u> - my mind was blown. <u>Wagon Master</u> is so much like a Coen Bros. movie - very existential. The movie wanders with the characters who are all wandering! It's simultaneously focused and unfocused. And it really works: hallucinatory and riveting. <br />
<br />
<u>Daisy Kenyon</u> was another surprise. It was another movie RTJ sent me. This film so easily could've been a superficial soap-opera, and it wasn't AT ALL. Henry Fonda, and Joan Crawford in a great role, and Dana Andrews, all three wonderful actors in a romantic triangle. I loved it so much, that a couple of weeks later, when I had some friends over for dinner, I suggested we watch it. They all thought it was great. I <b>highly</b> recommend it. <br />
<br />
I really enjoyed hypnotic <u>Shine a Light</u> - the Rolling Stones concert doc by Scorcese. Wowza, it's really been a Rolling Stones year for me. And ohmygod, <u>Harold & Kumar!</u> I laughed so hard - really <i>really</i> hard. So hard that I think Michael became slightly disturbed by how funny I thought that movie was. I have <u>Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanomo</u> from Netflix and will watch it this month some time.<br />
<br />
<u>Seeing Other People</u> was another lovely, surprising movie. It stars Jay Mohr and Julianne Nicholson and they play a very funny couple, they give very realistic, nuanced performances that are also highly comedic. I thought it would be too broad for me but it was <i>not</i> <i>too broad</i>, it was delightful, ahead of it's time in my opinion. I wish Mohr and Nicholson would get together again and play a couple, they are perfect together. Some of the reviews, which I try to read only after I see a film, claimed it was too sit-com-y. I dunno, I laughed a lot. <br />
<br />
Didn't like <u>Dr. Zhivago</u> at all. I'd seen it a million years ago. Thought it was all style and no substance, but of course Omar Sharif is always sweet to look at.<br />
<br />
I thought <u>Cyrus</u> was a perfect movie. Pitch perfect. Yes, I did. I loved every frame of that film. I loved the tone, especially. I was constantly surprised and I felt people behaved just like people do. And yet the story had great suspense and movement and best of all the film was delightfully ambiguous. I felt it was up there with <u>An Education</u> for me in my personal hierarchy of great films that I think I could possibly try to emulate in my own writing. Anyway, <u>Cyrus</u>, I really tickled by that film. Jonah Hill was great - in fact the whole cast was exactly right.<br />
<br />
<u>Rope</u> is a failure, but still great to watch. The interview with Arthur Laurentz - which is on the extras on the DVD - is very insightful. It caused me to buy two of Laurentz's memoirs, which I hope to get to this month or next. Laurentz mentions that the dream casting had been James Mason in the Jimmy Stewart role, and Montgomery Clift in the John Dall role. I thought Dall was perfect - and was hankering to see <u>Rope</u> ever since I watched <u>Gun Crazy</u>. On the other hand, <u>Rope</u> <i>REALLY would have been</i> a much better movie if it had had Mason and Clift and if Hitchcock had not insisted on basically stunt shooting the thing in long takes, which I could see deeply constrained the performances and the sense of movement. Laurentz says Stewart is sexless, like a dopey oblivious uncle, and not the character he had envisioned for the professor. Once he said this I realized immediately how right he was and how far the film had fallen by casting Stewart in the part - who apparently was completely unaware of the gay themes in the film. <br />
<br />
Errol Morris is such a genius. I really loved <u>Fog of War</u> - very disturbing, that film. We go to war for the such silly reasons which are sold by only a few people, people who are usually acquiescing to some paranoid fear raging inside of a couple of other people. And it's going to happen again. It's happening now. OOOOkay.... Not going there. Oh, I loved <u>Gates of Heaven</u> too. Michael and Mulan and I visited a pet cemetery (the film is all about a pet cemetery in California) in San Francisco this past summer. A pet cemetery is simultaneously poignant and ridiculous. Morris got that combination of feelings perfectly, I thought. <br />
<br />
<br />
Books read in Sept. 2011<br />
<br />
1. The Myth of Free Will, Revised and Expanded Edition, written by Cris Evatt<br />
2. The Givers & the Takers, written by Cris Evatt<br />
3. The Wizard of Lies, written by Diana B. Henriques<br />
4. One Good Turn: A Novel, written by Kate Atkinson<br />
5. When God is Gone, Everything is Holy, written by Chet Raymo<br />
<br />
Well, where to begin... <u>The Myth of Free Will</u> was pretty good. I am just beginning my deeper reading on the subject of free will. I guess I'm convinced that we don't have it, but I'm unsure - so far - how this acceptance effects my behavior and judgement. It's a tricky thing. How do you parent when you don't believe in free will? Surprisingly, it makes me much more compassionate. Also, it makes me more accepting of my own attempts to shape my child. This is what I keep thinking: new information is an event, like any other event. It has effects, like weather, war and strokes of great luck and serendipitous random occurrences. Therefore understanding that I have no free will is also an event. I guess what I'm saying is that I realize my own actions, driven unconsciously by forces I have no control over, still - obviously - have an effect on the world around me. Those effects also drive unconscious forces in other people who will respond whatever way or however way they are going to respond. It's simultaneously empowering and dis-empowering. Okay, I'm not explaining this properly - partly because I have only a limited grasp of the concepts myself and how I digest them into my own psyche. So, I will stop for now, but this is an ongoing idea that I continually turn over in my thoughts. Evatt's book is a breezy, <i>and dare I say light?</i>, a summary of the leading thoughts on the subject of free will. I read another one of her books too, <u>The Givers & The Takers</u>, which divides the people of the world into one or the other. It's over-simplifying things, to be sure, but there were some good take-aways from it. For example, "Give to givers and take from takers." I've kept that in mind and it's been helpful.<br />
<br />
I enjoy Kate Atkinson's books. There are three books in this mystery series, and <u>One Good Turn</u> is the second in the series. She's such a delightful, funny, surprising writer. I'm in love with her protagonist, Jackson Brodie - an ex-cop, ex-detective, divorced-dad who is so endearing and hapless and intelligent. I often laugh out loud while reading Atkinson.<br />
<br />
Now, I must say the Bernie Madoff book, <u>The Wizard of Lies</u>, was FANTASTIC. Ohmygod, you must read this book. Diana Henriques is a fair and exacting writer. I never really understood exactly what was going on with the Madoff case. I mean, I understood it was a big ponzi scheme, but I didn't pay close attention to the details. It's heartbreaking. I want to see the movie. I want Aaron Sorkin to write the script. The whole story is mind-boggingly compelling. I drove Michael crazy, after every page I had to tell him what was happening. <br />
<br />
Lastly, and I feel bad that I'm running out of gas here because I have so much feeling for these books - I love Chet Raymo. I want to meet this man. We are so similar - Catholic, appreciative of the culture - or at least parts of the culture, but ultimately non-believers. <u>When God is Gone, Everything is Holy </u>was like a meal I'd been waiting to devour. The book is mostly chapters musing on this and that. My criticism is that the book should have added up to more, but it's meant to be written in a non-linear and wandering fashion. On the other hand, I agreed with almost everything he wrote and felt so similarly. I love this guy. I really appreciated this book. I want to read his other books, now.<br />
<br />
Well, today I'm heading over to Space, to do the first of eight workshop performances for the book I'm writing:<u> If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother</u>. I'm going to read three chapters I've written, and riff on three story ideas I may write up. I'm going to tell stories I could not tell in my book, and it's going to be very casual and I hope fun. I also hope there are a few people there. This is what I did when I began the process of writing <u>Letting Go of God</u>. I went to the Knitting Factory (a club in L.A. that was supposed to be like the one in NYC) on a late afternoon every week for several weeks and just plowed through what I was working on at the moment. It was extremely helpful. <br />
<br />
I have a new assistant and she just started this week. I haven't had a helper in a long, long time. Her name is Pam. I'm looking forward to working with her, we are really clicking. She'll be there today at the show.<br />
<br />
Well, for this month (sadly, two weeks overdue) that's all folks! <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-38298648507226547672011-09-06T12:59:00.005-05:002011-09-06T13:38:30.533-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qoC7S9MKuio/TmZCChWw0NI/AAAAAAAAAJo/ZeV6Qqc8cD0/s1600/blogsept11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qoC7S9MKuio/TmZCChWw0NI/AAAAAAAAAJo/ZeV6Qqc8cD0/s320/blogsept11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Mulan sings along with "Oklahoma!" in the basement home theater. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>It was a hot, happy, and somewhat harried August.<br />
<br />
Here are the movies I watched in August 2011:<br />
<br />
1. Pitfall, Andre DeToth<br />
2. To Kill A Mockingbird (twice), Robert Mulligan<br />
3. They Won't Forget, Mervyn LeRoy<br />
4. Young Mr. Lincoln, John Ford<br />
5. It's Always Fair Weather, Gene Kelly & Stanley Donan<br />
6. The Edge of the World, Michael Powell<br />
7. Vera Drake, Mike Leigh<br />
8. Gun Crazy (twice), Joseph H. Lewis<br />
9. Sweet Land, Ali Selim<br />
10. A Canterbury Tale, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressberger<br />
11. Contraband, <i>AKA Blackout</i>, Michael Powell<br />
12. Ballerina, Bertrand Normand<br />
13. Oklahoma!, Fred Zinnermann<br />
14. Bleak Moments, Mike Leigh<br />
15. A Passage to India, David Lean<br />
<br />
It was a very enjoyable film-watching month. I actually happily appreciated every single movie, well - perhaps with the exception of "Sweet Land." That film was just glaringly underdeveloped, in my humble opinion. Oh, and also - surprisingly, "A Passage to India." I'm sure the book was better, but jeez. Yeash. I wanted to yell at the screen: When characters behave in unbelievable ways, it does not make them complicated! It just makes them unbelievable!!!!!! How could Mrs. Moore have left India? Maybe the book makes it clear, I dunno... <br />
<br />
The highlights, if I had to parse them out, would be seeing "Gun Crazy" for the first time ever - and then, after almost losing my mind over how great this film is, I forced Michael to watch it with me. In a period of six hours I'd seen it twice. The long tracking shot in the car while they start their bank robbing spree - the parking lot, the feeling of claustrophobia and fear and titilation are incomparable. I liked it better than Bonnie and Clyde (heresy!) The scene where they meet each other - at the carnival, c'mon. Very hot. Funny, and actually steamy too. Fantastic. God, you just have to see it! I was laughing out loud from sheer delight and excitement! <br />
<br />
I got "Gun Crazy" from Netflix, but I didn't listen to the commentary, so I think I might send for it again. <br />
<br />
We watched "To Kill a Mockingbird." Mulan promptly announced that was the best movie she'd ever seen. I was surprised, since I hadn't seen the film since I was a kid - at not only how great it was - but how iconic its been for me my whole life, and without me being completely aware of this. Boo Radley is such a potent character, one I've been inspired by in my own screenwriting. Of course Atticus and Scout and Jem and Dill - the whole world of it. It was so good, we (Michael, me and Mulan) were all three crying by the end. The image that arrested me most surprisingly was the scene when Atticus sits on the top of the jail house steps (with the standing, crook-necked lamp next to his wooden lawyer's chair) and quietly reads, attempting to protect Tom Robinson who's inside. Just the sight of Atticus sitting there - before the crowd of angry men arrive, and then the children - just that single image of Atticus so alone, so calm, and so clearly doing the right thing, made me get a lump in my throat. I didn't realize that this image has always been with me, I see it when I read certain stories in the paper, when I see decency and courage and quiet all wrapped up in some person. That lamp and that chair have unknowingly become for me a symbolic screen-shot of justice and protection.<br />
<br />
I didn't realize that when I first came to know about Obama, I had that image in my mind too. I think I must have thought he was a kind of modern Atticus Finch - his careful speech and deliberate manners. I guess we are all hoodwinked by our fantasies. I used to think that conservative Republicans who didn't care for Obama must have thought he was conjured up magically, the perfect Democrat in every way. I've tried hard to look the other way in poor choice, and sad unnecessary compromise again and again, thinking there was some master plan that I just didn't know about. I thought I really knew and trusted Obama, especially after reading "Dreams from My Father."<br />
<br />
But now, after so many disappointments - the capitulation on the debt ceiling and the latest scrapping of the proposed EPA regulations on smog and oil drilling - those two things being just a couple in a long list of bad moves. I know he's being strangled by an inept and clearly stupid Congress, but I think he can do a lot more. I don't think he has to give in constantly even before the fighting starts. I just don't get it. Seriously I'm baffled. I have lost the sense that Obama personally cares about doing the right thing, even if it's impossible to accomplish.<br />
<br />
I'm really finding it hard to see the difference in Obama's policies and Bush's, and now I'm wondering if Obama isn't just a magical conjured person dreamed up by Republicans! Okay, I'll say it: I think I'm ready to jump ship. I don't feel I'm capable of supporting him. It would require blind faith and I have run the gas out on blind faith in Obama. No, I don't want Rick Perry (or Mitt?) to scare me into voting for Obama. But I have to admit that I'm completely depressed and disillusioned by this current administration. I could go on - I won't for now, but it's very very sad to me and causes me a lot of distress. (I'm beginning to not-secretly wish that Bernie Sanders would run for president.)<br />
<br />
Frankly, I'm still livid over the fact that Bin Laden was not captured and tried in a court of law. And I guess I bring this up here because seeing "To Kill a Mockingbird" again, after so many years... well, I see how far we've come when even our Democratic president abandons the process of law. I remember when I was a kid and saying to my Dad something about some hateful dictator - I said, "Why don't we just go and kill him?" And my dad said, "That's against the law. Because that is wrong. There are international laws in place, and even the most heinous person must be allowed to defend himself in a court of law." I really felt that the world - the United States - had made that leap into civilization. <br />
<br />
God, what a joke that is now. Jeez. The truth is we did just what Bin Laden was wishing we would do, (which he blatantly said, in recorded audio release again and again and again) and draw the U.S. Military into countless Middle East wars and bring our nation to bankruptcy. <br />
<br />
Enough. Breathe. Slowly now...<br />
<br />
I need to take a walk around the block.<br />
<br />
I'm back.<br />
<br />
Okay. So... <br />
<br />
At the end of August, my mother and my two aunts (my mother's two sisters) came for a long weekend visit. There was really only time for one movie. Mulan insisted we watch "To Kill a Mockingbird" again. The extras on the DVD are excellent - very good interviews with all the main players and a making-of doc that's well done. When I read later that when Gregory Peck died, Brock Peters (who played Tom Robinson) gave the eulogy at the funeral - well, that gave me tingles. <br />
<br />
What other film highlights? "Pitfall" is a long-neglected film noir that is very well done and hard to see now. "Young Mr. Lincoln - of course I had seen that before but a long time ago. I remembered liking it a lot. But this time, I realized it was even better than I recalled. Henry Fonda is soooo good. This movie shows that in the hands of a master like John Ford, even a straight flattering bio-pic can have style and punch and substance, even leave you with a sense of having watched something profound.<br />
<br />
"Oklahoma!" was fun, and Mulan is now constantly singing all it's songs. In the last two weeks, I often hear her singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" in the kitchen while she's making her breakfast. God, that is so funny to me.<br />
<br />
After watching "Vera Drake" I was up all night, going over this scene and that one. I'm on a Mike Leigh jag and want to see everything he's ever directed. Leigh's good. There is just nothing like his films. Long improvisation and character development with actors pays off.<br />
<br />
"It's Always Fair Weather" is my favorite musical. It has a real adult, complex story and fantastic singing and dancing. Should we just say, categorically, that Cyd Charisse has the best body ever on film? Maybe ever in the history of women? I think so. I think she's the best dancer too.<br />
<br />
I'm also trying to catch up on all the Powell-Pressberger movies. "The Edge of the World" was made before their partnership was cemented - by Powell, but it really haunted me. It takes place on some Scottish Islands - or are they Irish? I don't remember, but it feels like a book I read - it has that kind of feeling that gets under your skin. You feel you've lived it. Oh! And "A Canterbury Tale" - the Archers collaboration - so good. Incredibly odd plot and yet uncanny in it's deceptively meaningful story. I read that there's a yearly hike along the route of the film in England. I want to make that some year.<br />
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Books read in August, 2011:<br />
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1.) <u>Anthill</u>, by E.O. Wilson. Jeeezhus. Is there nothing this man can do? I guess I had low literary expectations, but he's not only a great scientist, he's a good writer too. It's a compelling and well-written story. And I learned a lot about ants. The Ant Chronicles are the main characters master's thesis and they comprise about a third of the middle part of the book. Really funny and scary and good. I agree - we have no free will. <br />
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2.) <u>The Devil in the White City</u>, by Erik Larsen. I still have about a quarter of the book left. Larsen is a terrific writer. I know that the Architecture Foundation here in Chicago has a tour of the sites from the book. I think I'll go this weekend. The book's about the 1893 Columbian Exhibition and a serial killer named H. H. Holmes. It's so sad, bone-chillingly creepy, shocking, and then - with Burnham, the architect and leader of the exposition - he is really human and deeply inspiring. And Olmstead! God what a great character come to life. I've surrendered my mind to this book. <br />
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Two Architecture Tours Twice in August: Went on the Chicago River Architecture tour twice with two sets of guests, then did it all again as we did a Sunday bus tour of Highlights of Chicago. I could go on both of those tours a few more times before I'd be tired of it. Great tour guides. I'm going to start trying to go on two architecture tours a month now. <i>This month my goal is: Calvary Cemetery Tour (where my great grandmother and grandfather are buried along with several other relatives) and the Devil in the White City tour. </i> I am feeling so lucky to be living here right now.<br />
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I went to New York City for four days in August, and I took Mulan with me. We went to two Broadway shows together: <u>War Horse</u>, which was very schmaltzy but very enjoyable. Mulan loved, loved, LOVED it. I guess Spielberg is making the film. The stage craft is very good. We also saw the <u>Book of Mormon</u>. I think it's genius. I bought the soundtrack. I love the songs, they're still in my head all the time. I could tell that "The Invention of Lying" and Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" were big influences. But it was great. Funny and it got better as I thought about it. Really top-notch. Mulan didn't like it! But she knows nothing about religion. She kept tugging my sleeve and asking things like, "What is a baptism?" Lots of explaining. Wow, my kid has no religious knowledge whatsoever. <br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-42148082048013570752011-08-15T21:17:00.007-05:002011-08-15T21:44:47.465-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpxPEo1a4ec&feature=channel_video_title"> Monarch Caterpillars Pupating</a><br />
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We planted two different kinds of milkweed in our backyard to attempt to attract Monarch butterflies. It worked. Now Michael has transformed the dining room into a Monarch nursery and has begun taking lots of pictures and making little films. The video is of two Monarch caterpillars becoming pupae. The pupae are so beautiful, a light green with a golden rim and highlights in a deeper gold. They would make fabulous earrings.<br />
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On to the movies watched in July 2011:<br />
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1. Cimarron, Anthony Mann<br />
2. You and Me and Everyone We Know, Miranda July<br />
3. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Steven Okazaki<br />
4. Helvetica, Gary Hustwit<br />
5. 2 O'Clock Courage, Anthony Mann<br />
6. Pick Up on South Street, Sam Fuller<br />
7. Burden of Dreams, Les Blank<br />
8. Topsy Turvy, Mike Leigh<br />
9. Another Year, Mike Leigh<br />
10. The Searchers, John Ford<br />
11. Whip It, Drew Barrymore<br />
12. E.T., Steven Speilberg<br />
13. Spartacus, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Mann (uncredited)<br />
14. Laurence of Arabia, David Lean<br />
15. The Lincoln Lawyer, Brad Furman<br />
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<br />
This was quite a delightful movie-watching month. <br />
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The clear highlight was three days watching two epics, absolutely stoned.<br />
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Well, on Benadryl.<br />
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Mulan came back from camp and told us how everyone had gotten sick, just before the end. She proudly announced that she did not feel sick. I immediately did feel sick. I don't know if that's how I got it, but that's the story that makes sense. In any case, I got a terrible cold in the middle of a horrid heat wave. I was delirious and had trouble sleeping and had trouble not sleeping. I was in a daze. I took a lot of Benadryl and drank a lot of tea. Somehow it seemed right the right moment to watch "Spartacus," which I had never seen, and "Lawrence of Arabia,"which I had seen so long ago that I only had a dim memory of it. <br />
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I loved "Spartacus" so much, it moved right to the top of my list of epics made about Rome. Kirk Douglas was so good, I forgave him for his shameless appearance on the most recent Academy Awards. (Actually I blame others, it felt like a creepy form of elder-abuse.) In any case, here Douglas was, in his glory, at his height of physical beauty and a damn good actor in a movie he really made happen from the start to finish. <br />
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Then, on to "Lawrence of Arabia," which I watched over two days, and then on the third day watched all the making-of extras on the DVD. I also spent my time, while not watching the actual movie, googling the history of this time, and the man on which the story is based, and reading all about the production. I loved this movie too - so hypnotic. I appreciated that we have a home theater in the basement like never before. I don't know how you'd watch "Lawrence of Arabia" on a television set and get any sense of it's grandeur. It was so dark in the basement, and the desert was so big and all- encompassing. I felt like I had been on another planet afterwards.<br />
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I think - seriously - that watching those two movies in that state of mind and body were one of my life's greatest movie watching extravaganzas and experiences. See, getting sick can pay off.<br />
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Another great epic I watched during July was "The Searchers." I have probably seen this movie five to eight times before, but as I get older, I just appreciate it even more. Also, just having read, in June, the book about Cynthia Parker's abduction, (Empire of the Summer Moon) on which the story for the film is based, my appreciation for "The Searchers" was enhanced. Even though it doesn't matter if the story is true or not - it just works. I wonder if there is a more perfect film. Seriously, I do.<br />
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Other wonderful film experiences included "Pick Up on South Street" - another movie I've seen a few times, but probably over twenty years ago. My god, it is terrific. Better than I remembered. Richard Widmark and Jean Peters are so good. There are extras on the DVD which are fabulous, including an interview with Richard Widmark about doing the film. <br />
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On the documentary side of things, Okazaki's "Bright Light, Black Rain" stays with me still, the images of people who survived the atomic bombs. Let me just say, you think you know what happened, but really you probably don't. This film takes you a long way towards understanding the real effect those bombs had on people who survived. Chilling. And really well made.<br />
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I loved both Mike Leigh films, especially "Topsy Turvy." <br />
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On the sad side of things, I felt "Cimarron" was nearly unwatchable. It was so terrible. I felt for Anthony Mann. I read he walked off the film when it was nearly over because of disputes with the studio. It's so awful. I was embarrassed for him to have his name on that movie. <br />
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Now, books read during July 2011:<br />
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1.) <u>The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris</u> by David McCullough. I read this book slowly. Savoring each chapter. Allowing myself the time to look up this painter and that, this doctor and that, this politician and that. There are pictures in this book, but they are limited. I was enthralled with the story of Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the Morse Code. My imagination was ignited by John Singer Sargent, and I had to look up this portrait and that online, over and over again. In fact, I was into Sargent, that the next book I read was an art book, but with very good text.<br />
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2.) <u>John Singer Sargent</u>, by Carter Ratcliff. I read every word, like it was a novel. Sargent's life is a feast of the imagination. He was the child of middle income, American, but European smitten parents who never lived in one place too long. He had the kind of childhood I think most of us wish we'd had - no formal schooling, tutors in Italy, England, Spain, etc. A mother taking him to museums and hiring art teachers. Friends who were equally loose-footed. He lived the best life, although he was never concerned with the poverty on the edges of his life. Never stirred by the politics which raged with extremity during his time in Europe. Great book with a great overview.<br />
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3.) <u>The Stein's Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the French Avant-Garde by Janet Bishop, Cecile Debray, Rebecca A. Rabinow, Emily Braun, Gary Tinterow, Martha Lucy, Claudine Grammont, Carrie Pilto, Helene Klein, Isabel Alfandary, Edward M. Burns, and McD Robert Parker.</u> <u> </u> Whilst in San Francisco... (I've just read Russell Brand's fabulous commentary on the London riots in The Guardian and can't get "whilst" out of my vocabulary, read it for yourself at: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron">UK riots: Big Brother isn't watching you | UK news | The Guardian</a>)<br />
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Anyhoo - whilst in San Francisco, I went to a really wonderful exhibit on the Stein family, including Gertrude - and their art collections. The exhibit was at the SFMOMA. I was so overwhelmed by the delightful nature of this exhibit that I couldn't take it all in in one visit. Even though I was only in San Francisco for four days, I had to go again. It was even better the second time. The exhibit moves from San Francisco to New York, (to the MET,) and then to Paris. If you have a chance to go, I recommend it. I fell into the Stein world and couldn't get myself out. The book that goes along with the exhibition is very good. I got it at SFMOMA, but I see it is on Amazon for half the price I paid. No matter, it is a great book that I'm already very happy to own. Included in the exhibition are not only the story of this remarkable family and their collections, but pieces of furniture that were in their homes. I wouldn't have guessed that this would make me so happy - to see old desks and dressers, but it did. It felt like you could touch history. My biggest surprise: realizing that I probably would have preferred the company of Michael and Sarah Stein to Gertrude and Alice. And realizing that I preferred the Matisses to the Picassos. Great art book, in my humble opinion.<br />
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4.) <u>A Planet of Viruses</u>, by Carl Zimmer. I love Carl Zimmer so much. I devoured <u>Parasite Rex</u>, and <u>Evolution: the Triumph of an Idea</u>. I hope Carl Zimmer lives a long, long time so we can get more and more books from him. Viruses; they are scary, it's debatable whether they are truly alive or if they could be defined as an animal, they are terrifying and will take over the planet in bad ways - surely they will - even while we are just acknowledging how they participated mightily in the instigation of life itself and that viruses, partly, made human beings human beings. It's a short read - under 100 pages, but intense and well explained. <br />
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Now I have started E.O. Wilson's "Anthill." his only book of fiction. It's good. But I'm not done yet. More on it next month. <br />
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This last month I really got derailed, the trip to San Francisco, then got sick, then we went camping in Door County, Wisconsin (want to go again, it was so beautiful - Cape Cod right in the mid-west!) and then house guests and then a short trip to New York - but now I'm getting into August. So, I will wait and post again at the end of the month, properly - and not two weeks late. Thanks of the comments on last month's post. I really appreciated them. <br />
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As for Arden, thanks for those who expressed concern over him (my dog, who has a tumor, who has an unspecified amount of time to live.) He seems pretty much okay! He still goes on his long 3 mile walk, he still chases rabbits and squirrels. The truth is, that tumor (which is between his lungs and heart) could have been there, growing very slowly, for a long time. On the other hand, he has a weird and getting-weirder cough. It's odd to spend so much time around a being who is terminally ill and has no idea. For now, his morning walks are moving to a first place on my daily to-do list. And I'm letting him stop on our walks, and smell the pee for a longer amount of time. Also, where we walk: down this block or that, crossing this way and that - well, I give him more say, it's more serendipitous all around. <br />
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I shoulda been that way a lot earlier with him.<br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-3540033519714428932011-07-05T17:22:00.014-05:002011-07-06T15:14:32.979-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gtvICVDSIMY/ThNmHJ7WdvI/AAAAAAAAAJk/RJsDL38zGwE/s1600/IMG_2370.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gtvICVDSIMY/ThNmHJ7WdvI/AAAAAAAAAJk/RJsDL38zGwE/s320/IMG_2370.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's July 2011</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I will never run for political office. Okay, I guess never say never. But I seriously doubt I would ever run, for many reasons, mostly because (aside from my inelectibility and my inability to do a good job) I am not temperamentally suited to such a task. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But I will admit, I occasionally think about my platform. Yes! How I would do things if it were Sweeneyland. It's a fun game, figuring out what I would do if I were suddenly in power. Therefore, it being July, and the day after the 4th, I thought I would begin to reveal my opinions. No, many aren't novel. Many are ridiculous. None will ever happen. But still, it's something to think about and to wish for. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One reason I like to admit to a specific point of view is because then that view can be tipped up and back, defended and reignited and maybe changed. The whole balm I get from settling on a point of view helps me veer away from the constant feeling of being a curmudgeonly skeptic, and sadly a helpless observer. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If I were Queen, I would institute these changes:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">1.) Flat income tax with no deductions. I'm guessing between 15 to 25%. No nifty accountants, no discount for being poor, no deductions for children, or interest on house loans, or even medical expenses, and no increased tax for the rich. I know it seems like the rich should pay more, but I think they pay so much less now -- than even poor people do -- because of all the deductions they take. I think this is a fair start. Maybe increase the tax rate on the rich as we see how things go.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">2.) Mandatory conscription. Everyone has to serve two years. It can be in the military but could also be building infrastructure in the U.S. or aid, Peace Corps like, outside the U.S. This would also help create a more cohesive American culture. To me this is important because I think the need for culture is great and religion swoops into the vacuum. Additionally, if people from the wealthier classes had to send their children off to war, there would be fewer wars. Duh. Also, people from different classes would mix together.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">3.) Universal health care. Medicare for all. Untether health care from jobs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">4.) Universal and equal education. Remove the correlation between property taxes and school budgets. Children of people who are <b>not</b> high-income expensive-home-owners should not have to go to schools of any less quality because of their parents situation. Parents in rich areas have a greater resource of available at-home parents who can volunteer and this is allowed. This will inevitably cause a discrepancy in the schools, but this I will allow. (Yes! I am QUEEN! This is fun!) Religious private schools are outlawed. Private alternative learning schools are allowed, as long as the basics are taught. This subject is added to the curriculum: Religion. Not teaching religion, teaching children <b>about</b> religion. The Bible is mandatory reading in school. Are you shocked? I do believe we would have much less fanaticism, fundamentalism, and influence by the religious right if everyone were forced to just simply read the Bible as literature, as a historical document, as a window into religion itself and not the word of god. I would still allow religions to exist (aren't I tolerant?) and kids could get religious schooling after their regular school if their parent chooses this. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">5.) Charity Schmarity. No tax deductions for churches or any non-profit organizations. None. People will still give money to charities even if it's there is no tax benefit, this has been proven time and again. Churches rake it in and have little to report about it. Other charities do too, it drives me nuts. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">6.) No inheritance. You can't transfer wealth to those who are over age 21. (Okay, this idea is impossible, hell, they're all probably impossible - but this one really REALLY is. Still, I like the idea that wealth cannot be transferred to those who did not earn it unless they're children.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">7.) Eliminate special states rights. State lines should evolve over time to simple cultural and geographical delineation's. No special business tax havens in Wyoming, for example. State taxes would also be set at a flat rate and every state would have the same rate.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">8.) Lobbying is made illegal. Sure there will still be lobbyists, but it will be clandestine and when rooted out, prosecutable. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">9.) Electoral college abolished. One person, one vote. I would go with the necessity of picture identification cards at the polling places. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">10.) Eliminate tax subsidies to any business that is profitable or even possibly profitable. Eliminate tax subsidies to any business that creates pollution. (I'm thinking how angry I get over oil subsidies. OIL, we give money to <i>OIL COMPANIES</i>!)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">11.) Marijuana decriminalized.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">12.) Other drugs also should be decriminalized, but they can only be done if you're not a parent and in a safe environment and not driving. If you're out of your home (which cannot have children in it) you have to be with others doing the same drug. Basically I would set up drug houses where, if you want to do drugs, that's fine, you can go there and do it. But you have to stay there until you're off of the drug or dead. I guess that means we will also provide the drugs. All right, fine. But no leaving until you are dead or not high anymore. (HA! This is really fun!) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">13.) End-of-life rights, or assisted suicide rights guaranteed, equal marriage rights for gays, prostitution decriminalized, and regulated. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">14.) "Under God" taken out of the pledge. In fact, let's toss the pledge. Why do we have to pledge? "In God We Trust" replaced with the <u>historical, original</u> "E Pluribus Unum" on money. Let's not toss the money. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">15.) Our influence in the world limited to defending a Universal Bill of Rights. Forget about bringing democracy everywhere. A solid Bill of Rights is more important than democracy. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">16.) Online poker is legalized. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">17.) Palestine has a right to exist, Israel and settlements out of the Gaza Strip. Jeez! Let the boats in, for crying out loud.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">18.) State Fair's are mandatory. State's cannot vote to de-fund them. (Michigan?! are you listening?) They are too much fun and add to state pride and understanding. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">19.) Abortions are free. Anyone who wants one can have one. No questions asked, no waiting period. Also, babies born with really severe disabilities can be euthanized in the first three months, of course only if the parents want it. Yes, I said it. I'm with Peter Singer on this one. I know it's a tragedy. These things happen. While I'm on the subject, birth control is also free. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">20.) Cash payments for going to the gym. I'm not sure how this will actually work but somehow you get $20 in cash for every time you go work out at the gym or go to yoga. Only one event per day.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">21.) High school students must graduate with a certified skill. It could be hair cutting, electrical apprenticeships, copy editor apprentices, marble cutters, sous chefs - something - a skill that can be learned in a year, which has enough basics for a job, and is certifiable. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">22.) (added 7-6) YES! Corporations are not persons! They are corporations! You can say whatever you want about them. How could I forget that one?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">All right. That's my platform so far. Wow, that was fun. I feel a little giddy. I may have indefensible ideas, yes - I like to read and mull. I change and morph. But right now, this is my dream. I don't want to turn this blog into a big debate about them (not that it would, I'm just sayin') but I am interested in other's platforms. Or comments. Let's all create our own platforms! </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Oh dear, and now I'm thinking about shoes. Well, I guess that is as good a transition as any. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now I will list the movies I watched this month, followed by books read.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Movies watched in June, 2011</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">1.) "Becoming Jane" Julian Jarrold</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">2.) "Even The Rain" Iciar Bollain</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">3.) "Back Beat" Ian Softley</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">4.) "American Quilts" Laurie Gorman</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">5.) "Sullivan's Travels" Preston Sturges</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">6.) "The Baron of Arizona" Sam Fuller</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">7.) "Objectified" Gary Hustwit</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">8.) "Salesman" Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">9.) "The Talent Given Us" Andrew Wagner</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">10.) "Beginners" Mike Mills</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">11.) "The Beatles, The First U.S. Visit" Albert & David Maysles, Kathy Dougherty and Susan Fromke</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">12.) "A Dandy In Aspic" Anthony Mann</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">13.) "The Virgin Suicides" Sofia Coppola</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">14.) "Bamboo Blonde" Anthony Mann</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As I look over this varied list of movies, it's interesting what stands out now. The biggest one-two punch was watching "Salesman" one day and "The Talent Given Us" the next day. I really loved "Even the Rain" right after I saw it, but then I haven't thought of it since. Funny how that goes. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I was deeply affected by "Salesman" - a documentary about Bible salesmen from Boston, working in Florida. The footage was shot in 1966-67. It was so raw and realistic - I mean, hell - it <i>was</i> real. But I couldn't get over how natural everyone was - like they didn't realize a camera was there. The main guy - (or, the person who turns into the main guy, I should say) is a Willie Loman-like, sweet and manipulative person who's hitting the ceiling on his abilities to sell and keep himself together. The salesmen are mostly Irish Catholic and I think that may have influenced my attachment to this film. This movie is deeply haunting. I found it very sad and poignant and surprisingly funny. It's a view of the world in 1967 that is discombobulatingly authentic and visceral. I was practically unable to walk for a day or so, after seeing Salesman. I'm still thinking about it day to day to day. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But then, unwittingly kicking it up a notch, I viewed, "The Talent Given Us." I'd put this film in my Netflix queue because I'd enjoyed "Starting Out In The Evening" and I wanted to see Andrew Wagner's first directorial effort. He had his family act in this first feature film of his. He wrote the screenplay too, but it appears to be suspiciously close to his own families true issues and experiences. It blew me away. The shocking thing is that in the first third to first half of the film, I was thinking of bailing and turning it off. It's very uneven and the performances are sometimes painful. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's a story about his parents (excuse me, characters much like his parents) driving across country - from New York City to L.A. to visit him (I mean, a character who is a screenwriter who is played by him.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The scenes he has with his parents, well, some are really sexual scenes. It was so shocking he would film his parents this way. I don't consider myself a prude, but knowing that it was his real mom and dad, watching his real mother (playing a character - okay, okay) saying, "I want to fuck" to his dad and being openly sexual with him, as well as pretty raunchy... Well, for this viewer, it was a bit dizzying. Yes, the movie was really sweet and believable, but also infuriating and I will admit it made me squeamish and uncomfortable, but then, I really appreciated that Wagner was manipulating his audience (and clearly me, too) that way. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This film led me to wonder about so much - how his family felt playing these "characters" and how it is now, having made this film a few years ago. My jaw was literally falling open for minutes at a time as I watched this movie. I told several people they had to see it. I'm eagerly awaiting another Andrew Wagner movie. IMDB does not have any new project for him, but he really, really has been given a lot of talent. Not that I believe in talent (see last month's book postings.) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I don't have any big insights into any of the other movies, except I do want to say that I enjoyed "Becoming Jane" a lot more than I thought I would, and probably a lot more than I had a right to. I found myself unexpectedly crying at the end. I thought Anne Hathaway was really good in it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Books read in June, 2011</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I only read two this month, and am in the middle of the third.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">1.) <u>Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, The Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History</u>, written by S.C. Gwynne. Oh! Oh! Oh! You have to read this book. It's so compelling, heartbreaking and breathtaking. Beautifully written. I didn't know about the Comanches being special - everything I knew about the Comanches I learned from John Wayne, watching "The Searchers." <i>Which reminds me that it's time to rewatch that movie. </i>Their territory was mostly in Texas - parts of Oklahoma and Northern Mexico too. The Comanches were real hunter gatherers. I didn't realize that what truly did them in was the systematic and deliberate destruction of their food source, the buffalo. What I mean is, I didn't know it was so calculated. And Quanah Parker should be known by all Americans as an amazing person with a completely unique life in all of history. This book is so good! </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">2.) <u>Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See Smell and Know</u>, written by Alexandra Horowitz. This book was really good, too. I like reading about dogs. It was particularly poignant to read this book right now because I have just learned that my dog, Arden, has a tumor in between his lung and heart. He has trouble breathing and it's unclear how much time he has left. It could be a terrifically slow-growing tumor. Right now he seems pretty much fine. In any case, reading this book was particularly meaningful because I'm feeling very close to Arden and enjoying every minute I have with him. Most of the things I learned from this book, I already knew, but enjoyed being reminded about. Like how much more a dog can smell and why they lick people's faces (wolf mothers regurgitate food into pups mouths, and this behavior seems to be a remnant of that) and of course I love how Horowitz teases people who treat dogs like people. For example, as I heard just this morning on my dog walk, a woman saying to her dog: "Max, get in the car, we have to go home to see Aunt Mary who's just flown back from China!" It's really astonishing how many people think explaining things helps a dog understand what's going on.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">3.) <u>The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris</u>, written by David McCullough. I'm halfway through this book and oh, do I want to move to Paris. I'm really enjoying it greatly. He's a very good writer. It's very systematic and logical and clear writing, and yet it's lyrical and inspirational too. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Okay, that's it for this month. Until August ---</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-44864776626020755382011-06-06T14:00:00.006-05:002011-06-06T20:36:49.341-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1HuwsBVpU58/TezzxPI0qTI/AAAAAAAAAJg/C6KRqg4x648/s1600/blog+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1HuwsBVpU58/TezzxPI0qTI/AAAAAAAAAJg/C6KRqg4x648/s320/blog+pic.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Spent two days going through old pictures. I'm not a good scrapbooker. In general, I have a love-hate relationship with photographs. A lot of time with friends and family has been momentarily ruined, in my opinion, by someone insisting on taking a picture as it tears people out of the moment. I think the photographer has a two-pronged and equally shitty effect - to make everyone look at him or her, while simultaneously making them self-concious about how they look, how their expression will be viewed again and again. <br />
<br />
Generally, I don't like pictures of people looking into a camera. On the other hand it's awkward to begin taking candid pictures of people while they are unaware. I have a few friends who take many pictures, and none of them posed. I've just gotten used to it. I like their pictures more than staged ones. <br />
<br />
I have gone up and back on this. When I became sorta, a little bit famous, people wanted pictures taken with me and I obliged. I sometimes asked other people I admired for pictures with them. But always with a note of embarrassment, regret, self-hate, aware of how the moment with that person was disrupted. And I mean a "note" in that last sentence. Not completely, not enough to stop myself or anyone else. <br />
<br />
I also have a somewhat extreme relationship with how I look in pictures. I care a lot, and I don't care at all. If I cared more, I would care more to look better. I don't care but I have bad feelings about myself if I don't look good. Good mostly means thin. I try to relax and broaden my outlook and sometimes I succeed, but mostly I don't. I exasperate my mother when she wants a picture. She has many pictures of me looking into the lens with resigned compliance and a dash of resentment. <br />
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I have not put together books of memories. I thought I would start when I became a mother. But apparently, I didn't. Well... I did a small album here and there. Weirdly, the more easily pictures were able to be taken and stored -- meaning when it all became digital -- I took even less pictures. Mulan's childhood pictures are bursts of ten pictures of one situation, and then nothing for a long time.<br />
<br />
Back when I got pictures developed, I threw them into one of three large plastic boxes, and this is what I'm going through.<br />
<br />
My friend Gino takes a picture every day. He's done this for over ten years, wait -- maybe fifteen years. One picture a day. Just an image that reflects that day. Millions do this on facebook now, but I like the private way he does it, just for him.<br />
<br />
I might try to do that. I don't know, half of my pictures are of scenery. Screw scenery! (Especially when you are not a good photographer!) Why do I have all these pictures of scenery? I travelled around a lot in the two years before I adopted Mulan and for the most part, I was alone. Sometimes I joined a friend, and I often took a Backroads trip. Backroads is this "active travel" company - mostly I took bike trips with them. Often I was the only single person along with eight or so other couples. I didn't mind it. In fact, I remember always feeling so happy that I got to go to my own room, alone, at the end of the day. But these couples often wanted a picture of the two of them in some spectacular place - the Galapagos, Machu Pichu, the Swiss Alps, Bhutan, Nepal - the list goes on and on. I would take their picture. And then they would say, "Uh... Thanks. Do you want us to um... take a picure of you?" <br />
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I didn't care if I had a picture of me in that far-away place. But it felt weird to say "no." Like I was judging them for wanting their own picture, or maybe they felt I was sad about being alone. So the easiest thing to do was to say "Okay." In any case, I have loads of pictures of scenery, and me by myself in exotic places, and pictures of other people on bikes. In the pictures of me, my expression is reigned compliance, but not with the resentment I add to my mother's pictures. <br />
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I began to throw away pictures. I threw away two large garbage bags full of pictures. I had to develop a criteria. It was: people who I love, keep. Mulan. Family, if they look good and would want me to have this picture of them in this way. Me, if I look good. Yes, I admit it. If I look particularly good, even if I don't know who I'm standing there with, I will keep the picture. <br />
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I began to wonder if this wasn't just ridiculously narcissistic. Why am I doing it? So I can remember I looked good in that moment? I guess. I dunno. I think I want Mulan, in the future and when I'm long dead, to look back and rewrite the images of me with sweat running down my blotchy red full face while I ask her to pick up her room and insert an image of me with some unknown person, but looking fantastic. I guess that's my strategy. <br />
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Forget it, those pictures are going in the trash too.<br />
<br />
A scary moment was when I came upon some pictures of a wedding. <i>I didn't know anyone at this wedding. </i> Were they even my pictures? Were these friends of Michael's and they somehow got into my box of pictures? I didn't recognize anyone, even among his friends. Then I came upon a large picture of the whole wedding party sitting down and looking in the camera - about twenty five people. Huh. I didn't recognize anyone, anyone at all. <br />
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Then horror of horrors, I spotted <b>myself</b> in the picture. And I was sitting next to the bride! Who the hell were these people? Was I getting dementia? Is this how it starts? My god!<br />
<br />
A long while passed, and I was feeling seriously discombobulated. Then, I remembered that on a bike trip in Burgundy in France - when I didn't know anyone at all in the group - one of the couples decided to spontaneously get married. And that's who it was and why I was there.<br />
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Sheesh!<br />
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The picture project is going to take me all summer working on it here and there. <br />
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Okay, here is my list of movies watched in May 2011:<br />
<br />
1.) The Heroes of Telemark, Anthony Mann<br />
2.) My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki<br />
3.) The Great North, IMAX movie, Martin J. Dignard & William Reeve<br />
4.) Side Street, Anthony Mann<br />
5.) Border Incident, Anthony Mann<br />
6.) Everlasting Moments, Jan Troell (saw it twice this month)<br />
7.) The Tin Star, Anthony Mann<br />
8.) Gladiator, Ridley Scott<br />
9.) Inside Job, Charles Ferguson<br />
10.) Raw Deal, Anthony Mann<br />
11.) Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?), John Sheinfeld<br />
12.) Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki<br />
13.) Harvey, Henry Koster<br />
14.) High School Musical 2, Kenny Ortega<br />
15.) Midnight In Paris, Woody Allen<br />
16.) Serenade, Anthony Mann<br />
17.) Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance<br />
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Once again, I spent the month - emotionally - with Anthony Mann. So many great movies. And some of his mediocre efforts were moved to Great Efforts simply by watching other people's movies. A case in point: <u>Gladiator</u>. I enjoyed <u>Fall of the Roman Empire</u> - but wow, did it get a whole lot better after I watched <u>Gladiator</u>, which I thought was a horrible mess. I cannot believe <u>Gladiator</u> won best picture. What a boring, yet splashy bowl-of-porridge that movie is. <br />
<br />
I have a deep and great affection for <u>My Neighbor Totoro</u> - it's the third time I've watched it. I want to go to Tokyo and visit Studio Ghibli. I truly adore Hayao Miyazaki - he is the animator reincarnation of Yasojiro Ozu, but with a lot more action. Later in the month Mulan and I watched <u>Spirited Away</u> again as well. The first time Mulan watched this film she was too little and it scared her deeply. Now she is exactly the right age. She enjoyed it, mentioned it again and again for days. And I appreciated this movie even more than I did before.<br />
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Of all the Anthony Mann movies I watched this month, I think I give top marks to <u>The Tin Star</u>. No, <u>Side Street</u> (with Farley Granger! So good.) Wait, no.... <u>The Tin Star</u> - yeah, I like it better. Anthony Perkins in the perfect role - in his early twenties: nervous, unschooled, ambitious, frightened, all those emotions that only Anthony Perkins can mix up just perfectly. Henry Fonda was a delight - I might even prefer him to Jimmy Stewart in Mann's westerns. I know! Heretical statement. One of the big moral dilemmas of the movie was whether to allow the bad guys to get killed when they're captured, or to make sure they get a proper trial. I wish the Obama administration, as well as Obama (!) had watched this film at the White House before deciding to just shoot Osama Bin Ladena without a trial. <br />
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I watched <u>Border Incident</u> again with my friend Cindy who was in town and had a flight delayed. We had just enough time for a 90 minute movie and we chose this one. It was better the second time, and that's saying something. <br />
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Two disappointments: <u>Blue Valentine</u> and <u>Inside Job</u>. I guess I had a lot of expectations for both of those movies. I did not think <u>Inside Job</u> did a very good "job" explaining the financial melt-down. I hated the music which vascillated wildly between nice and evil depending on who was being interviewed. Very slick movie - too slick. I think Planet Money on Public Radio did (and does) a much better job explaining how things went down. <u>Blue Valentine</u> - gosh I really thought I would like this movie. I lerve (see - Woody Allen reference!) Michelle Williams. But I felt the movie had that indie-condescension of working class people. Look at them - they buy alcohol in gallon jugs at the liquor mart and go to cheesy theme hotels! I didn't buy them as characters and I wondered if the writer or director had any real understanding of these people But this movie got rave reviews. I just don't get it. The only director I've recently watched who really does her homework is Debra Granik. <u>The Blue Valentine</u> movie team should have watched <u>Down to the Bone</u> by Granik first.<br />
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O how I love Harry Nilsson. I listen to him constantly. I love his song, "Good Old Desk," which I often play just before starting to write in the morning. I enjoyed this documentary and I learned a few things. I wish they'd had a more in depth interview with his last wife. She married him when she was 20 and he was much older. They describe the wedding - Ringo Starr had to hold Nilsson's arm up to help him put on his bride's ring because he was so high and drunk. There was story after story about Harry carousing, and showing up at friend's houses and then going off with them for three days on a big debauchery-ridden drunk. What did she think about that? They had five or six children together... What was she thinking? The film does not go there. I wish it did. Still, Harry Nilsson is a compelling and complicated character. Friends describe the time when John Lennon and Harry Nilsson decided to basically wreck their voices together. They began screaming and screaming until their vocal chords were bloody, which is so heartbreaking. Two of our greatest singer song writers destroying their instruments. Harry's voice was never quite the same after that, he had a lot of trouble. It made me think of that concept from evolutionary psychology - where there is "intra-sex competition" (?) and individuals show their fitness by being or doing dangerous things, flirting with death to show superiority and excessive sexual fitness. So, we have two peacocks: Lennon and Nilsson, pulling their feathers out of their backsides - one-upping each other. Risking it all. Very disturbing and poignant. (Anthony Weiner, is that what it's about?)<br />
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<u>Harvey</u>. I'd never seent his movie but had heard so much. It was excrutiating to watch. One joke. <i>Barely</i> one joke. He has an invisible rabbit friend! He wants to introduce the rabbit to people! He's a nut! <u>Harvey</u> makes <u>It's Pat</u> seem like <u>Citizen Cane</u> in complexity. The screw-ball comedy was so forced and fake. I spent the whole time wondering if Koster had seen any Preston Sturges, a guy who knows how to do screw-ball comedy. <u>Harvey</u> was so much more horrible than I thought it would be. I looked it up on IMDB and found that Steven Speilberg is remaking it with Tom Hanks! HA HA HA. How perfect! Wow. I do not have high hopes for that remake, on the other hand - maybe Speilberg can reinvent it. I doubt it, however. <br />
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I watched <u>Everlasting Moments</u> and was just bowled over by it. It's a Swedish movie about a woman at the turn of the nineteenth century who is stuck in a fairly bad marriage and having kid after kid. She learns photography and this art elevates her life. I had such affection for this movie that I insisted a group of friends come over and watch. They liked it, but I think they thought the film was extremely sad. When I watched for the second time, I realized how incredibly depressing (and long) this movie was. I have to say, this is a common experience for me. Me loving a movie, and not realizing how dark it is because to me it's mournful and beautiful. Then I watch it again through my friend's eyes and the whole time I'm thinking.... "Oh... Yeah... I guess this is... really extremely, breathtakingly, debilitatingly and totally sad. Oh, and long." <br />
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<br />
Now, Woody Allen. Where to start? I went to college with a one-sheet poster for <u>The Front</u> which I put up above my bed at my sorority. At that point, and I swear that this is true - I had never met a Jewish person before. That's how white Spokane Washington is. I vividly remember seeing <u>Annie Hall</u> for the first time. It played at the State Theater downtown (now the Bing Crosby theater where Jill and I just performed.) I went alone to the movie, and I remember that part so well that it might have been the first time I did that. It was the summer before I started college. I think I had actually seen The Front already. But I remember sitting in <u>Annie Hall </u>and being so blown away by this movie. Not just the film making, but the environment. Woody Allen, Diane Keaton - New York City. I could barely stay in my seat I wanted to move to New York so badly. The whole movie I kept thinking, Okay, this is it. I want to live in this world. I want to be in Manhattan. I want to be around funny and witty and smart and quirky people. Woody Allen is some kind of comedy god. <br />
<br />
Then of course, everything - life - happened. I did move to New York. Woody Allen became a creep. Worse than that his movies began to suck. I wondered if his movies were ever any good. I stopped going to his movies. <br />
<br />
But <u>Midnight in Paris</u> promised to be different. And I have just recently fallen in love with Paris. So Mulan and I went on Memorial Day. As soon as the credits - that font -- <i>that Woody Allen font </i>- came up on the black screen - I felt this chemical shift in my body. I wanted it to be good. I wanted to feel the way I used to feel. And the truth is, the movie is not a masterpiece. It is not <u>Crimes and Misdemeanors</u> (my favorite.) But it is enjoyable. His characters are all very one dimensional and broad. His characterizations of Hemmingway and other famous writers have the depth of a bad sitcom. His characterizations of Republicans and rich people in L.A. are completely off. But y'know what? I really loved it. I enjoyed every minute of it. It's gorgeous. It's fun. It's a night with an old friend that you'd written off, but is somehow still around. That's how it felt. <br />
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<br />
And now, books read in May 2011.<br />
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1. <u>Talent Is Overrated</u>, by Geoffrey Colvin. Wow. This book had a big impact. Not as big as the next book I read, but still. It caused me to rethink and review certain work endeavors of mine in the past - rethink my behavior now, and influence how I advise and raise Mulan. So, that's a lot for one book. According to this book, talent is not only overrated, it may not actually exist. It may not be innate - although there is debate whether "deliberate practice" is enhanced by certain biological factors. The point is, it's all about "deliberate practice" which is defined as: Engaging in highly structured activities to improve performace and overcome weaknesses. I realized that I have not practicied much with the precision necessary to master the skills I wish I had. What I have mastered, I realize I have done so practically accidentally. I did a lot of sketch work at the Groundlings, and I've been working for years telling stories on stage. But I am not organized about it - not focusing all the time on ways to improve. I cannot stand to hear my own voice so I do not record myself. All those things I've watched other people do, many of whom have really soared professionally. I have not really applied myself. Of course now I am old. But old people can still practice deliberately! So I've started working more systematically on writing, and I've even begun to read and watch movies with more deliberate desire to learn. When it comes to music, the book shows how ability is related tightly to how much one has practiced. It takes about 1200 hours of practice to be merely proficient on an instrument. 7500 hours to be good. 10k or more hours to master it. This caused me to encourage Mulan to focus on one instrument and aim to be proficient on it. She takes violin, piano, and up till last year, guitar. But now she is focusing mostly on piano. We will see how it goes. My favorite thing about being a mother right now is that my daughter is old enough to understand when I tell her these things. I honestly don't know if I had known this - especially at her age - I would have applied the knowledge. But still, it's advice she can take or discard. As for me, I am thinking about things differently - even going to yoga. Making an effort to get better. Making comparisons to other practice sessions. It's a small psychological shift - but has had an effect. <br />
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2. <u>Your Brain at Work</u>, by David Rock. I am so blown away by how insightful and useful and brilliantly laid out this book is that I said to Michael, "If Scientology had all the levels they currently have, and you moved up and up through the system, and when you got to the top - instead of telling you about the god Zenu they handed you a copy of this book, I would say it was all worth it." Rock takes all the brain science we currently know, organizes it in story form - as in a play with two characters (the best way for us to understand information) and shows how understanding how your brain works can dramatically change your life - even though you are making very subtle changes - there is potential for big results. I really have used the information in this book. I understand when my neocortex is overwhelmed with emotion (often) and how I cannot think straight when that happens. I understand how I can't think of more than a couple of things at once, how the stage of the neocortex is very small. I have a lot more respect for my brain because of this book. I've been giving Mulan little bits of information from it here and there and she's hungry for more. I wish I'd read this book many years ago. I don't want to say more, I just completely and totally recommend it.<br />
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3.) <u>Case Histories</u>, by Kate Atkinson. This was my only fiction for the month. I adore this writer. I cannot wait to begin the sequel to this, <u>One Good Turn</u>, the next book in the series that features Jackson as the investigator. <br />
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4.) <u>Sin in the Second City</u>, by Karen Abbott. I had a very good start with this book, and then it went downhill. I was excited to read it because I (think) I am related to Hinky Dink Kenna - an alderman in Chicago for many years at the turn of the century (19th to 20th.) My grandmother suggested Kenna was a relative, but now she's not around to ask about specifics. In any case, Hinky Dink Kenna helped my grandmother's family after her father died and left her mother with seven young children to support. The book describes a very salacious period of Chicago history, and the Everleigh Club - a fancy brothel run by two sisters. But the way the book is written - very over the top, filled with scenes that Abbot cannot possibly have known about - too much intrigue and no footnotes and it made me wonder. <br />
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4.) <u>The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry</u>, by Jon Ronson. Well written, funny, insightful, sad. Can you see I am running out of steam here on my blog? Ha. That's too bad, because this is the one book I read this month that I insisted that Michael read. You should too. <br />
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I am too tired. I have to post this and get back to work. No - to my "deliberate practice." I'm not going to post music I use on the treamill. Next month. I got some good music suggestions from people writing here - thank you! All right, until next month....<br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-19374031989886328532011-05-02T16:25:00.406-05:002011-05-03T09:56:17.996-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bIodJkjw35o/TbnJ71tDhXI/AAAAAAAAAJY/sOA1grXSJCE/s1600/anthony_mann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bIodJkjw35o/TbnJ71tDhXI/AAAAAAAAAJY/sOA1grXSJCE/s320/anthony_mann.jpg" width="256" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lHcofOc5rCk/TbnJ9xCLQ2I/AAAAAAAAAJc/B6SLFCB6LYs/s1600/MarthaBeck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lHcofOc5rCk/TbnJ9xCLQ2I/AAAAAAAAAJc/B6SLFCB6LYs/s1600/MarthaBeck.jpg" /></span></a></div><u><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anthony Mann and Martha Beck</span></b></u><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yes, an unusual pairing. But those two individuals dominated my April.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It was an explosion of man-on-Mann violence in movies, while simultaneously reading self-help books!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">However, first. Before we get to the movies and books, a word about exercise music.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I haven't posted my treadmill music for a couple of months. One reason is that I had a computer back up disaster that caused me to lose two years of new music. After I cried, (and yes, I did cry) I got realistic. I had bought a fair number of CDs, and I still had those. And at least on iTunes, I was able to see what music I'd downloaded over the last two years. 50% of it - honestly, I didn't care enough to buy it again. That was a real eye-opener. I guess I can be impulsive about music. What turned into a blessing was this: I had made a folder a couple of years ago called simply: exercise music. Anytime I heard a song that I thought would make me work out harder, I added it to the list. Then I culled from it and made up an hour of music and changed it about once a month. In general I get on the treadmill in my basement three or four times a week for an hour. (Not when out of town.) I don't run. (I hate to run.) I walk fast - I set the pace at 3.8 mph. I do some arm movements in three minute intervals. I sweat. 60 minutes goes by. For me, it's a workout. But I need music to push me along. I need to be both familiar with the song and yet surprised by it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I got a new hard drive, and happily, all the books I had downloaded from audible were in my "library" and I was able to download them again. Then I set on this fun and serendipitous task of beginning a new exercise folder, starting from scratch. After that I made another list - my current exercise list - it's one hour and fifteen minutes long. This is good because I don't get through the whole list in each workout, (I set it on shuffle) and I'm always happy to hear what's next. And yes, there are some - what you might say cringe-worthy songs - guilty pleasures, if you will. Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" for example. But you cannot beat that song for making your body move. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. Bonneville, The DB's</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. Angels, Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3. Good Old Desk, Harry Nilsson</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4. Shiny Happy People, R.E.M. featuring Kate Pearson</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5. Loser, Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6. I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7. It's The End Of The World As We Know It, R.E.M.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8. Vertigo, U2</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">9. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">10. The Fall of the World's Own Optimist, Aimee Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">11. Indoor Fireworks, Elvis Costello</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">12. Waiting For The End Of The World, Elvis Costello</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">13. Use Me, Bill Withers</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">14. Do I Ever Cross Your Mind, Emmylou Harris and Linda Rondstadt and Dolly Parton</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">15. Green Pastures, Emmylou Harris</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">16. Dance Me To The End Of Love, Leonard Cohen</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">17. Midnight Train to Georgia, Gladys Knight and the Pips</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">18. Survivor, Jill Sobule</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">19. Mayor of Simpleton, XTC</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">20. Pump It, Black Eyed Peas</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">21. Psycho Killer, Talking Heads</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Okay. Now onto books for the month of April. I'm still not reading fiction and that's a shame. I have "READ FICTION" on my list again, and I cannot check this off because I have not read a single book of fiction for the entire month. As often happens, the non-fiction takes over. Another thing often happens: I read a book that causes a detour and I veer off in a whole new direction. The queue of books is toppled, and instead there are all these other books.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That's what reading, "Leaving the Saints" by Martha Beck did. I had a full-on crazy Martha Beck month. I knew about Martha Beck from occasionally reading her column in Oprah magazine. I can't remember what prompted me to buy "Leaving the Saints" although it's totally a book I would buy. It's just been sitting around. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Well, I devoured it. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough, and I often woke up in the night to read more. Yes, I had my own leaving-my-religion experience, but hers is so super-charged and over-the-top and yet true! Every experience I had was mild compared with hers. My experience was really much, MUCH more cerebral than her experience. The Mormon church has always fascinated me. It's all-encompassing. The nice, mildly intellectual Catholic community I grew up in was eons more open-minded and worldly than the Mormon community Martha came from. Her father was a well known, high status apologist in the church. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> she had some recovered sexual abuse memories to deal with. I didn't have anything like that in my experience. Probably our biggest difference is that I chucked the whole magical world view, and she retained a good deal of it, mostly in the form of what I would call woo-woo, or new agey ideas that dance around scientific concepts (and seem to incorporate them to those who are not scientifically literate) but which really allow her to believe in a universe that cares about her, has a destiny waiting for her, and is a mix of predetermination with a dose of free-will driven by optimism. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wow, just writing that last sentence, one would think I don't like Martha Beck. But no! I do like her, and very, very much, too. There's a lot left out of "Leaving the Saints." I wanted to know more, how her marriage broke up, how she met her new partner, how she feels about being gay and her husband (apparently) being out too. It's very poignant to me that they met and married and they both came out of the closet and they both left the church -- and they both left the church for reasons other than their emerging sexual desires. All that seems so potent and compelling, and none of that is in this book. I want more!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Still, it was </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">great</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. I had so many experiences similar to Martha's but much subtler. My parents being fine with my lack-of-faith privately but not fine with it publicly. The constant battle - choosing between community and integrity. The astonishment that hardly anyone in my growing-up Catholic community had thought much at all about the things I was struggling mightily with. I too had many of the same types of "religious" experiences that Martha describes. Not as intense, but I recognized them and I relate. There were times when I was so distraught and so confused, and I had experiences too - where I was certain a divine presence was near me and this caused me to think everything was fine and going according to plan. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I came to understand those experiences as psychological and biological strategies that do not come from a god or any supernatural source. Martha came to redefine her relationship with God through those experiences. She also puts much more confidence in coincidence, and uses those events to point to Ultimate Meaning where I think they are simply coincidences or are connections that I make on my own. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To me, the most chilling scene in the book is when Martha's mother believes her accusations of sexual abuse, and then recants and calls Martha a liar. I'm sure that is typical of these kinds of explosive revelations in families.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Martha mentions Steve Benson in her book a few times. He happens to be a friend of mine. He also left the Mormon Church publicly. Steve's a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist for a newspaper, the Arizona Republic. His stuff is here, it's really good: </span><a href="http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/benson"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steve Benson cartoons. </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> His grandfather was the president of the LDS church (Ezra Taft Benson) and Steve's de-conversion was also painful and public and resulted in being ostracized from his family. He accidentally called me on Easter, thinking he was calling another "Julia" and we laughed about that and I enthused, "I'm reading 'Leaving the Saints!' You're in it!" I think I scared him with my exuberance. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But - back to the book. I am typically very skeptical of sexual abuse claims, and I have to say that Martha's claims rest on pretty flimsy evidence. It must have been traumatizing, but if I were her, I think I would have dropped the issue about sexual abuse. It's her word against her father's and there is or was no winning or proving that point. On the other hand, Martha is so candid about this very aspect of it, and is such a master at dissecting Mormon culture that cause this type of secrecy and sexual repression and outburst. Martha is also very insightful about what works inside the church and in the Mormon community. And how scary it is to leave it behind.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I loved the book. I just loved it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, I had to go and read everything else she's ever written. These are the books I read in April:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1.) Leaving The Saints, Martha Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2.) The Joy Diet, 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life, Martha Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3.) The Four Day Win, End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4.) Steering By Starlight: The Science and Magic of Finding Your Destiny, Martha Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5.) Changes of the Heart: Martha Beck Life Coaches Share Strategies for Facing Life's Challenges, edited by Martha Beck</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6.) Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, Martha Beck</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, you see. You see how it all exploded. Martha Beck was everywhere. And you know, overall, even though many parts of several of the books literally made me cringe, even though it was kind of crazy to read so many self-help books all at once, even though I think if I were reading this blog post and I wasn't me I would be frowning and shaking my head right now - even though all that is true -- I got a lot out of each book. The "Four Day Win" diet book was hands down the best diet book I've ever read, and people: I have read A LOT of 'em. Have I followed it? No. Not specifically. But some of the concepts are really useful and have been extremely helpful. The finding your destiny books - </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">North Star </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steering by Starlight</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - also very woo-woo, but if you can let that part go, if you can just say, "Hey, I'll go with it, just for now" they are insightful. The thing is, it might be adaptive and helpful to selectively believe in some kind of magical thinking. As long as you know you're doing it - like when you go to a movie. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Speaking of MOVIES. Oh! What a month, what a month, what a month!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Last summer I was visiting my dear friends Richard Jameson and Kathleen Murphy. They're both film critics. They are a couple. They were both teachers of mine in college at the University of Washington in Seattle. (I loved each separately as teachers and when I found out they were married I nearly fainted!) Richard became the editor of Film Comment (requiring him to live in New York City) the same year I got on Saturday Night Live. For two years I lived with Richard and Kathleen in Brooklyn. Now they live in Seattle again. They are still very active writers, mostly writing film criticism at MSN.com.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anyhoo - I was at their house, and Richard had just recorded, off of TMC, "The Black Book" by Anthony Mann. It's a rare noir film, set in revolutionary France no less, and the DP was John Alton, and I had never seen it before. It was magnificent looking. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Richard sent me a copy. That's what began my Mann education. Richard keeps sending me DVDs, now I'm also getting them off Amazon and Netflix. I feel this deep love and appreciation for Anthony Mann. I am so sad that he died, suddenly, while filming "A Dandy In Aspic" at age 60, in 1968. I think I can now say that he is my favorite film director. But I could just be in the first bloom of love. I may have lost my head. But I don't care! I love Anthony Mann! I just love him!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Richard and Kathleen sent me a book about Anthony Mann, by Jeanine Basinger. It's by my bed, and I read chapters about the movie's I've seen just after I've seen them. It's a continuing compulsion. I think when I have seen everything I can see, I may start again - or at least watch the ten or so movies that I like most. Anyway, that's why Anthony Mann is so heavily represented in my movie watching this month.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">These are the movies I watched in April, 2011.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. The Kings Speech, Tom Hooper </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">for the second time</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. Dinner for Schmucks, Jay Roach</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3. The Tillman Story, Amir Bar-Lev</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4. Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6. Gasland, Josh Fox</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7. Still Bill, Damani Baker and Alex Vlack</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8. Castle in the Sky, Hayao Miyazaki</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">9. Amelie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">10. Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">11. The Furies, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">12. Railroaded!, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">13. Man of the West, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">14. Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">15. T-Men, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">16. The Last Frontier, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">17. The Far Country, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">18. The Fall of the Roman Empire, Anthony Mann</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">19. Young Victoria, Jean-Marc Vallee</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">20. Nanook of the North, Robert J. Flaherty</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Notes on the films: "The Tillman Story" had me up for several nights. Pat Tillman's story is so haunting and upsetting and mythic and yet real and mundane (sadly) that I cannot get him out of my head and I'd love to meet his mother. I'm not generally a conspiracy-theorist-leaning-person, but I am skeptical about the Tillman's death - not just the cover up, but the whole thing. I want to go on the walk (there's a "Pat's Walk" held every year which raises money for military scholarships) and I actually wondered for a split-second if they wanted "Pat" to go on "Pat's walk" (although the whole Pat thing is probably too much in the past and simultaneously too weird to even bring up.) Anyway, as a supporter of his legacy, I'd like to go on that walk. I wish I could have known Pat Tillman. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It was fun to watch "Reservoir Dogs" again, after almost twenty years!!!! Michael had never seen it, so we watched. It was as good as ever. As creepy as ever. And everyone looks so young. Long ago, Quentin once arranged a night where everyone who was in the movie, and available, went to the Beverly Cinema in L.A. (I happened to be hanging out with Quentin a lot then and was there too) and watch "Reservoir Dogs" at midnight. I ended up watching the movie (which I'd seen several times before) SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO MICHAEL MADSEN. It was one of the most surreal life-experiences ever. A few years ago, I was a co-host at the Academy Editing Awards in L.A. and Michael Madsen was at my table. He didn't remember me, but I cannot be around that guy without thinking that my ear is going to be cut off and I'm going to be doused in gasoline.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I watched "Still Bill" twice. It's a documentary about Bill Withers and I found it very uplifting. So inspiring, I insisted that Michael and Mulan watch it and that's how I came to watch it twice. Surprisingly, Michael found it depressing. I didn't. I think this movie is a Rorschach test about how you feel about people "retiring" maybe. I dunno, I loved it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'm not sure how we came to watch "Easy Rider." I'd never seen it and it must have come up on our Netflix queue. Michael hadn't seen the film since he was a teenager. It was funny and great, campy and silly, bad and good, all simultaneously. What was ever better was the making-of documentary on the DVD. In various ways it was more satisfying than the film itself. I had a big surge of love for Dennis Hopper, who hosted SNL while I was a cast member. My little glimpse of his personality was memorable. He seemed "touched" in a good way - a special otherworldly person. Terrible at SNL though. Hilariously bad at sketches. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"Nowhere Boy" was a happy surprise. After reading "John Lennon The Life" by Philip Norman last year, I was hankering to see this film, and I felt the filmmakers got the story just right. The whole triangle: John, his mother, and his aunt Mimi, it's a story that could really be fucked up. And yet, it wasn't. The tone was pitch perfect. They got the weird motherly, authoritarian, sexual, mysterious, unseemly relationship between mother and aunt and son just right. It was amazing. Just astonishingly good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We watched "Young Victoria" the night that Will and Kate wed in London. That's how we celebrated the wedding. I was also happily surprised by how good this movie was. Emily Blunt is a subtle, competent and amorphous actress. What a part!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Okay, the Anthony Mann movies: The one that stays with me the most is probably... Probably... Oh... How to choose... Okay, if I have to: "The Last Frontier." Victor Mature is GREAT. He is perfect. It's a complicated story and I was surprised again and again. But also, "Man of the West" that was good too. However, in both movies, the women - the women characters, they really could've been better. I wish I could rewrite and remake both films, even though I still loved them as they are. The women were two dimensional, where they could have been more complicated. "The Last Frontier"was really a modern film in many ways, and Robert Preston is in it as the evil military leader. I have recently seen "The Music Man" and have reveled in his talent, so this was a treat to see him in such a completely different role. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I just finished "The Fall of the Roman Empire" and I watched all the extras on the new Blue Ray DVD. It was complicated and thoughtful, and I sort of can see why it wasn't a hit. It deals with very complex material. I felt the whole time like I was watching a film about the United States getting enmeshed in wars which they have no understanding of and that are getting out of hand. How could this movie have been made then? We need to watch it now, I think. Christopher Plummer is phenomenal, giving a star performance. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There was a documentary on the extras part of the DVD that featured Anthony Mann - I kept thinking: he's going to be dead in three years. And yet he looks so happy. (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Odd, like I think he should know that he's going to be dead in three years...</span>) Of course this was before the movie was a flop. And I don't think that depressed him all that much. (Probably not as much as Samuel Bronston who went bankrupt.) But still, he looked so sweet and happy. Like he would have been a great guy to know. Oh! I love Anthony Mann!</span><br />
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</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-8872434511734622362011-04-08T13:14:00.002-05:002011-04-08T14:01:22.040-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AtyaAqqDFK8/TZ57qOQC88I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/dy3EwuWiNn8/s1600/ParisRainyDay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AtyaAqqDFK8/TZ57qOQC88I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/dy3EwuWiNn8/s320/ParisRainyDay.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKUc2U3sK9A/TZ57sszbpxI/AAAAAAAAAJU/cNo3kx5IOM0/s1600/CalliabotteParisRainy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WKUc2U3sK9A/TZ57sszbpxI/AAAAAAAAAJU/cNo3kx5IOM0/s320/CalliabotteParisRainy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Just home from eight days in Paris. Michael’s brother Joel lives there, and we've been wanting to go for a long time. Mulan began taking French at school this year, so she was eager to try out speaking French to real Frenchians. Joel’s favorite impressionist painter is Gustave Caillebotte, whose best known work: "Paris on a Rainy Day" hangs at the Art Institute here in Chicago. Joel had this idea that we should restage the picture now. He knew the exact location of the painting. So one day, we all traipsed out – on a rainy day in Paris – to take our version of the picture. And there you have it – one Caillebotte’s version, and one Joel’s starring me, Michael and Mulan as the person walking towards us. Unfortunately we had only one umbrella. But still, it's an approximation. Cars really take the romantic out of a place, don't you think?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I've travelled quite a bit in the last six weeks. Since Feb. 19<sup>th</sup> – only 42 days ago, I have been on the road for 25 of those days. Hawaii, the Pacific NorthWest, France. Truthfully, I'm always scheming for another trip and my urge to travel has the markers for addiction. For example, in a moment of downtime in Paris I found myself googling rental houses in Hawaii for next year. Something that I not only canNOT afford to do, it's way too far in the future, and isn't even advisable from a time available vs. other commitments standpoint. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Wow, just writing that caused me to stop and shudder. My mind is an “I want” machine. It can get out of hand. Plus, as much as I love to travel, I have an equal feeling of hate towards it. The getting ready, the re-entry back into routines. It's all much more effort than the trip itself. After this much travel, I am practically on the verge of entering a contemplative convent which observes the offices of the day and has only bland un-spiced food. Now, where could I join a convent like that? Should I start googling it?<br />
<br />
Damn.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, now I have a large swath of time without guests or travel. I am feeling greedy and ambitious about it. I want a schedule. I want a slow encroachment towards completing tasks. I want organization and plodding effort. I don't want that zing. Travel is like sugar, it gets me all hopped up. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But back to Paris for a moment, shall we? <br />
<br />
It was such a dreamy, lovely trip. Every day in Paris we went to a museum and also did some major area site seeing and a whole lot of walking. We rode bikes on Sunday when the express-ways near the Siene are blocked off for just that purpose. We wandered all around Monmartre with a nice walking tour in English (called “Paris Walks.”) We did another tour called: The History of Fashion. Mulan was riveted. Me too. Our guide started with Louis 14th showing off his great legs in tights and went on from there. On top of all this, Joel invited us to join him to see several historical exhibits I would never have gone to without prodding. For example: The Paris Commune of 1871 at City Hall.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oh, I want to live in Paris!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I'd only been to Paris once before. In 1981, just after I graduated from college. I went backpacking with my brother, Bill, and we camped. That’s right, we <b>camped</b> in Paris. I'm not sure where, just outside the city. We had to walk everywhere in Paris with huge backpacks. We ate canned food, heated on a butane stove outside our tent, IN PARIS. I barely remember anything from that trip except glimpses of the glimpses we got of the Mona Lisa and the gardens at Versailles and the Eiffel tower – although I don’t believe we had the money to go to the top and just hung out at the middle level. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, now I’m in love with the city. I didn’t realize how easy it was to get around (the Metro system is so efficient and reliable and widespread) and how knowing only English was almost never an impediment. I had a big fantasy going while I was there about how I could live there for a whole year. I am always like that, falling for every place I visit. What a tart!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Speaking of which, the pastries were great. Joel’s apartment (originally built around 1650) in the Morais was an ideal spot for people-watching from his large second floor window. Orthodox Jews mixed with gay people and hip fashion stores next to kosher falafel stands. Every morning Joel would make us great dark rich coffee while Mulan and I went to his favorite boulangerie and got croissants. Mulan would order them in French. I simply beamed with pride. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just before this Paris trip I went on the road with Jill Sobule. We did four Jill & Julia Shows in six days: Spokane, Portland, Seattle, and then Los Angeles. Dave Carpenter came along to play the bass. He's such a great addition to our mix and we all laughed so hard on this trip. It was an absolute joy. The travel was also grueling, but somehow the days felt light-hearted and breezy. Wow, just writing about Jill and Dave causes me to wish we were on the road again. In Spokane they made it "Julia Sweeney Day" (truly embarrassing to everyone except my mother) and the mayor, Mary Verner, came to our show and gave me a calligraphic official proclamation. She was really cool and funny as we joked around backstage about my "<i>day</i>." </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Okay, let’s get on to the lists:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Books read in the month of March, in the year of 2011:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">1.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span><u>After The Ice, A Global Human History 20,000 – 5,000 B.C</u>. by Steven Mithen. I finished this book, I had started it last month. It knocked my socks off. It’s not that I learned anything completely surprising, it’s just the detail of knowledge, the big overview of prehistoric man was world-view changing. It’s like when I took my first Economics class and suddenly the world and it’s myriad of transactions were forever altered. I knew how money worked, I just didn’t realize – I didn’t see how it invaded <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i>. That’s how I feel about his book. It’s heart wrenching, and deeply poignant and inspiring - reading about what we know about societies and groups of people scraping out a life so long ago. It’s bone-chilling when you think how our climate is probably going to be changing dramatically in the next 100 years – in fact it could very well be as different from the weather we have now as the Last Glacial Maximum was from the warm, perfect-for-farming weather that we have experienced (more or less) since, say, 10,000 B.C. There is an extreme likelihood of major population movement (and decline) drought, and warfare over dwindling resources. I feel we're living in a Belle Epoch, in the future people will look back and say that the 100 years around just now - here in this place - in an affluent democracy – in relatively calm weather very conducive for humans and farming, it was a paradise. But am I just an ego-maniac trying to imagine a horrible future, but just after I die? Am I so guilty over giving up a belief in God that I have latched onto an apocalyptic world-view in another way? I really don't think so, but then, I can't read what I just wrote - and not wonder if I'm being hysterical. My answer: no! It's real and it's happening. <br />
<br />
<br />
And so, lets calm ourselves by thinking of... bad mothers.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">2.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span><u>Bad Mother</u> by Ayelet Waldman. This book is funny and smart. I'd read the reviews, and various articles written by Waldman before, but never read this book. I love this woman! God, it’s hilarious, relatable, provocative and bracingly truthful all at the same time. It's inspired.</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">3.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> <u> </u></span><u>The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean </u>by Susan Casey. Waves happen to scare me deeply, and not just because of the recent tsunami tragedies. Long ago, in Santa Monica, CA, I was driving home late at night, and I looked over my left shoulder at the ocean - very dark and big and foreboding. The moonlight was just so. Suddenly I was overcome by the idea that there was this huge mass of water so close to me, and the only reason it stayed put was because of gravity. I know that's true for everything. But to me at that moment, the ocean looked like a docile gigantic monster that just happened to be sleeping. I verged on developing an out and out panic attack - my heart rate climbed, I pushed down on the gas pedal, I broke out into a sweat. I drove home to Hollywood quickly, flying down the freeway, as if I had to outrun the ocean which was chasing me. (A psychologist may have pointed out that I was also driving home from a boyfriend who had just told me two very disturbing things: the first was that he feared my vagina was going to bite his penis off - he had had some horrible dream about it. And this was not he scariest part of it! The double punch was that he insisted he'd never heard of vagina dentata before. The second very disturbing event was just after this, while I was trying to configure my face into an expression less like Munch's "The Scream." He confessed he had waxed his entire back, to get rid of hair, <i>by himself.</i> This had caused his entire back to erupt in disgusting oozing pustules that he wanted me to dab with some special ointment. <i>Btw, I had never said a think about his back hair, hadn't even thought about it. </i> But alas, I feigned an illness and basically bolted out the door. Yes, cruel. But yet - unavoidable. In any case, true, this may have contributed to my sudden fear of the ocean. Let me also add: I was 24 years old.) Bottom line: Waves fascinate and scare me. Surfers intrigue me. Tsunamis seem to be on the rise. (he he) This book delivered.<br />
<br />
<u>The Kill</u> by Emile Zola. Finally, some fiction! I really want to read fiction, I really do! But jezhus sometimes I just cannot get there. On the plane to Paris, I began this novel which I enjoyed thoroughly. My brother-in-law Joel had recommended it. Joel is currently in the thrall of a particular time in French h history: the Second Empire and the Haussmannization of Paris. Haussmann was the prefect of Paris in the mid-1800's. He oversaw a great modernization effort that destroyed much of medieval Paris and introduced the big boulevards and iconic apartment buildings that define most of Paris today. There was a lot of back-room dealing, fortunes were lost and made, and much graft and profiteering. This is the backdrop of the book, The Kill. It's filled with real estate scheming, debauchery, incest and excess of every kind. I wish Zola were alive to write the stories of New York financiers during the last ten years – it all rings so familiar. Joel took us on walks around many homes that were of the type the characters in the book lived in, and we even walked around a park that is featured prominently in The Kill. </div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">4.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span><u>Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction</u> by Bill McGuire. I know. I <i>know</i>! I'm so hungry for doom. This book concentrates on Ice Ages and Warm Ages, Earthquakes and Tsunamis, and Volcanic Eruptions. It also addresses human induced global warming and possible ice aging (for example, if the gulf stream shuts down there is a marked possibility that the British Isles and northern Europe would experience a mini-ice age.) The most surprising frightening thing I learned is that global warming causes more earthquakes. That association was never made clear to me before. Why? Because water is heavy. When there is more water in the ocean, and less of it seized up in ice, it’s weighs down on the earth’s crust. Every additional inch of water is a significant difference is weight. The fault lines get much more pressure, and they give way more quickly, therefore more earthquakes.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">5.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Now I've just started “<u>Scream-Free Parenting</u>” (ha – just writing that made me laugh. And then, sadly, wince.) by Hal Edward Lunkel. Then, I hope, I swear, on to another book of fiction. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m much more of a risk-taker with non-fiction than with fiction. With non-fiction, at least I’m going to learn something, it doesn’t have to be extraordinarily written. I get eager just because of the subject matter. But fiction. God – it’s hard. I want to read it – but it must be stellar or I’ll stop. I give up pretty quickly. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These are the non-fiction books piled on my office desktop right now: <u>Bossypants</u>, by Tina Fey, <u>Great American Hypocrites</u> by Glenn Greenwald, <u>The Most Human Human</u> by Brian Christian, <u>Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman</u> by Jon Krakauer and finally <u>Leaving The Saints</u> by Martha Beck.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The fiction books, piled on the other side of my desk are: William Trevor’s <u>Selected Stories</u>, Peter Carey’s <u>Parrot and Olivier in America</u>, Zola's <u>The Belly of Paris.</u> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I can start a book of fiction while not first grabbing Fey's <u>Bossypants</u>, it will be a miracle. <br />
<br />
In fact, I can say with confidence right now that I cannot resist Tina Fey. In all her forms. I might have to stop writing this blog to go read her book.<br />
<br />
Okay, I did. It was great. I actually laughed so hard at the list of things to do to get a break from your baby that I snorted and lost control of my laughter in a freaky way that would have terrified anyone if they'd been home to witness it. Get this book. She is just, oh - Tina Fey! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Okay, the list of MOVIES!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">1.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Salt, Phillip Noyce</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">2.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">3.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Devil’s Doorway, Anthony Mann</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">4.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">5.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">6.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Meet Me in St. Lewis, Vincente Minnelli</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">7.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Music Man, the TV version directed by Jeff Bleckner</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">8.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Cairo Time, Ruba Nadda</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">9.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Joan Rivers, A Piece of Work, Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">10.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">11.<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span>Me and Orson Welles, Richard Linklater</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mulan got a cold a few weeks ago, something that almost never happens. She missed two days of school – unheard of! This kid has the immune system of a child raised for a sixteen months in an orphanage. She is strong like ox. But there she was, with a cold and a fever and home from school. We had a great time. I realized that without intending to, I had gotten two end-of-royalty epics from Netflix: "The Last Emperor" and "Marie Antoinette." First we watched The Last Emperor – and had lots to talk about – the end of the dynasty in China, the rise of the communists. Then the next day we watched "Marie Antoinette." It was awesome. The whole experience made me want to home-school Mulan. When I suggested this, it was her turn to reconfigure her face into something that was as much NOT Munch's "The Scream" as humanly possible. <br />
<br />
I think "Marie Antoinette" is my favorite Sofia Coppola film. I thought it was poignant and sad and emotionally realistic in ways I didn't expect. Jason Schwartzman as Louis 16th, how perfect! He is so tragic. Their relationship - dear Lord, there has to be more women directors. I keep seeing movies that have an emotional truth about them and they are inevitably directed and written by women. I want to see "Marie Antoinette" again. (I guess I am still musing about "Down to the Bone" written and directed by Debra Granick. It blew me away.)<br />
<br />
Both "The Last Emperor" and "Marie Antoinette" had the same emotional tug and pull. You're outraged at their excess and luxury, you feel for the central characters thrown unwillingly into this world, you are firmly waiting for the "people" to rebel and burn the place down, but on the other hand, how fantastic are those shoes??? <br />
<br />
Although it hit me with a wallop in Paris last week – oh yeah…. The French Revolution didn’t exactly take. It’s much easier to be a disgruntled and frustrated citizen than to figure out how to maintain a real meritocracy over the long haul. This brings me to my latest musing.. do revolutions really work? And also, why do we call our cessation from Britain the American Revolution? It wasn’t a revolution. It was a cessation from Britain.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I loved "Me and Orson Welles." I'm a big admirer of Richard Linklater. I wanted to drop into that movie and roll around in it. All the performances were spot on. The end broke my heart and felt like pure hope and possibility. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I did not like "Joan Rivers, A Piece of Work." So depressing. I don't understand how she could be so un-self-aware as to allow that movie to even be released. Her jokes were terrible. She was desperate for attention, a bottomless pit of need, masked as "ambition" and she exhibited no real inner life. Even at the end, when she's crying about her associate not working with her anymore – it was all narcissistic and self pitying. No real concern for him. Michael and I were debating weather to watch the Joan Rivers documentary or the documentary "The Pat Tillman Story.". After we watched Joan Rivers, I said to him, I think the Pat Tillman film would have been less depressing than that doc.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course "An American in Paris" was a treat. Mulan referenced it constantly in Paris. Especially since Joel's small apartment was much like Gene Kelley’s in the film. And Leslie Caron, what a body, what a dancer – my GOD!<br />
<br />
Okay. I am out of steam. I have no energy to write about any audio books. Plus, my hard drive crashed and I lost all my audio books (I am in them midst of doing some damage control) and the only one i listened to was Patton Oswalt's "Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland." It was fun and funny and made me miss Patton who I used to hang with in L.A. quite a bit.<br />
<br />
I have no energy for music lists. I must get back to my work. <br />
<br />
Oh, but first a word about Libya.<br />
<br />
I just cannot take it. I can't let it in. I can't even read about it. I am livid with Obama. It may be the right thing to do, I really hope it is, I really hope there is so much I don't know, so much that supports this ADDITIONAL FUCKING WAR.<br />
<br />
I feel as though Obama were my husband and let's say he's a banker, and one of the things we first bonded on together was how we hated - let's say people who cheated on their taxes. And then, I find out my husband is cheating on his taxes! And worst of all he didn't act like it was all that big of a deal. Oh yeah, I cheated on my taxes. And then, I am so stunned, and there's nothing I can really do at the moment, plus - as I said, I am stunned and cannot even think about this reality - so I just go around in my regular life with him - to the pharmacy, let's say, and it rushes up to me when I'm least expecting it, when I'm standing in line. My husband is a big cheater!!! <br />
<br />
Is that the most convoluted analogy? I dunno. It's just - what? <br />
<br />
And then, when Obama's allowing a military commission at Guantanamo try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed instead of in a civil court - after everything he said he would do about it... To me, that is this addition to my shocked stupefication in line at the pharmacy-analogy. It's this: oh yeah, and your husband also sleeps with a drug addicted whore when he has time. <br />
<br />
Oh. Really? Huh. Huh. Huh...<br />
<br />
All righty. Just had to add that rant. Take care, and thanks for reading!<br />
<br />
<br />
</div></div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-51643789952167622652011-03-01T17:06:00.004-06:002011-03-01T18:34:53.943-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p3hFRfXr_is/TW0TVKWYZLI/AAAAAAAAAJM/I-jLN5EKEpE/s1600/hawaii2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p3hFRfXr_is/TW0TVKWYZLI/AAAAAAAAAJM/I-jLN5EKEpE/s320/hawaii2011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I came home from Hawaii two days ago. This photo is of a bird that spent a lot of time outside my cabin. Every morning I would look for him, and most days he was right there. He was both alert and relaxed, vigilant and yet unconcerned. When I think about him, my pulse slows down. If I were superstitious I would think he was sent from above to remind me how I wish to exist. But I'm not so I'll be inspired by him. Or her. <br />
<br />
I got a week to bask, along with my mother, sister, aunt and daughter. I know: lucky, lucky.<br />
<br />
Now, here in Illinois, it's raining onto snow, then all moisture is freezing. The sidewalks are glistening with black ice. My dog walk is going to be a grizzly, slippery, abdominal-strengthening affair. Hawaii's weather is so absentmindedly perfect, like a natural looking, effortless supermodel, not even aware of the dwarves and gargoyles around her. In Hawaii the weather changes so slightly, down to 70 at night, up to 80 in the daytime. Coming home is like going from a breezy carefree girlfriend who's nearly always smiling to the bi-polar, angst-ridden, demanding wife back home - one who seems pissed off that you dared to leave for a minute.<br />
<br />
Onto the lists...<br />
<br />
Movies watched in February:<br />
<br />
1.) Exit Through The Gift Shop (Banksy)<br />
2.) The Company Men (Wells)<br />
3.) The Social Network (Fincher) <i>for the second time</i><br />
4.) Restrepo (Junger & Hetherington)<br />
5.) Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)<br />
6.) Winter's Bone (Granik)<br />
7.) Rabbit Hole (Mitchell)<br />
8.) Animal Kingdom (Michod)<br />
9.) True Grit (Coens) <i>for the second time</i><br />
10.) Biutiful (Inarritu)<br />
11.) Waste Land (Walker & Harely)<br />
12.) 127 Hours (Boyle)<br />
13.) Inception (Nolan)<br />
14.) Enter the Void (Noe)<br />
15.) Morning Glory (Mitchell)<br />
16.) Down to the Bone (Granik)<br />
<br />
Okay. Last month I wrote that I preferred the original, Hathaway "True Grit" to the Coen Bros. version, but it was a close call. This month, Mulan and I went to go see "The Illusionist"and there was something wrong with the print, or maybe the projector - and so the theater offered us free tickets to any other film they had playing. I had wanted Mu to see "True Grit" so we saw it again. I am such a slobbery sentimentalist, I was crying from the start and had to wipe my eyes throughout the movie. I just love this film. Now I think the Coen Bros. version is best. I think the ending is better - we see Mattie as an older woman. You could say I am too ripe for this movie - it ends, after all, with a fiftyish woman reminiscing - unsentimentally - about her youth, when all the most exciting adventures occurred. I could cry right now just thinking about it.<br />
<br />
Sunday night I wanted "True Grit" to take all the Academy Awards it was up for, especially for Roger Deakins - the Cinematographer. I was very disappointed, although not surprised by the awards. I absolutely hated, - no, hate is too moderate a word for my opinion of "Inception." What a big, boring, complicated, pretentious emperor-with-no-clothing that movie turned out to be. I loathed that movie. <br />
<br />
I really responded to "Animal Kingdom" and I must see it again. It's so foreboding, it has such a nearly debilitating feeling of threatened violence, that I could barely watch it the first time. I felt this way about "Reservoir Dogs." I loved it the first time - really was knocked out by it, but then I almost wasn't able to really, <i>really</i> see it until the second (and third and fourth and fifth) time. Movies like those - which I think are masterpieces - are not enjoyable, well - not AS enjoyable the first time because of my anxiety about what is going to happen and to whom. Once I know, I can relax a little bit and at least watch it. God - the music in Animal Kingdom - (it should have been nominated for music or sound editing) is very powerful. <br />
<br />
"Biutiful" was another movie which was hard to watch, but which stayed with me for days. I thought all the people were real, and wondered how they were doing for a long time afterwards. Of course Javier Bardem is - well, I cannot think of any words that do not reduce themselves to cliche when it comes to this man. Let's leave it at this: we are all lucky to be alive at the same time as Javier Bardem. Does that get my feeling across?<br />
<br />
I went to "127 Hours" like I had homework to do - I did not want to see it - I really expected that he would be cutting his arm off with a small, dull army knife for two hours. But I was enchanted! I thought Boyle solved so many story telling and film problems given the material. I was riveted and would see it again.<br />
<br />
Saw "Morning Glory" on the plane and laughed a lot. That's a movie I wouldn't be likely to see, and I thought Rachel McAdams was wonderful. <br />
<br />
Academy Awards: I felt James Franco and Anne Hathaway were duds. I want a comedian as host. Or at least a stage performer. Franco and Hathaway were simultaneously too sincere and too smug. Frankly, I'm not sure how they did it. When Billy Crystal came out and was reminiscing about hosting the Oscars and referenced a moment when he told a joke, let it build to a laugh, then got an applause, I realized that Anne Hathaway and James Franco probably had only the most superficial understanding of what he was talking about. True, I am heavily biased in favor of comedians. And I don't love all comedians, for example, I am not a fan of Whoopi Goldberg. (<i>And nostalgic for Billy Crystal, no less!!! Jeez.</i>) If I were in charge, I would have had Louis C.K. be the host. Or Hugh Jackman again - he is not a comedian, but he is at least a stage performer and you can tell he has a good sense of humor.<br />
<br />
Oh. Now I'm thinking that Anne Hathaway IS a stage performer. But... But...<br />
<br />
On SNL there were always these women coming on - hosting the show - and the press (and the public too) would refer to them as comediennes. But they were not funny people. Maybe they could do pratfalls, maybe they were ditzy-funny in certain circumstances, like - they were funny with the right lines, the right co-stars, right directors - but they were not funny, or even moderately witty people. There is nothing wrong with them, they were doing what they did best - but I realized that a lot of consumers of entertainment really did not understand the difference. <br />
<br />
Which brings me to "Funny Girl." Barbra Streisand being the perfect example. Not really funny. I saw that movie over the winter break - I hadn't seen it since I was a kid - and I loved that movie when I was a kid - and as an adult I found her - and her character - both of them, just insufferable. Painful to watch. Not funny AT ALL, and worse, getting laughs - milking laughs mind you - in the sleaziest ways. The "aren't I adorable and cute" kind of funny. The lowest! The worst! I kept yelling out loud, mocking her while I watched, "I'm just a kook! I'm pregnant in a scene about beautiful slender women! Why, I'm hilarious!" Ha, ha! Belch. ARGH. <br />
<br />
My only other comment on movies, is that - after watching both "Winter's Bone" and "Down to the Bone" I am a huge, huge, inspired, smitten, devoted Debra Granik fan.<br />
<br />
<br />
Books read in February:<br />
<br />
1. <b><u>Cinderella Ate My Daughter</u></b>, Peggy Orenstein<br />
2. <b><u>Three Dog Night</u></b>, Abigail Thomas<br />
3. <b><u>Waistland</u></b>, Deirdre Barrett<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">4. </span><u> After the Ice,</u></b> Steven Mithen. (2/3 of the way through)<br />
<br />
<br />
Notes on the books:<br />
<br />
<br />
1. <u>Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girly-Girl Culture</u>, written by Peggy Orenstein. As I read the book, I was floored by how much I hadn't really thought about. How the whole princess craze got started, how much it's merchandized, how it appeals to young girls, how much of it is natural and how much forced. Each chapter in the book is better than the one before, and each chapter made me think about topics to talk to Mulan about. Full disclosure, I know Peggy - she interviewed me for one of her books entitled, Flux. This is my favorite of her books, and they're all good. I am so glad I got to read this book at the perfect moment, just as Mulan is coming of age - able to converse with me about all of this stuff. We had a great conversation about TV shows, and how many products were spun off from each show. We talked about Demi Lovato, who even my daughter knows is now struggling with some type of problems that have caused her to go into rehab. I loved the chapter that was about little-girl beauty queens and why people are attracted to this combination of innocence, sexuality and the push and pull of girls and parents who feed each other's desire for accomplishing recognition in this way. And best of all, Peggy doesn't even diss this whole cultural arena - in fact, she made me realize how close it is to what American Girl sells too. <br />
<br />
2. <u>A Three Dog Life</u>, written by Abigail Thomas. Lyrically written and optimistic, it's the memoir of a woman who's husband sustains a terrible brain injury from a car accident. I enjoyed reading it. It has a stream-of-thought style that mimics actual memories unfolding. It was moving and funny. <br />
<br />
3. <u>Waistland: The R/evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis</u>, written by Deirdre Barrett. I found this book in the weirdest way. I saw the documentary called, "Waste Land" about a garbage dump just outside Rio de Janiero in Brazil and the people who work picking through garbage there. The movie was fantastic, but I had a very first-world, affluent thought afterwards. And that was, what a great title. "Waist Land" would be a good title for a diet book. I wondered if there was one. There was. Not only that, it had gotten a positive review from Steven Pinker, a scientist and writer I love and whose books I've gobbled up. So I had to get this "Waistland" book. It's really good! She distills all the stuff I've been thinking about recently. She says that there should be a disease called "Sedentary Disease." This book dovetailed nicely with a book I was reading simultaneously (which I vowed not to do this year, but which I have to continually remind myself about!) And that book I have not yet finished, it is:<br />
<br />
4. <u>After The Ice, A Global Human History 20,000 - 5,0000 BC</u>, written by Steven Mithen: I have about a third of this book to still finish and frankly, I do not want it to end. I'm afraid I've fallen down a well, I wake up in the night thinking about what I've read, and it's deepened and changed my view of... well, of all of civilization. The idea of the book is that between 20,000 B.C.E. and 5,000 B.C.E. - I<i> cannot resisting adding the "e" after b.c. turning it into"before the common era" instead of "before christ"</i> - humans went from being all hunter-gatherers to developing farming, cities, and a sedentary stationary lifestyle. Everything was set up during those 15,000 years for all of what happened to us to come afterwards. I have not read, but heard that Jared Diamond wrote an infamous article about how the invention of farming was in many ways catastrophic for humans, the worst human invention of all. Our health suffered, we grouped ourselves into cities, our life spans were diminished. <i>Hmmm... I just did a casual googling and couldn't find this article.</i> In any case, this book: "After the Ice" has opened up into vivid technicolor the paleolithic and mesolithic worlds for me. The author, Steven Mithen, creates this character - named Lubbock (after a Victorian scientist who wrote about archeology and speculated about early cultures) who magically visits early human groups at various times in those 15,000 years. It's a risky device that I think works 100%. This allows the book to be more visceral than simply being lists of discoveries and artifacts and speculations. Mithen meanders through each continent with Lubbock, coming out of the fictionalized fantasy with actual controversies and discoveries in archeology. <br />
<br />
Amongst the things I did not know before reading this book: 1.) There were many <u>stationary</u> hunter, gatherers. I had assumed that there were hunter-gatherers who moved with their prey and didn't stay in one place year in and year out - then farming began, and then <i>and only then</i> did human populations stay put. But no! Many groups were stationary - in fact the best example is in the Pacific Northwest where I'm from. The salmon were so abundant that there was no need to move around. But there are lots of examples in Europe and Central Asia and South America too. Actually, everywhere. 2.) I thought the early americans hunted to extinction all the mega beasts that were in the Americas. But no - it looks like there was already a lot of climate change pressures that drove the big animals 80% of the way to extinction. The big animals needed a lot plants to eat, as well as plant diversity, which began to change at the end of the last ice age. The humans were not killing them at the rate previously thought, they mostly got one here and there, sometimes happening upon large animals - the mastodons, giant sloths, camels, etc. as they were already dying off - more as opportunists rather than hunters - and even though these animals had weathered other ice ages and survived, the humans just was the added push that plunged them into extinction, but still - not the primary cause. 3.) Wow, all those new "Paleo-diet" books (like Waistland) are onto something. Our hunter-gatherer diets were much more diverse, full of fiber, low in sugar and high in plant life and nuts and fruit than our modern diets. And 4.) The hunter-gatherers who flourished for thousands and thousands of years really didn't have to work as much as we work today. They averaged four hours of work a day and spent the rest of their time interacting socially with their other tribe members and especially their children. They had children on average of every three to four years. If you got out of babyhood and then pregnancy (no small feat, granted) you could live a very long time. It seems to me, reading this book, that the golden age for humans in this time period when there was enough accumulated wisdom to hunt and gather food, not have to move all the time, and before there were so many humans that territory fights began and farming was introduced which allowed people to hoard the wealth and establish hierarchies. 5. Wow, Oaxaca. In the Oaxaca valley, all three major American plant domestications took place: corn, beans and squash. Well, I guess squash isn't totally locked in there, but they suspect it is. <br />
<br />
I am reading this book like a text book, yellow highlighter in hand and making notes in pen in the margins. I love, love, love it. I want to dive into this book and not come out.<br />
<br />
In general, I want to concentrate on more fiction. But dear Lord how I gravitate towards non-fiction. I have a general rule that I listen to non-fiction on my iPhone, and read fiction, but I dunno - I guess I get uncontrollable urges to read non-fiction that overrides the fiction books on my list.<br />
<br />
Audio Books listened to in Feb.<br />
<br />
1.) <u>Revival: The Struggle for Survival in the Obama White House</u>, by Richard Wolffe. I'm a fan of Wolffe's. He was often on Keith Olbermann. The book is mostly about how the health care reform legislation was maneuvered. It's an insightful book about how Obama governs and how things work inside. <br />
<br />
2.) <u>Coming to Our Senses: Healing the World and Ourselves Through Mindfulness</u>, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I' also a fan of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I did a mindfulness meditation class years ago and it's a part of my life and thinking now. I enjoyed this book, although it's abridged. I liked it so much I got a hard copy of the book, which I will read later.<br />
<br />
3.) <u>Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes</u>, by Tamim Ansary. I just finished this audio book yesterday. It's transformative. It's so revealing, history told so plainly and insightfully. It makes me very afraid about Egypt. I didn't realize how much we screwed things up in Iran. I knew a little bit, now I know a lot more. I'm afraid about Egypt because of the stories of revolutions that go wrong, and the wrong people seize power in the vacuum. We are going to pay a heavy price for what we've done in the middle east. I'm so glad that Obama is in the White House, but still it's a frightening time. Of everything I've listened to, or read this last month, this is the book I would most recommend. Well this and "After the Ice." I have an urge to write a letter to Obama insisting that he put Tamim Ansary on his advisory panel. (Because, y'know, he'd hop right to it.) Tamim is from Afghanistan, but has lived here since he was 12. He also has a memoir that I want to read. I'm sorry, I'm so pooped, I have run out of steam and cannot properly describe this book. But it's really good - funny - Ansary is very funny... I got the book version of this too and must read it slowly just so I can get it all. <br />
<br />
Here's to a good March!<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-40966201111172083702011-02-05T07:37:00.001-06:002011-02-28T09:06:54.729-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__KFD8goEbDc/TUtM-o2PDmI/AAAAAAAAAJI/TZc-ge6T2Co/s1600/blizzard2-1-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__KFD8goEbDc/TUtM-o2PDmI/AAAAAAAAAJI/TZc-ge6T2Co/s320/blizzard2-1-11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I thought this was going to be an "after" picture, turned out it was a "before" picture. <br />
<br />
I got to experience my first blizzard. I've been in many snow-induced paralyses in New York when the snow was several feet high, the city was frozen, and almost every store closed down. But apparently in order for a weather event to be categorized as a "blizzard," it has to have sustained winds over 40 miles per hour for more than three hours, as well as snow and cold. So in that sense, and insofar as I can remember, this was my first blizzard.<br />
<br />
I was extremely lucky to be able to be inside for all of it, in comfortable warmth, looking outside, and intermittently watching movies. Is there anything that modern civilization offers that is sweeter than being able to experience extreme weather from the comfort of a safe and cozy house? I think not. I almost felt guilty about it. But I got over that and had another cup of tea, and turned my gaze to window and it's moving whiteness.<br />
<br />
Of course there was a lot of shoveling the next day but that turned out to be good exercise for a couple of hours. My husband got his cross country skis out of the basement and he skied to the beach; me running alongside with our dog, Arden. The snow was so high that Arden had to swim through it. He looked like a dolphin, leaping and hurling himself through piles of snow.<br />
<br />
I was going to post monthly all the movies I'd watched, books read, and music I'm listening to while exercising. But I lost almost all my info for December - I'd written it down, but lost the notes. So, I will only list five weeks of movies.<br />
<br />
Movies Watched from December 26 through January 31, 2011<br />
<br />
1. Please Give (Holofcener)<br />
2. The Black Swan (Aronofsky)<br />
3. The King's Speech (Hooper)<br />
4. Barney's Version (Lewis) (<i>I only watched 1/2 of it - I hated it so much I had to stop.</i>)<br />
5. The T.A.M.I. Show (Binder)<br />
6. Date Night (Levy)<br />
7. Pirates of the Caribbean (Verbinski)<br />
8. The Fighter (Russell)<br />
9. Ride with the Devil (Lee)<br />
10. Night of the Hunter (Laughton)<br />
11. Documentary on making of the Night of the Hunter<br />
12. Vincere (Bellochio)<br />
13. October Country (Palmieri, Mosher)<br />
14. El Cid (Mann)<br />
15. True Grit (Hathaway)<br />
16. Help! (Lester)<br />
17. Waltz with Bashir (Folman)<br />
18. How to Train Your Dragon (Sanders, DeBlois)<br />
19. Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)<br />
20. Mars Attacks! (Burton)<br />
21. W.C. Fields, The Great Man, a documentary<br />
22. Happy-Go-Lucky (Leigh)<br />
23. Secretariat (Wallace)<br />
24. The Black Stallion (Ballard)<br />
<br />
<br />
Notes on films: Well, my number #1 movie for last year is: True Grit. But it was a close call for me, I also loved The Social Network, and The King's Speech. But all in all, True Grit gets my best picture vote for 2010. That said, I saw the original True Grit, directed by Hathaway, and starring John Wayne, and I liked it even better than the Coen bros. version! I liked John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn better and I liked Kim Darby's Mattie better! I was completely shocked and did not expect to have that reaction. The bottom line is, I love True Grit. I love the story, I love the girl, I love Rooster Cogburn. Okay, Matt Damon is infinitely better in the role of the Texas Ranger than Glenn Campbell. And the Coen bros. version is more like the book, which is all from the girl's point of view. Hathaway's is not exclusively from the Mattie's point of view, but then you understand more about the guys they are fighting and what's happening when she is not around in the his version, which I think makes it better. <br />
<br />
Night of the Hunter is a masterpiece, and the documentary on the recently reissued DVD is really wonderful, there are all these outtakes that give you a very real sense of what it was like on the set. <br />
<br />
I don't know if I prefer How to Train your Dragon to Toy Story 3 yet - they are so different, and both are so wonder-filled, it's impossible to compare them. <br />
<br />
The other gem I would like to mention is Ride With The Devil, Ang Lee's western feeling, civil war movie made 6 years before Brokeback Mountain. (It was made in 1999) The film is about the civil war in Kansas and Missouri; it's beautiful and a complicated epic that was basically dumped by the studio when it was released. I just don't understand it. Tobey McGuire stars, as well as Jewel(!, and she's good) and Skeet Ulrich and Jeffrey Wright. Really fantastic.<br />
<br />
Okay:<br />
<br />
Books I read in December and January, which I can remember right now.<br />
<br />
1.) <u><b>Life</b></u> (Keith Richards) I read the book and listened to the audio which is narrated by Johnny Depp as well as Joe Hurley. Depp is being mentioned a lot as the narrator, and yet he only narrates the first three chapters and the last two chapters. Joe Hurley is fantastic narrating. I hope he gets more work from doing this. The book is very long, it seemed like three weeks of listening - an hour each day while walking my dog. A long, hard, slog.<br />
I definitely recommend listening to this rather than reading it. It was funny to me, when I bought this book - at an airport just after it was released last fall, I looked in my iTunes collection of music, and out of 20,000 songs, I had NOT ONE SINGLE ROLLING STONES SONG. I was flabbergasted. I wasn't particularly a fan of the Rolling Stones, but I wasn't against them either. There songs are so ubiquitous, maybe I just felt I heard them enough already. Although you could say that about the Beatles, and I have every single CD of theirs. So, hmmm... I really didn't know all that much about the Rolling Stones. So to me, listening to this book, it was all new. <br />
I realized I did have all the music that Keith says he was so inspired and influenced by: Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley - all those guys. I guess I didn't make the connection between these musicians and the Rolling Stones. In any case, I went crazy on the Rolling Stones! I got a bunch of CDs and I made a set list of all Rolling Stones songs for my treadmill workouts. For two or three weeks I was completely immersed in The Rolling Stones. I got Bill Wyman's "A Stone Alone" and while I didn't exactly read it through, I skimmed it while I was reading "Life." I got the recently published book, "The Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles" by Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot, the two guys who host the NPR show "Sound Opinions" - a show I try not to miss, a fantastic music show btw, and I poured over it. <br />
Keith is funny and articulate in ways that are surprising. He is a survivor in such a particular way in such a specific time, it's really revealing and at the same time just what you'd expect. <br />
But I have to say, in the end, I didn't really feel I liked Keith all that much. He is not kind to Mick Jagger - in really petty ways. He says a lot of nice things about him, but the things he has against him seem peevish. Worst of all, Richards is really defensive about his own horrifying behavior. He is not apologetic at all about all the people he inconvenienced and lied to during his drug years and not the least reflective on his job as a father. He totally leaves his son out in the world with no protection and barely any supervision and he is not the least bit concerned about it. In fact he's defensive and talks about how Marlon turned out okay in the end. Which is apparently true, but that is probably more about the luck of Marlon's staggeringly resilient personality than anything else. I dunno. I didn't expect to feel this way about Richards by the end, I expected to really love him all the way through. I did respect him more as a musician. He is a character - truly a character. You can see why Depp based his Pirate on Richards. <br />
However, I think my feelings about "Life" were colored significantly by the next book I read:<br />
<br />
2.) <b>Just Kids </b>(Patti Smith) I had another complicated and evolving relationship with this book. Her mindfulness about herself and her situation, her insight into herself as a young woman, the decisions she made - having a baby and giving it up for adoption, and then this being the catalyst for her to quit teaching school and go to New York and become a poet, were riveting and filled with nuance and detail that made me love her so much. It was odd to read "Life" just before this book, the time is overlapping, and the writers are both icons of a certain generation, but Patti Smith - and forgive me for using this overused, tired phrase - is SO MUCH MOVE EVOLVED AS A PERSON. She's more insightful and more complicated and seems much more honest. She is constantly saying how emotionally unprepared she was for certain things, like Mapplethorpe bisexuality in a very naked, honest, and clear way. Her writing is plain and yet poetic and also precise. Although, I have to say, by the end, I was also leery of Patti Smith - and I really didn't expect to be. She really drops out so much stuff in the second half - why she left New York, and who her husband was and why she and Mapplethorpe stopped communicating. I had this pervasive sense of someone not wanting to get into the details of their relationship changing as they both aged. Things that she would have included at the beginning of their relationship and things that made the book really resonate with frank honesty. Again, I didn't expect to feel this way. In any case, both books are worth the read.<br />
<br />
3.) <b>My Stroke Of Insight</b> (Jill Bolte Taylor) I have been meaning to read this book for a long time. I had read about this woman, and a friend who loves this book loaned me her copy. I really liked the beginning, I love learning about the brain and it's architecture. I also liked her description of what it felt like while she was having a stroke. I think it was profound, her description of energy and waves and how during her stroke she felt like an energy field. I mean, it was a bit of "ain't it so cool I had a stroke and I'm also a brain scientist"-y, but okay, it must have been cool on one level. Unfortunately, the rest of the book makes all these leaps that I don't follow about her experience and God and praying and playing these card games - the Angel cards, over and over again. I have to say by the end of the book I had lost all respect for her and thought the book could have easily been an article in a magazine and not a book. To me the lesson of this book is twofold: 1.) We are all trapped in a way of viewing the world by the way our brains are structured and by habit that makes it difficult to see how strange and beautiful all of life is. 2.) Even brain scientists can fall for the schpiritual gobbedlygook and become wrong-headed and full of new age bullshit.<br />
<br />
4.) <b>The Reason Why: The Story of The Charge of the Light Brigade</b> (Cecil Woodham-Smith) Over the holidays I was in Los Angeles visiting my mother-in-law and said to Mulan, "Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do or die." My mother had always said that to me and it made me laugh. Norma pointed out that was from the poem by Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Then she handed me this book, and I devoured it. It's a very well written - tragic and funny (my favorite combination) account of a horrifying battle in the Crimean War. It centers on two aristocratic men, Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan and how their hatred of each other - as brothers-in-law no less - managed to orchestrate the horrible debacle of this campaign. Both are really unsympathetic characters, and Woodham-Smith so deftly and articulately describes how the British obsession with aristocratic war leaders pushed them into positions for which they were ill suited, and truly incompetent. The book has this awful foreboding about it because as we learn about these two men from babyhood, we know what it's all leading to, and it ain't going to be pretty and it does not turn out well. Now I am looking forward to reading Cecil Woodham-Smith's other books - the first of which is going to be "The Great Hunger" about the Irish famine. Last night Michael and I watched, "Restrepo" - a documentary that is up for Academy Award nomination and seeing those poor boys in Afghanistan trying to retake this valley, how scary it is, how horrible battle like that really can be - it caused me to go to sleep thinking about the Crimean war and all wars. In "Restrepo" the war leaders are competent, but the whole endeavor is so much messier and serendipitous and chaotic and uncomprehending than we can understand from the outside. <br />
<br />
These are the audio books I listened to over the last month and a half. I listen when I walk the dog which works out to about an hour to an hour and a half per day:<br />
<br />
1.) <b>The Bedwetter</b>, Sarah Silverman Oh my god, Sarah Silverman is so fucking funny. She is really great. I like her a lot. I know her a little bit, as we were on SNL together for a year at the same time. She was a kid then, 18 or 19 I think. She has really developed into one of the best comediennes. This book made me laugh out loud so much. Mostly in the first part, however, the last half which deals with her show and her life after she became famous is less interesting to me. But damn, I was laughing and laughing and I still think of lines here and there and laugh out loud. I made my husband listen. This book is really good. I like listening to her read it, hearing her voice. <br />
<br />
2.) <b>The Accidental Mind</b>, David J. Linden This book is much better at describing the brain, how it evolved, and how it works than My Stroke of Insight. Our brains are such inefficient kluges of added on evolutionary adaptations, it's actually hilarious. It made me want to do a comedic monologue about brain architecture. Linden describes things really well. <br />
<br />
3.) <b>Nothing to Envy</b>, Barbara Demick. Okay, this book - of all the books I've read or listened to in the last month or so, this book is at the very top. It's about North Korea, and Barbara Demick, who is a writer for the Los Angeles Times, and who is currently bureau chief in Beijing, but was previously working in Seoul, describes the lives of about six North Koreans and how they managed to escape the country. All her subjects are currently living in South Korea. <u>If you are reading this, you <b>must</b> get this book, or listen to this audio.</u> It's really fantastic and the stories are so well told, so intelligently interwoven and constructed, so climactic when they are all trying to escape. The writing is exemplary, and Demick is a master at telling these people's stories. In fact, one of the most compelling stories - well they are all compelling - is about a young teenage couple in love. I cannot stop thinking that their story just has to be made into a film. The end of their relationship is devastating and real. The famine is so awful, and people dying everywhere, and the North Korean regime is so hateful and life is just - this book really emphasizes the point that politics so profoundly affects people's lives. We are so lucky not to be living in North Korea, I don't think there's any place quiet as horrible in such a particularly communist - dictator way as North Korea. It makes me so fearful for the future and I am really hopeful that - maybe China? - can put them in their place, or maybe help them out of this catastrophe. I really had no idea how North Korea was separated from South Korea (practically arbitrarily in Washington D.C. looking at a map) and how it came to be. It's all so recent, and happening now too. Riveting and important, that is what this book is. I got the actual book from the library and now I'm going to read it (again, for real?) and just let it all sink in another time. What a great writer. Demick also wrote a book about Bosnia, and I want to get that too. <br />
<br />
<br />
Music. I said I was going to post what I was listening to, my exercise music list. I'm worried this makes this blog so blathery and I'm tired of it myself, but still, I'll post it. <br />
<br />
I change my exercise playlist every month. Last month was all Rolling Stones. This month, I have some old faves - some songs can never leave the list - like Talking Heads, "Slippery People."<br />
<br />
1. "Burning Down The House" Talking Heads<br />
2. "Finest Worksong" R.E.M.<br />
3. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight." R.E.M.<br />
4. "Give Paris One More Chance" Jonathan Richman<br />
5. "To Hide A Little Thought" Jonathan Richman<br />
6. "Istanbul (Not Contantinople)" They Might Be Giants<br />
7. "California" Rufus Wainwright<br />
8. "The Sunny Side of the Street" The Pogues<br />
9. "Spanish Dancer" Patti Scialfa<br />
10. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana<br />
11. "Corrina, Corrina" Bob Dylan<br />
12. "Lovely Rita" Beatles<br />
13. "Rita Mae" Jerry Lee Lewis<br />
14. "Dying Day" Brandi Carlile<br />
15. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Santana with Yo Yo Ma and India.Aire)<br />
16. "Love Hurts" Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris<br />
17. "Slippery People" Talking Heads<br />
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What am I doing these days? Well, I'm working on a book - and I'm writing a screenplay. Both are actually moving forward, slowly, but I'm happy about it. I've been getting into a nice working groove. If I can keep this up for a few years, I will make some traction towards my goals. Which I mostly do achieve, although slowly and in a tedious incremental manner. </div>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16654170.post-78366306260332111352010-12-06T10:34:00.008-06:002010-12-06T11:09:33.554-06:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__KFD8goEbDc/TP0AJQcowBI/AAAAAAAAAI8/uZIx30HAdlY/s1600/IMG_1369.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__KFD8goEbDc/TP0AJQcowBI/AAAAAAAAAI8/uZIx30HAdlY/s320/IMG_1369.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm so full of it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You see, I plan to resume being a public personal story teller.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh what a difference a mere nine months makes.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was mortified by telling the frog story (see last post.) I stopped telling it. Mulan was glad, she didn't like that I was telling that story. That story threw me a curve ball about telling personal stories.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then Mulan decided she DID like the story. She came to a couple of my shows, she wanted me to tell the story. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought: I have to protect her from me. She doesn't realize that it's potentially embarrassing. But oh, it was fun to tell that story. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then a bunch of time went by. Mulan grew up more. We talked about it from time to time. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was asked to write the story out for a publication. I dithered and dathered.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much discussion was had about the difference between a video of a story and a written story. Our theory (meandered to while driving with my husband and my brother -in-law, Joel) was that no one really reads, and so the written story would not be read by anyone that might cause embarrassment to Mulan. What could be embarrassing was the video, which was already up on the TED website. It's out there. I can't take it back. It's done.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plus Mulan liked it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Very confusing. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I couldn't decide if I should write the story. I wanted to do it. I didn't want to do it. No, I really wanted to do it. But maybe it wasn't right to do it. Plus I already made a big announcement that I wouldn't. Not that anyone is closely following my mercurial agonizing over what to do. Except me. Or maybe you, if you happen to be reading this. ARGH!!!!!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I decided to do it. Only the title of this thing is not just that frog story but several other parenting stories. All the other stories seem very clear to me. They are really about me, not about Mulan. My blunders. The only borderline case is the frog story. But the really embarrassing way to tell it for Mulan (potentially) is already in existence. So I would only be adding to this by reiterating it, in writing. The least embarrassing way. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, I'm doing it. I'm writing it, I'm almost done with it. Therefore, I am full of it. (see above)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plus, after last March, I really did start focusing on my scripts and my book. Not writing a lot of blog entries really did help me focus on long term projects. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this thing happened: my book became really personal. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's going to take a long time to finish - two years at least, for reasons that - if it really does get finished and if anyone sees it and simultaneously is reading this, will be understandable. Oh dear, I'm speaking very murkily. The point is, I guess I am a public personal story teller. Even though I really have - obviously - mixed feelings about it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, Jill and I had a blast doing our shows during the summer. We went to Colorado, Montana, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. We really had fun and the audience seemed to like it. It was so win-win.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jill encouraged me to do a few shows in the Northwest. Since we'd done a show in Denver, Jill's home town, she said she wanted to see Spokane. (I love her so much for wanting to see Spokane!) </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So we booked a few shows in mid-March in Spokane, Portland and Seattle. Then we booked a New Year's Eve show in Evanston. Dave, our bass player and dear friend, is going to fly out too and we will have fun and a happy, laughing New Year's Eve. I'm looking forward to it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though, on some level, Jill and I are still thinking this is the end of it - or maybe not. Or I can't even say, because every time I take a stand I have to take it back. Like I'm doing right now. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lord in heaven.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, that is that. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this is my new idea. A monthly blog posting. Why? Because I read other people's blog postings and I am always interested in what they are reading, watching, and listening to. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought I would simply post:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The books I read during the month</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The movies I saw during the month</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The audio books I listened to</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The treadmill music-playlist of the month</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway... Here goes:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">November 2010</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Books read: </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1.) Freedom (Franzen) My review: Eh.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2.) Ms. Hemple Diaries (Bynum) My review: pretty damn good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3.) Life (Richards) I'm currently halfway through "Life" and oh my god, I am now obsessed with Keith Richards. I keep putting down the book and googling various people. Last night I was focused on his girlfriend Linda Keith basically discovering Jimi Hendrix. That's not the whole story of course, but it's still a thrilling anecdote that I cannot stop picking at on the internet. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Movies I saw:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have a home theater in the basement and I watch movies there. It makes all the difference. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1.) Design For Living (Lubitch)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2.) Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3.) Read My Lips (Audiard)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4.) Auberge Espagnole L' (Klapisch)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5.) Red Shoes (Pressberger, Powell)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6.) Agora (Amenabar) Watched this twice - fantastic! </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7.) City Island (De Fellita)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8.) Adventures of Milo and Otis (Hata)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">9.) Men In War (Mann)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10.) Music Man (Da Costa)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">11.) Russian Dolls (Klapisch)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">12.) Sea Inside (Amenabar)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">13.) Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">14.) Somewhere (Coppola)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">15.) Iron Giant (Bird)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">16.) Kirkou and the Sorceress (Ocelot)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">17.) To Sir, With Love (Clavell)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">18.) Funny Girl (Wyler)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Audio Books listened to:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(I listen while walking the dog)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1.) At Home (Bryson)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2.) Cleopatra (Schiff) - I'm halfway through with that one.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Treadmill play list</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I do the treadmill about four times a week for an hour. I change my playlist monthly. I think you can tell I am exactly 51 years old by this playlist. November was:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1.) Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2.) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3.) Fuck You (Cee Lo Green)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4.) Devil's Haircut (Beck)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5.) Shiny Happy People (R.E.M.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6.) Nightswimming (R.E.M.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7.) Radio Song (R.E.M.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8.) I'll Be Back (Beatles)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">9.) Blackbird (Beatles)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">10.) Black Horse & the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">11.) The Sunny Side of the Street (Pogues)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">12.) Light You Up (Shawn Mullins)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">13.) Take Me to the River (Talking Heads)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">14.) Slippery People (Talking Heads)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">15.) Paint It Black (Rolling Stones)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">16.) God's Child (David Byrne & Selena) </span>Julia Sweeneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02459682985438227986noreply@blogger.com73