MasurskyLand

Oscars nominations

2012-01-24T08:30:00.000-05:00

What a great day - nominations announced this morning, SOTU address tonight, and Larry's 49th birthday today. Here are the top categories:

Motion Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Actor In a Leading Role
Demián Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Actress In a Leading Role
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Actor In a Supporting Role
Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Actress In a Supporting Role
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Animated Feature Film
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

Cinematography
The Artist
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Directing
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Foreign Language Film
Belgium, Bullhead
Canada, Monsieur Lazhar
Iran, A Separation
Israel, Footnote
Poland, In Darkness

Adapted Screenplay
The Descendants: Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
Hugo: Screenplay by John Logan
The Ides of March: Screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
Moneyball: Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. Story by Stan Chervin
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Screenplay by Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan

Original Screenplay
The Artist: Written by Michel Hazanavicius
Bridesmaids: Written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
Margin Call: Written by J.C. Chandor
Midnight in Paris: Written by Woody Allen
A Separation: Written by Asghar Farhadi

"My strength is not for hurting"

2012-01-20T19:00:00.000-05:00

Paula Deen's diabetes

2012-01-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

I was pretty pissed off when I heard about Paula Deen finally admitting that she has Type 2 diabetes, because of her generally cavalier attitude about it. I think it's beyond irresponsible for her to encourage people to eat in a way that has given many people, and probably herself, a serious disease which is expensive and unpleasant to treat. She says she waited 3 years to admit to her condition until she could give her fans some "hope" - which apparently takes the form of her shilling for an injectable diabetes control drug. So she makes even more money, but doesn't recant her lifestyle, or in any way suggest that her food choices have impacted on her health (we're not talking about general eating here, we're talking about deep fried cheesecake and hamburgers served on Krispy Kreme donuts as the bun). Diabetes is not a joke, it's actually fatal, twice so far in my immediate family, and it's treatment is not a walk in the park. It's making me so angry, I can hardly write this.

"The rich are not special"

2012-01-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just love this essay by James Moore at HuffingtonPost - below are some highlights:

. . . There is something troubling about the collective American consciousness that enables us to elect persons of privilege to a job whose most basic requirement ought to be a first hand understanding of economic struggle. Like the two Republican Bush presidents, Mitt Romney has always had a soft place to fall. In 1975, when he left Harvard, he went straight to Wall Street with a class of business school graduates who became consultants instead of employees. The mortgage his dad told him to deal with first was probably never a big worry and when Mitt landed at Bain Capital in 1977 he was launched on the business career that is somehow supposed to qualify him for the White House. Please explain how being successful at an investment fund trains an individual for dealing with foreign policy, a stubborn congress, and a lagging economy.

We Americans celebrate wealth and business success as if it were a form of religion. Of course, people who work hard and accomplish their goals, financial, material, or even spiritual, ought to be admired because they contribute to the advancement of our culture. But the rich are not necessarily special; they tend to be prepared and lucky. Their money is generally not the consequence of any intellect or insight that can translate to leadership or government. We simply want to believe that is how they earned it.

. . . There isn't any class warfare in America. We are all participants in the same game and some of us have greater advantages and use them to gain wealth but that doesn't mean the rich should be president. I've often thought the difference between the two political parties was that one was rolling down the highway in a nice new car and ignoring all of those who had fallen into the ditch while the other party was slowing down and pulling over to help get the stranded travelers back on the road. Capitalism is imperfect and x amount of effort does not necessarily produce y amount of results. Some of us end up in the ditch. People fail for many reasons. But almost all of them are trying. Our national discourse is over how we provide assistance.

We've had wealthy presidents in the past and some have had greatness. Our greatest president, however, came from a log cabin and understood the common man's struggle, and it is not about corporate tax cuts. Leadership is a product of intimate understanding, which rarely is a consequence of wealth. But America has only two types of citizens: millionaires and those of us who very shortly expect to be millionaires. The result is we admire money and project onto the wealthy characteristics they often do not possess.

And putting those people into the White House tends to be a grave mistake.

Golden Globe fashions

2012-01-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Some of my favorites:

Lots of great color, like Zooey Deschanel:

And Kelly MacDonald:

And Michelle Williams:

This type of textured gown was super popular,
not all of them as pretty as Evan Rachel Wood:

And Berenice Bejo (from "The Artist"):

Classic black, always appropriate, like Glenn Close:

Or with a twist, like Kate Winslet:

Or an even bigger twist by Claire Danes:

I was wowed by the bold art deco style of Salma Hayek:

And just plain bold style of Lea Michele:

And the Grecian style (and stunning color) of Emma Stone:

And Viola Davis:

Some of the neutral colors were boring, but not Kate Beckinsale:

Or Shailene Woodley (from "The Descendants")

Or Piper Peraboo (this photo does not do the dress justice):

And certainly not Angelina:

Golden Globe winners

2012-01-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed the broadcast a lot. Ricky Gervais was funnier last year, but he was still good. The winners' speeches are always good for this show, and the actors often acknowledge the other nominees, which I love. I thought many of the dresses were spectacular - lots of color. And speaking of color, there was actually a few non-white winners, which is exciting. I actually saw a higher percentage of the (movie) winners than I saw of the nominees, which is interesting. Note to self: watch Season 1 of Downton Abbey!

Best Motion Picture - Drama
"The Descendants"
"The Help"
"Hugo"
"The Ides of March"
"Moneyball"
"War Horse"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
Glenn Close, "Albert Nobbs"
Viola Davis, "The Help"
Rooney Mara, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"
Meryl Streep, "The Iron Lady"
Tilda Swinton, "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
George Clooney, "The Descendants"
Leonardo DiCaprio, "J. Edgar"
Michael Fassbender, "Shame
Ryan Gosling, "The Ides of March"
Brad Pitt, "Moneyball"

Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical
"50/50"
"The Artist"
"Bridesmaids"
"Midnight in Paris"
"My Week With Marilyn"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical
Jodie Foster, "Carnage
Charlize Theron, "Young Adult"
Kristen Wiig, "Bridesmaids"
Michelle Williams, "My Week With Marilyn"
Kate Winslet, "Carnage"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical
Jean Dujardin, "The Artist
Brendan Gleeson, "The Guard"
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, "50/50"
Ryan Gosling, "Crazy, Stupid, Love."
Owen Wilson, "Midnight in Paris"

Best Animated Feature Film
"The Adventures of Tintin"
"Arthur Christmas"
"Cars 2"
"Puss in Boots"
"Rango"

Best Foreign Language Film
"The Flowers of War" (China)
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" (USA)
"The Kid With a Bike" (Belgium)
"A Separation" (Iran)
"The Skin I Live In" (Spain)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Berenice Bejo, "The Artist"
Jessica Chastain, "The Help"
Janet McTeer, "Albert Nobbs"
Octavia Spencer, "The Help"
Shailene Woodley, "The Descendants"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Kenneth Branagh, "My Week with Marilyn"
Albert Brooks, "Drive"
Jonah Hill, "Moneyball"
Viggo Mortensen, "A Dangerous Method"
Christopher Plummer, "Beginners"

Best Director - Motion Picture
Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris"
George Clooney, "The Ides of March"
Michel Hazanavicius, "The Artist"
Alexander Payne, "The Descendants"
Martin Scorsese, "Hugo"

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris"
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon - "The Ides of March"
Michel Hazanavicius - "The Artist"
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash - "The Descendants"
Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin - "Moneyball"

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
Ludovic Bource - "The Artist"
Abel Korzeniowski - "W.E."
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross - "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"
Howard Shore - "Hugo"
John Williams - "War Horse"

Best Original Song - Motion Picture
"Hello Hello" - "Gnomeo & Juliet," music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin
"The Keeper"- "Machine Gun Preacher," music and lyrics by Chris Cornell
"Lay Your Head Down" - "Albert Nobbs," music by Brian Byrne, lyrics by Glenn Close
"The Living Proof" - "The Help"; music by Mary J. Blige, Thomas Newman, Harvey Mason Jr.; lyrics by Mary J. Blige, Harvey Mason Jr., Damon Thomas
"Masterpiece" - W.E., music and lyrics by Madonna, Julie Frost, Jimmy Harry

Best Television Series - Drama
"American Horror Story"
"Boardwalk Empire"
"Boss"
"Game of Thrones"
"Homeland"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
Claire Danes, "Homeland"
Mireille Enos, "The Killing"
Julianna Margulies, "The Good Wife"
Madeleine Stowe, "Revenge"
Callie Thorne, "Necessary Roughness"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
Steve Buscemi, "Boardwalk Empire"
Bryan Cranston, "Breaking Bad"
Kelsey Grammer, "Boss"
Jeremy Irons, "The Borgias"
Damian Lewis, "Homeland"

Best Television Series - Comedy or Musical
"Enlightened"
"Episodes"
"Glee"
"Modern "Family"
"New Girl"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
Laura Dern, "Enlightened"
Zooey Deschanel, "New Girl"
Tina Fey, "30 Rock"
Laura Linney, "The Big C"
Amy Poehler, "Parks and Recreation"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
Alec Baldwin, "30 Rock"
David Duchovny, "Californication"
Johnny Galecki, "The Big Bang Theory"
Thomas Jane, "Hung"
Matt LeBlanc, "Episodes"

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Movie
"Cinema Verite"
"Downton Abbey"
"The Hour"
"Mildred Pierce"
"Too Big to Fail"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Romola Garai, "The Hour"
Diane Lane, "Cinema Verite"
Elizabeth McGovern, "Downton Abbey" (Masterpiece)
Emily Watson, "Appropriate Adult"
Kate Winslet, "Mildred Pierce"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Hugh Bonneville, "Downtown Abbey" (Masterpiece)
Idris Elba, "Luther"
William Hurt, "Too Big to Fail"
Bill Nighy, "Page Eight" (Masterpiece)
Dominic West, "The Hour"

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jessica Lange, "American Horror Story"
Kelly MacDonald, "Boardwalk Empire"
Maggie Smith, "Downtown Abbey" (Masterpiece)
Sofia Vergara, "Modern Family"
Evan Rachel Wood, "Mildred Pierce"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Peter Dinklage, "Game of Thrones"
Paul Giamatti, "Too Big to Fail"
Guy Pearce, "Mildred Pierce"
Tim Robbins, "Cinema Verite"
Eric Stonestreet, "Modern Family"

Republicans attack each other

2012-01-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

Absolutely surreal to watch Newt Gingrich on CNN this morning, bashing Mitt Romney for being a greedy bastard. Of course, I agree with him - sucking the value out of companies (30% of the companies that Bain Capital invested in ended up in bankruptcy) is not at all the same kind of glorified capitalism that creating businesses represents. Mitt *is* a job killer, much more than a job creator. But to have a Republican making that argument is just another bizarre twist in an election year that gets weirder and weirder all the time.

The only thing that really annoyed me about the segment was the way that the reporter (Soledad O'Brien, who I normally admire and enjoy) didn't say a word to Newt while he ranted about Mitt the job killer - specifically, why didn't she ask Newt how many jobs *he's* created in his life? He's an extremely wealthy man, and his activities over the last decade have involved nothing other than generating that wealth, through speaking engagements, books sales, and his non-lobbying efforts. I suppose he's created a few jobs for accountants, but other than that, his efforts have been focused on filling his own pockets.

Weekend movies

2012-01-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

Puss in Boots - Alana and I saw this with a friend; it was quite entertaining, with a lively story and some terrific humor; kick ass female character, voiced by Salma Hayek, was bonus

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - a beautifully crafted movie with wonderful performances, but not a perfect film; a bit confusing and a bit slow - it felt not only set in the 1970s, but also produced in the 1970s, with a very different sensibility from movies today; it's not necessary for a period movie to reflect the film making style of that era - I found myself thinking a lot about Munich, a film with some similar themes, but which manages to be a lot more absorbing and involving than this one.

Stale discussion

2012-01-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

We read a fairly interesting section of the Jewish Literacy book for our bnai mitzveh class this week on Life Cycle events, and I was looking forward to discussing conversion and the get and the mikveh, all fascinating aspects of Jewish life, and ones that don't receive enough attention. But instead we spent the entire hour on the kosher laws. Not even interesting aspects of it, like how it's defined and distinguished our community, or its role in modern Jewish life. Instead, we spent the whole time just talking about the actual laws - the definition of meat, and how we can't eat the back half of the cow, only the front half (including an actual list of which cuts are readily edible and which ones aren't). Holy cow!!! Super dull and super annoying. Why would an entire class be devoted to a practice that's not even required, or widely observed, by Reform Jews??? Especially when there's so much more interesting topics to consider.

"Prosecutors gone wild"

2012-01-07T22:30:00.000-05:00

This essay by Conrad Black is just depressing. Here are a few key paragraphs:

Even casual samplers of the media now come across colossal injustices and failures in the U.S. justice criminal system every two weeks or so. Yet these stories, everyone a heart-breaking recitation of how willful prosecution misconduct has ruined a life or a family, with no consequences at all to whoever has abused his great powers as a prosecutor, seem never to elicit any particular public response or gain any traction for review or reform.

It is an achievement just to pierce the eagerness of most of the media to be a stentorian Hallelujah chorus for law and order paranoia.

. . . Prosecutors have practically untrammeled discretion in deciding what to charge, how many counts to allege, and a very wide latitude in sentences sought. Grand juries are just a rubber stamp for prosecutors, and contrary to the spirit of the Fifth Amendment, provide absolutely no assurance against capricious prosecution. But complicity in or direct causation of the lengthy incarceration of falsely accused and convicted people, not to be confused with honest error and misplaced zeal, is a terribly serious offense and is so treated in every other serious jurisdiction except the U.S.

. . . prosecutors enjoy a stacked evidentiary and procedural deck which gives them a success rate in prosecutions of over 90 per cent. (The corresponding figure in Canada is about 65 per cent, and only about 40 per cent of those receive custodial sentences.)

The United States has just 5 per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of its incarcerated people, and 50 per cent of its lawyers. The U.S. Supreme Court is unvaryingly proud to try law and not fact, and is thus ostentatiously uninterested in a just result as such, in the unutterably irritating and desiccated way of people who profess indifference to the control they exercise over the fate of real people.

Gratitude

2012-01-06T23:00:00.000-05:00

At Larry's annual managers' dinner, the spouses have to say what they're grateful for, giving us all an opportunity to be treacly (and, IMO, insincere) about how much we love our TRH family, and, no surprise, I just don't like to follow the crowd on this one.

I've actually been thinking a lot about the upcoming year - 2012 and the end of the world, and what we're responsible for, and what we owe our community. And, of course, I love elections, and presidential election years are my all time favorites. I considered saying that I'm grateful this is a presidential election year and all that CNN will talk about all year is the election! But that would've bee going a bit far, so this is what I said:

I'm grateful to live in the greatest country in the world, where I can talk shit about my government and no one is going to drag me out of my house in the middle of the night, and I can practice my religion and no one cares that it's different from theirs. And most of all, I'm grateful that it's a presidential election year, and I get to VOTE!

It's not what anyone wanted to hear, but I'm okay with that - it's what I had in my heart. (Larry later said it was just so typical of me, though he didn't strictly mean that as a compliment of course.)

The Iowa sideshow

2012-01-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

I love Matt Taibbi, and this piece on the election is excellent, but also kinda depressing.

Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins

by Matt Taibbi

The 2012 presidential race officially begins today with the caucuses in Iowa, and we all know what that means …

Nothing.

The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe. Just as even the non-British were at least temporarily engaged by last year’s royal wedding, people all over the world are normally fascinated by the presidential race: both dramas arouse the popular imagination as real-life versions of universal children’s fairy tales.

Instead of a tale about which maiden gets to marry the handsome prince, the campaign is an epic story, complete with a gleaming white castle at the end, about the battle to succeed to the king’s throne. Since the presidency is the most powerful office in the world, the tale has appeal for people all over the planet, from jungles to Siberian villages.

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

If that sounds like a glib take on a free election system that allows the public to choose whichever candidate it likes best without any censorship or overt state interference, so be it. But the ugly reality, as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

That damning statistic just confirms what everyone who spends any time on the campaign trail knows, which is that the presidential race is not at all about ideas, but entirely about raising money. The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors.

. . . both parties rely upon the same core of major donors among the top law firms, the Wall Street companies, and business leaders – basically, the 1%. Those one-percenters always give generously to both parties and both presidential candidates, although they sometimes will hedge their bets significantly when they think one side or the other has a lopsided chance at victory. That’s clearly what happened in 2008, when Wall Street correctly called Obama as a 2-1 (or maybe a 7-3) favorite to beat McCain.

. . . The campaign is still a gigantic ritual and it will still be attended by all the usual pomp and spectacle, but it’s empty. In fact, because it’s really a contest between 1%-approved candidates, it’s worse than empty – it’s obnoxious.

It was always annoying when these two parties and the slavish media that follows their champions around for 18 months pretended that this was a colossal clash of opposites. But now, with the economy in the shape that it’s in thanks in large part to the people financing these elections, that pretense is more than annoying, it’s offensive.

And I imagine that the more they try to play up the drama of these familiar-but-empty campaign rituals, the more irritating to the public it will all become. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, before the season is out, the campaign itself will become a hated symbol of the 1% -- with the conventions and the networks’ broadcast tents outside the inevitable "free speech zones" attracting protests the same way the offices of Chase and Bank of America did this fall.

Best movies of 2011, pt 2 - Oscar bait

2012-01-04T22:00:00.000-05:00

This week's issue of EW has a list of "25 movies to see before Oscar night," based on which are likely to be nominated. I've only seen 9 of them, which has to be a serious low for me (not even half!), but more to the point, I didn't really love any of the 9 that I saw. They were all good, but not movies I would buy on DVD (as a measure of my enthusiasm). Not sure what that says about me, or the year in film, but it's not too inspiring.

Moneyball
Bridesmaids
The Help
The Descendants
Midnight in Paris
Young Adult
My Week with Marilyn
Hugo
Rango
The Ides of March
The Iron Lady
Albert Nobbs
J Edgar
Beginners
War Horse
Shame
Tree of Life
Drive
The Artist
Harry Potter 7
Kung Fu Panda 2
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

I really had to think about what movie I would say was my favorite this year. I thought Breaking Dawn was terrific, but I'd be too embarrassed to call that my favorite for the year. I liked The Help a lot, but I liked the book more. Probably Crazy Stupid Love and The Adjustment Bureau are tied as the movies I most enjoyed and that stuck with me the most. Sarah's Key and No Strings Attached were the only other movies I gave 9 stars to on imbd.com (I didn't give any 10s this year). Not very substantial films, and not very arty - it's a little disconcerting that there's nothing like Traffic or Crash or The English Patient. I'm getting fluffy in my old age.

Best movies of 2011

2012-01-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

I'm embarrassed to see how few of these "best" movies I saw this year. I feel like I went to the theater quite a bit, but I guess I was watching other stuff. The asterisks mark the films I most want to see (from these lists) - interesting that there's not much overlap in the lists.

Daily Beast list of most overlooked movies:

*Meek's Cutoff
*Attack the Block
*Weekend
*Like Crazy
Cedar Rapids
Hall Pass
13 Assassins
The Trip
The Guard
Fright Night
Warrior
Melancholia

Huffington Post list of best movies (I saw the first 4, none of which I totally loved):

Moneyball
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
Midnight in Paris
*Take Shelter
*Shame
*Beginners
The Trip
Tree of Life
Drive
The Artist

Very bad news

2012-01-02T22:00:00.000-05:00

What an awful way to start the new year - a very kind and sweet woman that I know at Temple Concord died over the weekend. The obituary in the local paper is vague about the cause of death, and I know she was depressed over family issues and a job loss, so I fear the worst. I really wish I'd called her over the holidays - I've been so busy with the kids that I really didn't think of her, though I knew she was alone. The world is full of so many poisonous people - she was really needed to help balance things out. I always feel so sad and frustrated when we lose gentle souls like her!

Weekend movies

2012-01-01T23:00:00.000-05:00

I watch a bunch of episodes of Homeland On Demand (which is excellent, even better than I've been told), so I didn't watch many movies this long holiday weekend).

The Muppets (2011) - Cal went to Tintin, which I would have been willing to see (having been a long time fan of the graphic novels), but Alana wanted to see this one. A weird combination of satire and earnestness, but I laughed quite a bit - there's some very funny inside jokes. Not exactly a classic, but not a waste of time, and Alana enjoyed it. Some of the songs are quite catchy and I think we'll get the soundtrack.

Solider (1998) - I think I saw this Kurt Russell vehicle back when it came out (cuz I was always a fan of Kurt's); kinda low budget and not a little cliched, but actually not a bad movie; there's some clever and rather brainy inside jokes, like the garbage planet is called Arcadia. Surprisingly, Alana ended up watching with me while Cal wandered off to the other room.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003) - We got this at the library because I thought Alana would enjoy it and she did; it wasn't quite what I expected, but it wasn't bad. A little bit of a downer, and a little too much about the people and not enough about the parrots, but still entertaining.

"Nobody understands debt"

2011-12-31T22:00:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman wrote a terrific essay about the US debt - short and plain spoken and illuminating. In it, he says national debt is NOT like personal debt - much of the debt is money we owe ourselves (that is, taxpayers), and while we do owe money to other nations, they also owe money to us. Furthermore, economic growth makes debt less burdensome; case in point - we never paid back the money we borrowed to fight WWII, but that debt doesn't really affect us anymore. Here's the last couple of paragraphs:

. . . the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an overindebted family might suggest.

And that’s why nations with stable, responsible governments — that is, governments that are willing to impose modestly higher taxes when the situation warrants it — have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today’s conventional wisdom would lead you to believe.

. . . Of course, America, with its rabidly antitax conservative movement, may not have a government that is responsible in this sense. But in that case the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.

Handedness still a mystery

2011-12-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

NPR had this fun story - hand preference is yet another human mystery that we haven't solved yet! Here's my favorite paragraph:

While science was quick to condemn left-handers — though those theories are now discredited — it has been less quick to come up with an explanation for the phenomenon. Smits says hand preference isn't inherited the way other traits like eye and hair color are, and no one's really sure why it arose in the first place.

Annual book goal

2011-12-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

For the last 2 years at the goodreads.com website, I've set a goal of reading 50 books. At the site, I appear to have exceeded my goal this year, but that's before deleting books that I didn't finish and kids' books, which I don't want to count in my total (though I want to track them in my account). After the deletions, I've gotten very close to 50, but didn't quite make it - I've finished 46 books. I'm reading 2 right now, one on paper and an audiobook that I'm about 2/3 done with. I'm trying to finish both, but I've only got 3 days left.

Even if I don't get to 50, I've done much better than I did in 2010 - I only read 38 books last year.

Even though I didn't set a goal before last year, you can really see the improvement since I started posting books to the site: in 2009, I read 22 books, and in 2008, I read just 18 books. Joining the book club has helped me stay motivated, and just devoting a bit more time and energy to reading has really paid off.

Pioneer in marketing research for film dies

2011-12-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

Joseph Farrell died this week. He introduced marketing research to the film industry; most famously, he suggested changing the ending of Fatal Attraction (Glenn Close's character was originally seen committing suicide): “They [the audience] didn’t want to see her do herself in, they wanted to see her done in.”

It's hard not to have a gut-level negative reaction to this guy's influence. On the other hand, I was struck by his quote:

Mr. Farrell defended his work. “The film is the athlete; I just give it every training tip I know. Filmmaking is a creative pursuit but must ultimately go commercial. Market research, a town meeting of sorts, lets the filmmaker know if he’s communicating effectively with the public.”

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your film, I guess. Some films are trying to be commercially successful, and his approach would be helpful.

But for a lot of filmmakers, this probably feels like tyranny. Ron Shelton is quoted in the obit also: “I want to confound expectations in my movies, not cater to them.”

And Farrell's method was hardly foolproof. He famously thought Ghost would flop. And many films which did not seem commercially oriented, like Dances with Wolves, connected with audiences way beyond expectations.

Still, his influence is undeniable, for good or ill, or both.

Weekend movies

2011-12-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

The Descendants - I was released early from work on Friday and couldn't think of any better use for my found time than to see a movie (though I missed my chiropractor appt to do it). I was a bit disappointed in this. It was good, but not amazing. Maybe too much hype (including several friends who liked it very much) - I expected to be blown away and I wasn't. Charming little movie, but not as much "there" there as I wanted. It introduces a bunch of interesting themes and characters, but doesn't do much with them, especially the descendant angle of the title, and it ties up all this messiness way too easily and tidily. I might want to read the novel, just to get a better sense of what the filmmaker saw in the source material that maybe didn't make it to the screen.

We Bought a Zoo - I thought Alana would really enjoy this (on Christmas day), but it suffers a little from the Marley and Me effect, in that the preview emphasizes the animal hijinks, but the film is much more about the adult human character. I enjoyed it a lot, but I was very conscious that it was not completely enthralling to her. Side note: I was interested enough to look up Benjamin Mee, and there is a lot that the movie changes from his story, including that his wife, Katherine, died after they bought the zoo, and that his mother (who is not a character in the movie) and brother (who is) were (and are) co-owners. In addition, the son was not a teenager when the zoo was purchased, he was 7, about the age of the younger daughter in the movie. And the zoo, renamed Rosemoor in the film, is really Dartmoor, in England! (The kids' names were also changed.) I would have loved to attend writers' meetings, to hear why all these changes were considered necessary.

Chipwrecked - I tried to avoid taking Alana to see this sequel of Alvin and the Chipmunks, but Larry took Cal to a double feature (The Darkest Hour and Sherlock Holmes), so I ran out of excuses. It wasn't as bad as I expected, with the usual message of "be yourself" and some added love and forgiveness that was very sweet. The music wasn't completely repulsive either.

On video:

Happily Ever Afters (2009) - silly British rom-com with very little romance and typical British comedy (apparently they find suicide attempts to be hilarious). Charming leads (Sally Hawkins, Tom Riley), and a (standard) precocious pre-teen make this almost watchable, but certainly not memorable.

Soul Surfer (2011) - I was doing stuff around the house while I was watching this, so I missed a few scenes, but I got the gist; pretty good story, pretty well made - great casting and wonderful surfing (much of it is footage of the real Bethany Hamilton); I had been concerned that the religious message would be pushed too hard, but Jesus is definitely a secondary character in this story of the triumph of the spirit.

Captain America (2011) - I had not seen this, and Caleb wanted to watch it again. It was okay, pretty much what I expected, except that I liked the kick ass female lead (Agent Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell), who actually gets to do more than stand around being rescued while she screams.

Clash of the Titans (2010) - Ditto; and ditto - pretty much what I expected, which wasn't much; again, they managed to include a female character (Io, played by the gorgeous Gemma Atherton) who occasionally gets to hold her own; my only real complaint is the way they muddled the mythology - I couldn't even follow it - I spent half the movie reading entries on Wikipedia. Side note: the sequel, Wrath of the Titans, is being promoted now (with Rosamund Pike taking on the role of Andromeda because the original actress wasn't available - I would consider watching it just for her).

This covers it!

2011-12-24T22:30:00.000-05:00

True meaning of Christmas

2011-12-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

I was really moved by this essay about Christmas. Of course Jesus's values, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, are Jewish values as well, and this author's call to follow those values year around certainly apply to Jews as well!

. . . every year I hear about some Christians who interpret the "Happy Holidays" greeting given to them at stores to mean that there is a full-on, multi-front war against their faith. I find it ironic that the person checking out their big screen TV on Black Friday somehow is thought to have some power to destroy Christmas. But even so, some Christians are absolutely livid about the fact that we no longer keep Christ in Christmas, and (in their perception anyway) no longer keep Christmas at center stage this time of year.

What they fail to understand is that culture didn't remove Christ from Christmas. We Christians did. We accepted the transformation of Advent, the period from late November until December 24th, from a time of holy watching and waiting to one of hyper-consumerism and cultural observances. So much so that when we go to a big box store and don't hear "Merry Christmas" we see it as an attack on our faith instead of the rightful separation of the commercial from the spiritual.

But there are still those who believe Christmas is under attack. I think they're right. But I don't think stores who have "holiday sales" are the attackers. I don't think it's towns that remove Nativity scenes from parks. I don't believe it's public schools that insist that Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist kids not be asked to sing songs affirming a faith different from their own.

I believe the greatest attack on Christmas has come from within. It has come from those of us who claim our greatest hope comes from the fact that God became a person of goodness, kindness, justice, and love. And who then act nothing like that person did.

And so here is my suggestion to Christians about how to keep Christ in Christmas: this season, worry less about the holiday policies of non-religious institutions, and worry more about whether we are actually listening to, and then doing, what Christ told us to do. In short, keep Christ in Christmas by acting like Christians.

I've always found the Beatitudes a good place to start. When Jesus called his followers up to a hill and preached to them, he told them who the "blessed" were; the ones whom God has looked with favor upon and will grant joy. The ones Christ calls blessed are often the same ones we as a culture are the quickest to condemn or criticize. We blame them for their own situation, and we refuse to help them. We somehow forget that when God became incarnate and preached a sermon about who was most blessed by God, these are the ones who were named: the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the peacemakers, the merciful, the mourners, the pure in heart, the gentle. If Christmas is about the incarnation of God, and this is what God incarnate saw fit to tell us, then this is the ultimate Christmas message.

But over the last year, how many examples have there been of Christians who could care less who God has called blessed? How many times has a Christian told a hungry man to get a job? How many times has one told a poor woman that she just needs to work harder? How many times has a Christian ridiculed the gentle or the merciful? Called the ethical naive? Mocked the peacemaker or the one who calls for justice?

How many times have we told God by our actions that we could care less what Christmas means? Because if we don't take seriously the words of the man that that baby born on Christmas came to be, we have no idea what it means to keep Christ in Christmas.

Managing the holiday season

2011-12-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

I'm always wrong about the Lunch and Learn discussion - the articles I think will create interesting and lively discussions never seem to elicit them, and the ones I think will be dull, inevitably are the most interesting and lively. Case in point is the last 2 months - the November discussion, about Gilad Shalit and life in Israel, never really got off the ground, but this month, about Hanukkah and Christmas, was excellent, despite my dour expectations.

I liked the article, from a book about Hanukkah ("A family guide to spiritual celebration"), the section called "The December Dilemma," which recommended a middle ground regarding Christmas participation, and offered this excellent advice: if you participate in Jewish celebrations all year long (e.g., Passover, Purim, Tu B'shevat, Simchat Torah), it matters less that our winter holiday is less elaborate than Christmas.

One exchange especially struck me, when one of the rabbis pointed out that the miracle of the oil was added to the Macabee story centuries later, to increase the spiritual content of the holiday and decrease the emphasis on rebellion - one of the group members got a bit incensed, suggesting that our celebrations are based on "lies." Several people in the group, including me, said that they're not lies, they're myths and legends and allegories that give meaning to our activities. I also pointed out that these stories have many parallels in other cultures - virgin births and resurrections and miraculous lights that burn when they shouldn't. He dismissed this - "does that mean that it doesn't matter which tradition you follow?" But that's not my interpretation at all. The strikingly common themes only demonstrate how connected we really are, and how our understanding and experience of the divine is shared throughout humanity.

Rabbi Pepperstone talked briefly about his recent readings on science and the bible (e.g., Nahum Sarna's Understanding Genesis, 1996), and I found myself thinking about how interesting and important I find such scholarly works, and how much more connected I feel to Judaism when I understand its roots and its evolution - it makes it seem bigger and more powerful, rather than diminished by losing its magic and mysticism.

Eye problem

2011-12-20T22:30:00.000-05:00

Friday night, on my way to bed, I noticed in the mirror that I had a little flaw in my eye:

I thought I had scratched my cornea, rubbing my eye. But over the weekend, it didn't really change much, except that the blood spots disappeared and then reappeared.

So Tuesday I went to see an opthamologist. He said it's an inflammation of the lymphatics, which he sees it regularly, often among women my age - he thinks it may be related to hormone changes. He recommended lancing it, and gave me some steroid drops to use for a week. After the lancing:

He said there's a small chance it could reappear, and if it does, he would cauterize it (not a comforting thought). I have to admit to being a bit freaked out. I trust this doctor, but it's a bit disturbing to be told you have something with no known cause and a rather random treatment. And I googled "lymphatics" and could find absolutely nothing online about such a condition in the eye. It's a little bit scary. And it makes me feel old too.

Manipulated photo

2011-12-19T22:30:00.000-05:00

I'm completely taken aback by this story - I saw the Time cover, and thought the "protester" they were acknowledging were those who participated in Arab spring. I'm quite surprised to discover that this picture is a stylized version of a photo of an OWS protester named Sarah Mason (created by the artist who made the famous Obama Hope poster, Shephard Fairey). Here is a comment from the RSN website that says it better than I can:

With the enhancement of 'Middle Eastern eyes' effect and the color and other changes making her hat and hankie look more like a hijab against the hell red background, you've added a nice note of fear and hatred. Nice propaganda job there. OWS as Arab terrorists...sigh.
And this one:

Sanitized ? It looks like the 1% did a hatchet job on this photo.

This young woman's physical coloring, and even that of her clothing is purposely darkened and cast in spooky shadows for the cover art in an effort to make The Protestor appear as sinister as it is possible to make a 25-year-old woman look.

If people weren't so impressed with the implicit recognition involved in a Time cover, they would be up in arms over the *blatant* "doctoring" and manipulation of this photo to make this young woman look more like a threat than like what she actually is ..... a young woman exercising her Constitutionally Guaranteed Right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and her obligation to petition her government for redress of grievances.

This cover is not a compliment of any sort. If that were my daughter, I would be outraged.

Latest movies

2011-12-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve (2011) - pretty disappointing; they tried to cram way too much into the movie, and it lacks any emotional resonance at all; but I laughed out loud a few times, and the cast is certainly comprised of lots of appealing people; not a waste of time but definitely a wasted opportunity

Ironclad (2011) - under the radar historical fiction of the story of King John (the one most famous for a cameo appearance at the end of many, many Robin Hood movies) after he returns from the Crusades in the early 13th century and tries to suppress a rebellion among his own nobles; great cast (including Paul Giamatti and Brian Cox) and a few fine moments, but super gory and apparently misrepresents several important facts

Love Wedding Marriage (2011) - uneven rom-com with the delicious Kellan Lutz (apparently his contract required him to film several scenes with his shirt off) and the adorable Mandy Moore, as a marriage counselor who almost torpedoes her own marriage when she tries to salvage her parents floundering relationship; not as appealing as it could have been - Jane Seymour and James Brolin, as the parents, fall pretty flat (Brolin's ham-handed attempt to portray a Jew is particularly unfortunate - his wife should have coached him better); the highlight of the movie is Jessica Szohr as Mandy's lively sister

Ayn Rand's philosophy

2011-12-17T22:30:00.000-05:00

Interesting essay about Ayn Rand's persistent influence, by psychologist Bruce Levine, sent to me by my friend Janet. He begins with a quote from Gore Vidal, and includes a summary of the main pillars of her philosophy. The following is only an excerpt:

Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. . . . To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961

[Ayn Rand summarized her philosophy thusly]: “Metaphysics — objective reality. Epistemology — reason. Ethics — self-interest. Politics — capitalism.” How did that philosophy capture young minds?

Politics — capitalism. While Rand often disparaged Soviet totalitarian collectivism, she had little to say about corporate totalitarian collectivism, as she conveniently neglected the reality that giant U.S. corporations, like the Soviet Union, do not exactly celebrate individualism, freedom, or courage. Rand was clever and hypocritical enough to know that you don’t get rich in the United States talking about compliance and conformity within corporate America. Rather, Rand gave lectures titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” So, young careerist corporatists could embrace Rand’s self-styled “radical capitalism” and feel radical — radical without risk.

Ethics — self-interest. For Rand, all altruists were manipulators. What could be more seductive to kids who discerned the motives of martyr parents, Christian missionaries and U.S. foreign aiders? Her champions, Nathaniel Branden still among them, feel that Rand’s view of “self-interest” has been horribly misrepresented. For them, self-interest is her hero architect Howard Roark turning down a commission because he couldn’t do it exactly his way. Some of Rand’s novel heroes did have integrity, however, for Rand there is no struggle to discover the distinction between true integrity and childish vanity. Rand’s integrity was her vanity, and it consisted of getting as much money and control as possible, copulating with whomever she wanted regardless of who would get hurt, and her always being right. To equate one’s selfishness, vanity, and egotism with one’s integrity liberates young people from the struggle to distinguish integrity from selfishness, vanity, and egotism.

Epistemology — reason. Rand’s kind of reason was a “cool-tool” to control the universe. Rand demonized Plato, and her youthful Collective members were taught to despise him. If Rand really believed that the Socratic Method described by Plato of discovering accurate definitions and clear thinking did not qualify as “reason,” why then did she regularly attempt it with her Collective? Also oddly, while Rand mocked dark moods and despair, her “reasoning” directed that Collective members should admire Dostoyevsky, whose novels are filled with dark moods and despair. A demagogue, in addition to hypnotic glibness, must also be intellectually inconsistent, sometimes boldly so. This eliminates challenges to authority by weeding out clear-thinking young people from the flock.

Metaphysics — objective reality. Rand offered a narcotic for confused young people: complete certainty and a relief from their anxiety. Rand believed that an “objective reality” existed, and she knew exactly what that objective reality was. It included skyscrapers, industries, railroads, and ideas — at least her ideas. Rand’s objective reality did not include anxiety or sadness. Nor did it include much humor, at least the kind where one pokes fun at oneself. Rand assured her Collective that objective reality did not include Beethoven’s, Rembrandt’s, and Shakespeare’s realities — they were too gloomy and too tragic, basically buzzkillers. Rand preferred Mickey Spillane and, towards the end of her life, “Charlie's Angels.”

Post Secret classic

2011-12-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Golden Globe nominations

2011-12-15T22:00:00.000-05:00

Announced this morning - the full list is here, the awards show is Sunday, January 15. I haven't seen hardly any of this stuff - movies or TV. Kinda sad. Though I hope to see several of these movies and performances in the next few weeks. (Weirdest thing is that I've seen more movies in the comedy category than the drama category - WTF!)One thing I noticed is Keira Knightley is not nominated for A Dangerous Method and Ryan Gosling was nominated in both comedy (Crazy Stupid Love) and drama (Ides of March)! So much for over-exposure - didn't seem to hurt him.

In this brief commentary, at E online, they refer to "the big-boy awards" - that must be why women never get nominated in those categories (basically Best Director and Best Picture)!

This from the NY Times:

. . . Golden Globe voters did little to clear up a blurry awards picture in Hollywood early Thursday, giving multiple films – “The Help,” “The Descendants” and “The Artist” — roughly the same number of nominations.

But it was the snubs that will get Hollywood buzzing. Perhaps most notable was the complete shutout of a perceived Oscar front-runner, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” a post-9/11 drama from Stephen Daldry and the producer Scott Rudin. Steven Spielberg also fared poorly, with his old-fashioned “War Horse” only picking up only a pair of nominations and Mr. Spielberg missing from the best director category.

The Golden Globes are not taken seriously as artistic milestones and have a history of voting idiosyncrasies; “True Grit” received no Globe nominationslast year, for instance, but went on to garner 10 nominations at the Academy Awards (albeit winning nothing). Studios have long complained that the group tends to nominate based on star wattage instead of performance in an effort to orchestrate a red-carpet spectacle. Evidence of that this year: multiple nominations for Madonna and her critically drubbed directing debut “W.E.”

Still, the Globes are picked over for clues about the Oscar race. The best picture Oscar has mirrored the association’s choice for best drama or best comedy-musical about two-thirds of the time over the last two decades. (Last year’s big winner at both the Globes and the Oscars was “The King’s Speech.”)

Studios also rely on Globe nominations to fuel ticket sales and lift movies out of the year-end multiplex pile-up. This year pictures like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “War Horse,” “The Adventures of Tintin” and “The Iron Lady” are all set for release in the days around Christmas.

. . . About 17 million people watched the live Globes telecast last year, on par with the year before. The British comedian Ricky Gervais will return for the third year as host of the show, scheduled for Jan. 15 on NBC. Last year, Mr. Gervais overshadowed the ceremony with a series of barbed remarks about attending celebrities like Robert Downey Jr. and the association itself.

Here is the key categories:

BEST MOTION PICTURE -- DRAMA
THE DESCENDANTS
*THE HELP
*HUGO
THE IDES OF MARCH
*MONEYBALL
WAR HORSE

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE -- DRAMA
GLENN CLOSE, ALBERT NOBBS
*VIOLA DAVIS, THE HELP
ROONEY MARA, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
MERYL STREEP, THE IRON LADY
TILDA SWINTON, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE -- DRAMA
GEORGE CLOONEY, THE DESCENDANTS
LEONARDO DICAPRIO, J. EDGAR
MICHAEL FASSBENDER, SHAME
RYAN GOSLING, THE IDES OF MARCH
*BRAD PITT, MONEYBALL

BEST MOTION PICTURE -- COMEDY OR MUSICAL
*50/50
THE ARTIST
*BRIDESMAIDS
*MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
*MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE -- COMEDY ORMUSICAL
JODIE FOSTER, CARNAGE
CHARLIZE THERON, YOUNG ADULT
*KRISTEN WIIG, BRIDESMAIDS
*MICHELLE WILLIAMS, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
KATE WINSLET, CARNAGE

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE -- COMEDY OR MUSICAL
JEAN DUJARDIN, THE ARTIST
BRENDAN GLEESON, THE GUARD
*JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, 50/50
*RYAN GOSLING, CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.
*OWEN WILSON, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

BERENICE BEJO, THE ARTIST
*JESSICA CHASTAIN, THE HELP
JANET MCTEER, ALBERT NOBBS
*OCTAVIA SPENCER, THE HELP
SHAILENE WOODLEY, THE DESCENDANTS

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
*KENNETH BRANAGH, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
ALBERT BROOKS, DRIVE
*JONAH HILL, MONEYBALL
VIGGO MORTENSEN, A DANGEROUS METHOD
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, BEGINNERS

BEST DIRECTOR -- MOTION PICTURE
*WOODY ALLEN, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
GEORGE CLOONEY, THE IDES OF MARCH
MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS, THE ARTIST
ALEXANDER PAYNE, THE DESCENDANTS
*MARTIN SCORSESE, HUGO

BEST SCREENPLAY -- MOTION PICTURE
WOODY ALLEN MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
GEORGE CLOONEY, GRANT HESLOV, BEAU WILLIMON - THE IDES OF MARCH
MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS - THE ARTIST
ALEXANDER PAYNE, NAT FAXON, JIM RASH - THE DESCENDANTS
STEVEN ZAILLIAN, AARON SORKIN - MONEYBALL

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
ARTHUR CHRISTMAS
CARS 2
PUSS IN BOOTS
*RANGO

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
THE FLOWERS OF WAR (CHINA)
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (USA)
THE KID WITH A BIKE (BELGIUM)
A SEPARATION (IRAN)
THE SKIN I LIVE IN (SPAIN)

"If I was a poor black kid"

2011-12-14T22:00:00.000-05:00

The interwebs are ablaze today with reactions to Gene Marks essay posted at Forbes.com. The original post is interesting, but what's riveting are the amazing essays that have been written in response. I can't decide which I like best.

I almost cried when I read Cord Jefferson:

. . . You find this sort of thing a lot among the white, moneyed, conservative set: "If only blacks and Latinos would work harder, they'd be fine." I don't think Marks and people who think like that are malicious, but I'd love to ask them how best to focus on your studies when all you can think about is the very real possibility that your mother is being assaulted in the bedroom where you're supposed to find sanctuary at night. How best to prioritize learning to read rigorously over scheming to get home and be the man of the house in the stead of the father who left? How best to find joy in school with so much hate and bitterness poisoning the rest of your life?

There's a lot wrong with "If I Was a Poor Black Kid," not the least of which is the grammar in the title. But the biggest issue with the piece and everything like it is that it assumes being poor and black are the only two things on poor black kids' plates. Content to generalize based on simplistic depictions of black poverty from TV and film, Marks believes that the only thing low-income minorities have to overcome is terrible teachers and a lack of technological knowledge; the rest of their problems stem from outright laziness. "If I was a poor black kid," writes Marks, "I’d become expert at Google Scholar." I'm not sure a more tone-deaf sentence has ever appeared in Forbes. To Marks, poor children exist in a vacuum where their only problem is poverty. In real life, poverty is a cloud that darkens every facet of a child's life, from his academic career to how he sleeps at night knowing his home is a brothel.

And Ta-Nehisi Coates almost had me cheering - his essay is extremely brave and thought-provoking:

When I read this piece I was immediately called back, as I so often am, to my days at Howard and the courses I took looking at slavery. Whenever we discussed the back-breaking conditions, the labor, the sale of family members etc., there was always someone who asserted, roughly, "I couldn't been no slave. They'd a had to kill me!" I occasionally see a similar response here where someone will assert, with less ego, "Why didn't the slaves rebel?" More commonly you get people presiding from on high insisting that if they had lived in the antebellum South, they would have freed all of their slaves.

What all these responses have in common is a kind benevolent, and admittedly unintentional, self-aggrandizement. These are not bad people (much as I am sure Mr. Marks isn't a bad person), but they are people speaking from a gut feeling, a kind of revulsion at a situation which offends our modern morals.

. . . It is comforting to believe that we, through our sheer will, could transcend these bindings -- to believe that if we were slaves, our indomitable courage would have made us Frederick Douglass . . .

Still, we are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a vacation, and industrious enough to keep the lights on. We like our cars. We love a good cheeseburger. We'd die without air-conditioning. In the great mass of humanity that's ever lived, we are distinguished only by our creature comforts, but on the whole, mediocre.

This basic extension of empathy is one of the great barriers in understanding race in this country. I do not mean a soft, flattering, hand-holding empathy. I mean a muscular empathy rooted in curiosity. If you really want to understand slaves, slave masters, poor black kids, poor white kids, rich people of colors, whoever, it is essential that you first come to grips with the disturbing facts of your own mediocrity. The first rule is this--You are not extraordinary. It's all fine and good to declare that you would have freed your slaves. But it's much more interesting to assume that you wouldn't and then ask "Why?"

This is not an impossible task. But often we find that we have something invested in not asking "Why?" The fact that we -- and I mean all of us, black and white -- are, in our bones, no better than slave masters is chilling. The upshot of all my black nationalist study was terrifying -- give us the guns and boats and we would do the same thing. There is nothing particularly noble about black skin. And to our present business it is equally chilling to understand that the obstacles facing poor black kids can't be surmounted by an advice column.

. . . The answers are out there. But they will not improve your self-esteem.

Kelly Virella tells it like it is too:

. . . Marks’ argument is essentially a kindler-gentler version of this post-Civil War rhetoric, spruced up with a tip of the hat to the wonders of the white man’s technology. So naturally, I detest it. I know my history and I know when someone is trying offer me the same okie-doke they offered my ancestors. They put up with it, because they were afraid and had few choices. But this is not 1865. “Equality of opportunity” was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now. So my advice is quit bringing it up, because we’re not having it.

The reason so many Americans are talking about inequality, is because we intend to actually drastically reduce or eliminate it. I am not opposed to working hard. But I am opposed to participating in an economy in which people like Marks A) unilaterally set the rules and B) stack the deck against my community and pretend that the real problem is our “ignorance” of opportunities.

I see no reason why my progeny should have to be any more special than Marks’ to succeed. But more importantly, I see no reason to tolerate the persistence of policies designed to restrict the number of black children who can succeed. If I were the middle class white guy Gene Marks, I’d see the handwriting on the wall and start acquiescing to some wealth redistribution, while the messenger is still a nice middle class black lady like me.

Glee Christmas Show

2011-12-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

I liked the message of the show, about the true meaning of Christmas, though it was heavy-handed and super cliche. The show overall was pretty dull. Not up to Glee's standards at all.

The black and white 60's-style TV show segment was sort of clever, but who was that for? Not the core audience, that's for sure. I found it kinda silly and boring, and the laugh track was excruciating (and it never could have been done for the $800 budget Artie was given!) "Bachelor pad" - please - I guess they were being ironic, but I thought that was sort of offensive.

And while we're on that topic, having Blaine and Rachel sing "Extraordinary Merry Christmas" together was bizarre - why hetero-ize the show that way? That's not what we want or expect from Glee! There's so many ways that number could have been staged, including having each of their boyfriends involved, or just having one of the couples singing it. The Kurt-Blaine duet of "Let It Snow" sort of counter-balanced the earlier number, but was too little, too late (and couldn't hold a candle to their flirty duet last year of "Baby It's Cold Outside").

In general, I thought there were too many songs packed into the episode (9!), including "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, which didn't fit and should have been cut, along with at least one other. Many of the numbers were just a person singing, including "Blue Christmas" (Rory) and "River" (Rachel), which gave the show a very inert feeling. The only number with any energy was the Brittney-lead "Christmas Wrapping."

Worst of all, two of the major characters (Puck and Rachel) are Jewish, and the word "Hanukkah" wasn't even mentioned, though it would have been very easy to slip it in somewhere. Rachel begging Finn for Christmas presents was obnoxious, but more so, knowing that she was Jewish. While we're on the topic - lots of Jews work at homeless shelters and soup kitchens on Christmas (like my family!), though you wouldn't know it from this program, which sets the final scene there without any acknowledgement of Jewish involvement. Thanks for contributing to the invisibility of our people and our holiday!

All around very disappointing! The first season's Christmas show was the best, but even last year's was so much better than this.

Best protest signs of 2011

2011-12-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

Amen brother - Cornel West at Occupy Wall St in New York.

Best protest signs of 2011

2011-12-11T22:30:00.000-05:00

From gay pride march in Texas.

Best protest signs of 2011

2011-12-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

Julie Summers at Slut Walk in LA.

Best protest signs of 2011

2011-12-09T22:30:00.000-05:00

From Zuccotti Park in New York. This actually brought tears to my eyes. (See entry on November 18.)

Best protest signs of 2011

2011-12-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

From a Planned Parenthood rally in Austin. This sums up the political situation quite succinctly.

Obama's speech

2011-12-07T22:30:00.001-05:00

Hoorah! He came out swinging - the speech that woke us up and made us pay attention. Here's just a few of the quotable sections:

. . . this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

I am here to say they are wrong. I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them.

. . . Theodore Roosevelt . . . was the Republican son of a wealthy family. He praised what the titans of industry had done to create jobs and grow the economy. He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It’s led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t.

And in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. “Our country,” he said, “… means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”

Now, for this, Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist—even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women—insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.

. . . Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. I’m not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I’m saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.

Now, this kind of inequality—a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression—hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

But there’s an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people—we tell our kids—that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.

. . . I think about a company based in Warroad, Minnesota. It’s called Marvin Windows and Doors. During the recession, Marvin’s competitors closed dozens of plants, let hundreds of workers go. But Marvin’s did not lay off a single one of their 4,000 or so employees—not one. In fact, they’ve only laid off workers once in over a hundred years. Mr. Marvin’s grandfather even kept his eight employees during the Great Depression.

Now, at Marvin’s when times get tough, the workers agree to give up some perks and some pay, and so do the owners. As one owner said, “You can’t grow if you’re cutting your lifeblood—and that’s the skills and experience your workforce delivers.” For the CEO of Marvin’s, it’s about the community. He said, “These are people we went to school with. We go to church with them. We see them in the same restaurants. Indeed, a lot of us have married local girls and boys. We could be anywhere, but we are in Warroad.”

That’s how America was built. That’s why we’re the greatest nation on Earth. That’s what our greatest companies understand. Our success has never just been about survival of the fittest. It’s about building a nation where we’re all better off. We pull together. We pitch in. We do our part. We believe that hard work will pay off, that responsibility will be rewarded, and that our children will inherit a nation where those values live on.

. . . And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we’ve changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed—what can never change—are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule of our national life,” he said, “the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Tammy Baldwin's speech

2011-12-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

Following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren, who made a speech in favor of progressive values that went viral and then some, we now have Tammy Baldwin, a Congressional representative from Wisconsin who's running for the open Senate in that state (against former and very popular governor, Tommy Thompson; she would be the first open lesbian to hold a Senate seat in the state). She made this terrific speech at the National Institute's annual dinner that is being quoted by all my favorite liberals:

“It’s not that we’ve forgotten how to create wealth in this country. It’s that we have allowed that wealth to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. And as the distance between top and bottom has widened, the bonds between us have stretched — and broken. Progressives want to restore those bonds.

. . . Wisconsin was one of the first states to guarantee access to a free public education," she said. "We were the first state to ratify the 19th amendment allowing women the right to vote. We were the first to protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination. Wisconsin was the first state to grant collective bargaining rights to public employees. We invented workers' compensation. We invented unemployment insurance. But recently, that progressive tradition has come under attack by extremists."

. . . It must be our fight -- for an economy and a government that works for the 99 percent. A fight that says we're all in this together. A fight that declares we have an obligation to each other. An obligation to be fair and just. And where there are wrongs, an obligation to change it. Believing in that -- that's what it means to be a progressive."

Progressive values

2011-12-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

One of my heroes, George Lakoff, wrote a great piece on HuffingtonPost about the use of language around the Occupy movement and the upcoming election. Toward the end, he summarized what we (progressives) should be emphasizing, and he just completely captures my personal political values. This should be required reading for everyone, not just progressives, so that everyone in America will understand what we (progressives) are fighting for:

"Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country. Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust public is necessary for private success, about the benefits of health, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours . . ."

More discussion of Israel

2011-12-04T22:00:00.000-05:00

We didn't have any guests this time, and the group was missing several members, but we stayed on the same theme - that the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the land, and generally they suck. This time we began by focusing our attention on an extremist religious sect of Jews who live in Israel, but don't recognize the government, because Israel can only be re-established as the homeland of the Jews when God arranges it, so the current political entity has no authority as far as they're concerned. We apparently agree that we "despise" this group because they've been used as "pawns" by anti-semites. However, our own arguments regarding the Palestinians play into the hands of our enemies as well. The assertion that "we were there first" isn't considered credible on playgrounds, but we still want to use it in this conversation. The fact that it's not true - read the book of Numbers* - doesn't bother us in the least. Similarly, the argument that we've made the land "thrive" more than any other group that's been in control of it (most specifically, the Palestinians) implies that they don't deserve it as much as we do. Which is exactly the sort of reasoning that leads to the UN calling Zionism "racist."

The whole conversation makes me ill. Why are we so unable to make the case for our legitimate claim to the land without dismissing the other people who also feel connected to it? Indigeous people have always been ignored when lands are conquered - apparently it's a natural human tendency. But that doesn't mean we have to succumb to it, let alone make it the cornerstone of our argument. I don't think American Jews realize just how incredibly unpopular Israel has become after 60+ years of this untenable arrangement. Our arrogant and narrow-minded, and frankly inhumane, approach to it is not helping Israel, America, or the situation in general.

*Numbers 13:28 - "The people who live there are strong, the cities are fortified and large. . . "
Numbers 13:29 - "Amalek is living in the land of the Negev, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and the side of the Jordan."
Numbers 14:9 - "They shall be our prey . . . do not fear them."

Hilary Swank scandal

2011-12-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

I missed this story completely this fall when it happened. She says she didn't know that the event was a birthday party for a Chechen political figure with a less-than-stellar reputation, but the fact that her PR firm and management team quit after the kerfluffle makes that hard to swallow. The stories I read about this suggest that stars are lured to these events by really big money and may not care that much what's involved.

Hilary Swank has already paid a public price for appearing at a Chechen gala — for a fee — that ended up celebrating the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-back president who’s been suspected of human-rights violations. She subsequently parted ways with her management and publicity teams after her appearance became public, and Swank offered a public mea culpa on The Tonight Show.

In the most recent issue of Gotham magazine, Swank opted to tell her side of the story to actress and guest-journalist Mariska Hargitay.

MARISKA HARGITAY: I want to ask you about something more serious concerning your travels. Much has been said about your recent trip to Chechnya. Can you share what happened?

HILARY SWANK: Invitations to make appearances come up all the time. In this case, a Turkish real estate company invited me to help promote peace by celebrating the rebuilding of a war-torn city and meeting people who were rebuilding their lives. That’s how it was presented to me, and I thought, Absolutely, yes. When I was there, I was asked to wish the president a happy birthday, and I did. Shame on me for not having researched the trip more fully, but I didn’t know President Kadyrov’s record. Human rights organizations had tried to warn me, but those warnings weren’t shared with me. The things that have been written about me in the press are totally contradictory to who I am. It’s on me for having gone, and I regret it. Believe me, I’m never again accepting an invitation before I have all the information I need.

Voyager probes approach solar system edge

2011-12-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

Super cool space news! (Compare this artist's rendering with my entry on December 20, 2007.) I know it's dopey, but when the Voyager probes are in the news, I always think of the first Star Trek movie, which imagined a Voyager probe that returns, still seeking information.

Voyager on the cusp of entering interstellar space

Plowing through the solar system's unexplored frontier, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a region of stagnant solar wind and magnetic pressure and is on the precipice of crossing over into interstellar space. But estimates for when the nuclear-powered probe will break through are not precise. Ed Stone, Voyager's project scientist, said it could be any time between a few months and a few years from now.

"I can almost assure you that will be confused when this first happens because this will not be simple," Stone said. "Nature tends to be much more creative than our own minds."

Moving around the perimeter of the Milky Way galaxy, the sun generates a wind of charged particles moving out in all directions. Ahead of the sun, the solar wind is compressed like the waves in front of a moving ship by a steady flow of plasma emanating from outside the solar system. The solar particles are mostly diverted down and up, then behind the sun like a ship's wake or a comet's tail.

The region of the sun's influence, in which the solar wind is dominant, is called the heliosphere. The heliopause is the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space.

No spacecraft has ever left the solar system before, so Voyager 1 is flying through an uncharted void between the influence of the sun and the interstellar wind, which blows waves of plasma and charged particles at a clip of up to 15 miles per second.

"That transition may not be instantaneous," Stone said. "It may take us months to get through a rather messy interface between these two winds."

Gay penguins

2011-12-02T22:00:00.000-05:00

What an adorable and fascinating story. A third "gay" penguin couple in the news - this one in China, were given a chick to raise. The couple in Toronto were separated for mating season, provoking a huge outcry. The first couple, who raised a chick in the New York Central Park zoo, were celebrated in the children's book, And Tango Makes Three.

The following story from HuffingtonPost includes a video of the Chinese couple:

Just weeks after the planned separation of two Toronto-based "gay" penguins for mating purposes sparked a global outcry, another same-sex avian couple is in the news -- ironically for chick-rearing reasons once again.

As Metro is reporting, two "gay" penguins at Harbin Polar Land in northern China have been given a baby chick to care for, in an effort to help a struggling penguin mother who recently hatched twins.

Despite being "gay," the penguin couple -- whose union was even celebrated in a 2009 "wedding" -- will be naturally suited for raising chicks. Male penguins share the duty of incubating unhatched eggs with females in the wild, and this pair has become notorious for trying to steal eggs during the hatching season.

Undoubtedly, the Chinese penguins' case is similar to that of Roy and Silo, the two "gay" penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo who were eventually given a rejected egg after attempting to hatch a rock. Their story was also the basis for the controversial children's book "And Tango Makes Three."

Perhaps Buddy and Pedro, the Canadian male penguin couple, could learn a thing or two from their Chinese and American counterparts when they reunite after mating season.

More exciting space news

2011-12-01T23:00:00.001-05:00

Earth-like planet discovered in neighboring solar system! (I mentioned, not by name, the announcement regarding Kepler 21b in an entry on September 29, 2010.)

It may have a radius about 2.4 times that of our home planet, but NASA scientists have confirmed that Kepler-22b is the first planet we've ever confirmed orbits within the so-called "habitable zone" of a Sun-like star, making it the most Earth-like planet we've yet discovered.

In astronomy, the habitable zone (also known as the "Goldilocks zone") is the region surrounding a star in which an orbiting planet could maintain liquid water (and, by extension,life) on its surface. And as the "Goldilocks" moniker implies, whether or not a planet resides inside a habitable zone has everything to do with whether the planet is a little too cold, a little too hot, or just right, temperature-wise.

Take Kepler-21b, for example, whose discovery was announced last week by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Kepler-21b is even closer to the size of Earth than Kepler-22b, but it orbits far too close to its sun to sustain any form of life we're familiar with; surface temperatures on the planet are estimated to reach as much as 3000-degrees Fahrenheit — that's hot enough to melt iron, not to mention any hope of us ever calling K-21b "Earth 2.0."

But Kepler-22b is a different story. Sure, the planet orbits about 15% closer to its star than Earth does to the Sun, but its star is also significantly cooler, dimmer, and smaller than ours. And while scientists have yet to determine K-22b's composition — be it rocky, gaseous or liquid — they estimate that surface temperatures on K-22b average a very Earth-like 72-degrees Fahrenheit.

NASA's Kepler mission (which is charged with identifying Earth-like planets throughout the Milky Way galaxy) has certainly turned up habitable zone planet candidates in the past, but Kepler 22-b is the first of these candidates to be officially confirmed.

And it certainly won't be the last. In fact, the confirmation was made on top of another announcement: that the Kepler mission has now discovered 1,094 additional potential planets (many of which could very well be Earth-like), bringing the total number of planet candidates discovered to date to 2,326.

Let's pause and consider that number for a moment. The Kepler space telescope has been in operation for less than three years, and already its findings stand to quadruplethe number of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system. If the rate of discovery continues on its present course, the identification of more and more Earth-like planets stands to ramp up in a big way.

"The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we're honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable," explains Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University. "The more data we collect, the keener our eye for finding the smallest planets out at longer orbital periods. We are really zeroing in on the true Earth-sized habitable planets."

In other words, we're getting closer and closer to finding Earth's twin — and that's assuming we haven't found something incredibly close already. All that's left now is coming up with a way to make the 600-light-year trip to Kepler-22b and we can set up camp.

Discussions of Israel

2011-11-30T22:00:00.000-05:00

This is the 3rd time in less than a year (see 5/1/11 blog entry) that I've attended a discussion of Israel at my synagogue with an "Israeli" present (though in this most recent instance, the woman is American, but lived in Israel for 15 years as a young adult). In all 3 instances, the Israeli took the standard hard line against the Palestinians. I realize there's plenty of Israelis who feel this way, but there's also plenty who actually favor a 2 state solution and actually think Palestinians are human beings deserving of dignity and consideration . . . none of those people ever seem to visit us though.

I've gotten to the point where I'm actually bored listening to American Jews trot out the same tired arguments about how superior we are, and how no one has suffered like we have, so we should get a pass on, well, everything.

I thought it was the height of irony that the section of Israel history that we read prior to the class makes extremely clear how divided the various factions of early Zionists were and how much they despised each other. Why should things be any different now? But we sort of glossed over that aspect. As soon as the discussion got a bit heated, the rabbi defused things with a long lecture about Harry Truman's role in the establishment of Israel (he wrote his thesis on this, or something). I suppose he didn't want us coming to blows, but I think we need more discussion about these issues, not less. I don't think disagreements should be avoided, though I realize this is not prevailing opinion.

Less than 2 weeks later, I heard Jeremy Ben Ami, the founder of J Street, speaking in Syracuse. There was a respectable sized crowd, and the questions were noticeably lacking in hysteria, rather to my surprise. It's so refreshing to hear a committed Zionist make the case for a reasonable and equitable solution, without demonizing the other inhabitants of the area. It's an uphill battle to change the conversation of American Jews, but there's clearly substantial interest in Syracuse for a chapter of J Street, and I look forward to being involved with other Jews who share my more nuanced view.

Girls becoming women

2011-11-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

Soraya Chemaly is my new hero. Love this Huffington Post column on the requirement of female actresses to debase themselves as an essential part of their transition to womanhood. Below are a few choice paragraphs:

. . . As Frank Bruni detailed in a NYT article making this "good girls gone bad" transition is practically a female celebrity rite of passage. I would add specifically, self-debasement, is an essential component. For girls to get their tickets stamped and become famous women, they have to very publically enact one or more of the following: rape, stripping, pole dancing, prostitution, sexual abuse. Want a list? Here's a very short one of recent actresses or performers who made their transitions in that way.

Kristen Stewart
Britney Spears
Christina Aquilera
Rihanna
Lindsey Lohan
Miley Cyrus
Dakota Fanning
Hilary Duff
Diana Agron
Lea Michele
Jessica Simpson
Vanessa Hudgens
Jessica Beil
Elizabeth Berkley
Abigail Breslin (who may have to go through a Round II)

Even Anne Hathaway, who's made a valiant go of it, played a phone sex worker in Valentine's Day (which meant she was available anywhere, anytime by the men who wanted her). And, this is nothing new, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Brooke Sheilds. The list is endless. Every single one of them: rape, stripping, pole dancing, prostitution. Success!

. . . So, having to "prove" you are no longer a girl means proving you are no longer "good" whatever THAT means. . . How screwed up is that?

. . . So the question isn't WHY DID SHE DO THAT? It's WHY DO GIRLS HAVE TO BE SEXUALLY DEBASED TO BECOME WOMEN IN OUR MOVIES, ON THE RADIO, IN GAMES, ON SCREENS BIG AND SMALL, ON THE SIDES OF BUSES, IN MAGAZINES, NEWSPAPERS. I'm out of room here.

The damage done by these images and the unbalanced portrayals of female sexuality (which almost always pivots, btw, around vulnerability to male violence (such a great image of boys' and men's sexuality) is like the damage done by second hand smoke. Girls and women subjected to these images (that would be... everyone) all experience, to varying degrees, self-objectification. The American Psychological Association report on it's effects on girls is detailed and clear.

What matters to women

2011-11-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

My friend Suzanne sent me a terrific piece on Oprah by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic. It's interesting, but the very best paragraph is pure CF, and really captures what makes women tick:

There are certain things about women that men will never understand, in part because they have no interest in understanding them. They will never know how deeply we care about our houses—what a large role they play in our dreams for ourselves, how unhappy their shortcomings make us. Men think they understand the way our physical beauty—or lack of it, or assaults on it from age or extra weight—preys on our minds, but they don’t fully grasp the significance these things have for us. Nor can they understand the way physical comforts or simple luxuries—the fresh towel or the fat new cake of soap—can lift our spirits. And they will never know how much our lives are shaped around the fear of bad men and the harm they can bring us if we’re not careful, if we’re not banded together, if we’re not telling each other what to watch out for, what we’ve learned. We need each other’s counsel, and oftentimes it comes when we’re talking about other things, when we seem not to have much important on our minds at all.

Post feminist domesticity

2011-11-27T23:00:00.000-05:00

Emily Matchar wrote a piece in the Washington Post, about the weird fad of home canning and wool making and other activities that we associate with pioneer women - activities that modern life make unnecessary, but to which young and middle-aged women are flocking. What's the deal, she asks.

Then Maggie Arden wrote a spirited (if somewhat defensive) defense, suggesting that it's all completely innocent.

I think Maggie misinterpreted Emily, who said that these domestic activities have started out as hobbies, but it could be a short step before they again become the obligation that they were for women in the age of Betty Friedan. While trends come and go, as Maggie wrote, there is still something disturbing about so many highly educated women snuggling down and enjoying all these tasks that many (not all, of course) of our mothers and grandmothers were very happy to relinquish. I certainly don't think it's anti-feminist to enjoy knitting or baking, but their prevalence is one of those things that make you go "hmmm" . . .

Local sex abuse scandal

2011-11-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

Shortly after the Penn State kerfluffle started, a story came out of SU, about a student who claimed he was molested by the assistant basketball coach for the team, Bernie Fine. Apparently, the young man reported his abuse in 2003, but, surprise, the story was suppressed. I was even more taken aback by several people I know (who shall remain nameless) who said they thought there was nothing to this story, that the accuser was just jumping on some twisted band wagon, or just wanted the publicity. (Of course, the venerated head coach, Jim Boeheim, expressed similar sentiments.) Needless to say, I was appalled at their reaction, but didn't really counter their assessment. Then, a couple weeks later, an audiotape emerged, of the accuser talking with the coach's wife, Laurie, wherein she says, she knew exactly what he'd done - that he was in denial and she felt powerless to stop him. Since then, 2 more accusers have come forward. The coach was immediately fired by Chancellor Nancy Cantor, and the head coach expressed regret that his initial remarks were "insensitive" to the victims. What makes me even more discouraged than the abuse is the dismissive way that people still treat the brave people who speak out about it. People seem shockingly unaware that the courage to speak up often only occurs after someone else has spoken out first. Hence the supposed "band wagon" effect.

Madame Bovary

2011-11-25T22:30:00.000-05:00

I read this book for my book club. Interesting and thought-provoking. I didn't really expect to like it, but I enjoyed reading it, especially the second half. It's a little hard to get "into," but a lot of books are that way. I might not have persevered if I hadn't been motivated by the book club, so I'm glad I had that to keep me going.

I read the Francis Steegmuller translation, which is considered the most authoritative. I got a gorgeous copy of the book at the library - a real treasure, with a ribbon bookmark built in. The saddest thing about ebooks is that we won't have these lovely books to hold and read anymore (they're virtually extinct already).

In the Steegmuller intro, he says that Madame Bovary is considered a "perfect" book. Flaubert apparently crafted every sentence with deliberation. It has some beautiful passages, though the descriptions can get a bit tedious, and I admit to scanning more than a few paragraphs.

One of the things that struck me was how modern the book seemed. Other than the descriptions of clothes and transportation (and medical treatments, ugh) you could almost swear you were reading a 21st century novel, which is a testimony to Flaubert's skill. It's also a testimony to the incredible universality of the themes in the book, which occur so frequently in literature that they are almost cliche - boredom with modern life, the search for love, the petty cruelties of friends and neighbors.

I found the character of Emma to be both sympathetic and highly aggravating. I went back and forth, feeling for her situation and then feeling annoyed with her. She makes many bad choices, and succumbs to self-pity (and of course the ultimate self-pitying act), but she is often aware of her own foolishness, and some of the best passages are her questioning herself: why am I so unhappy, why can't I take pleasure in my life?

I was a bit surprised that she commits suicide, not over lost love, but due to her financial ruin, and her general cynicism about life. In general the book is not romantic or passionate the way I expected it to be, but that's not ultimately a flaw.

The question is always raised about whether this is a feminist novel. On the one hand, I would say, definitely not, because Emma is such a victim of her circumstances and her melancholy nature. But there's also an amazing passage fairly early in the book, talking about the dilemma of women, that could have been penned by Betty Friedan, right out of The Feminine Mystique.

As I read it, I often found myself wondering: where are her female friends? It seemed almost an oversight on the author's part - women always have friends in novels written by women. Emma does not seem especially anti-social and I had to think that her story would have ended very differently if she'd taken the trouble to cultivate some girlfriends.

I also thought the author's gender was apparent in the short shrift that Emma's relationship with her daughter was given. The child is almost an afterthought throughout the book. It's possible that a woman of such strong emotions would have so little connection to her child, but I thought it was improbable, and one of the few weaknesses of the story.

I also thought some of the secondary characters could have been developed more. For a story that was so carefully crafted, this seemed something of a missed opportunity.

Overall I enjoyed the book and thought about it more than many books I've read. I was left with the thought that there are so many "classic" novels that I never read, and the ones I read in school I didn't probably understand or appreciate. Added to my Bucket List: take a literature course!

Feminist defense of Twilight

2011-11-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

I was pleased to come across this writer's commentary on the strangely rabid criticism. Great stuff. Below is the first few paragraphs. In addition to her calm assessment, many of the comments at the Time website (as far as I read, certainly not the many hundreds there), are reasonable and reasonably intelligent.

The Harsh Bigotry of Twilight-Haters

Time. com

By ERIKA CHRISTAKIS

Hating Twilight is so 2009, and with the newest installment, Breaking Dawn, ruling the box office, the juggernaut hardly needs defenders. But the virulent seriousness of the haters is surprising. Many of the reviews have heaped disproportionate and moralizing scorn on an Oscar-winning director’s fantasy enactment of a young girl’s dreams and fears. Kristen Stewart and her co-stars have been excoriated for their “sullen” and “wooden” performances despite receiving respectable and sometimes highly favorable reviews in other movies in which they have starred.

The negative reactions fall in two camps: The dismissive camp simply mocks Twilight’s incorporation of silly, “moony” elements like undying love and the surprisingly authentic portrayal of wedding ritual, honeymoon jitters and the shock of unintended pregnancy; the topics are apparently too boring and unrelatable for most reviewers. The deluded camp, conversely, takes Twilight far too seriously, faulting it for leading young girls to mistake fantasy for reality in dangerous, disempowering ways.

It makes you wonder if some people missed the memo that hundreds of millions of females, like their male counterparts, enjoy their fantasy life straight-up weird, sexy, and implausible.

Why is it that female fantasies are such a source of derision and fear? The male species is allowed all manner of violent, creepy, ludicrous, and degrading movie tropes, and while we may not embrace them as high art, no one questions them seriously as entertainment, even when sometimes we probably should. (Violent imagery is, after all, associated with violent behavior.) You want to saw someone in half or put their head in a vise? Showcase naked strippers as a fake plot device? Pair a beautiful and successful career woman with a slovenly, unemployed man? Pretend you are Wolverine? Go right ahead. We know you can’t really be serious. But watch a tender wedding night between a virginal, undead superhero and his teenage, human bride, and the scolds come out in force. Are parents worried that their teenage daughter actually wants to be impregnated by a 100-year-old vampire who can crush a headboard with his hands (and perform an emergency C-section with his teeth)?

(Even) more on Twilight

2011-11-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

I'm still annoyed about the fan boy fuss directed at Breaking Dawn in particular and Twilight in general (as the juggernaut consumes the world's movie dollars, breaking the $300 million mark in less than a week), and I had a new thought, about the source of their spite. I know part of it is the co-opting of the vampire genre, which clearly annoys a lot of folks. But I'm also convinced that an unspoken irritation is Bella/Kristen Stewart, who is not portrayed as nearly sexy enough. True, in the latest installment, she appears in a couple of honeymoon scenes clad in a bikini and negligees. But the ship has long since sailed on her persona - she's not "hot." I really think that if she had been portrayed in a more traditional sexy and available way in the movies, the first one especially, much of the hostility toward the series would be muted. Fan boy films require a hot girlfriend character, not jeans and hoodies and sensible shoes. If they'd put her in a low cut top and a push up bra, tight jeans or a mini skirt, and slathered gloss on her plumped-up-with-collagen lips, I really don't think they would (still) be howling so loudly about how "stupid" these movies are.

Commentary on Breaking Dawn

2011-11-22T22:00:00.000-05:00

This feminist analysis makes some very good points, and the fact that the series is so widely read by young women means that it's very likely influencing their attitudes, whether you think it's pop culture "crap" or not. I like the series, including the final book, and obviously I consider myself a feminist.

I think the appeal has a lot to do with good old-fashioned romance, because Edward is a very old-fashioned figure - polite, considerate, protective, etc. Lots of adult women still fantasize about such a man! The entire romance genre is hugely popular, and profitable, and many, if not most, of these standard romance books (and movies!) portray relationships pretty much exactly like Edward and Bella's (whether historical romance or modern chick lit or young adult fiction). And portray women/young women desiring the same things criticized by the author of this critical article - a thin body, a good man, children . . .

The other, more disturbing elements of Twilight, oft-discussed, like Edward's attempts to control Bella (though rarely successful) are valid points. Sexist tropes are extremely prevalent in today's books and movies, even if more alternatives exist now compared to when I was a teen. I think this is a valid discussion - I worry greatly about the self image and expectations that my own daughter and other young ladies will develop in a culture that still communicates a very stunted message to them about who they should be. Though I'm more concerned about the shallow consumeristic role models like the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, and the Housewives of Whatever, than I am about Twilight! At least young ladies are reading books!

The Bloody, Twisted, Inverted World of Twilight:

Violent Vampire Sex, Demon-Babies and Overwhelming Female Desire

by Sarah Seltzer

Alternet

. . . Every time a new installment of the neverending Twilight film franchise comes out, I have to reassess this massively popular tale that is such a paradox: it’s centered around a young woman’s desire, yes, but it’s a desire for all the wrong things (by feminist standards as well as by normal social ones). There’s no question that Twilight is saturated with sexist tropes--to the point of being disturbing. But there’s also no question that that disturbing element is compelling, too. Deeply so.

There’s a reason teenage girls are obsessed with this story, after all, and it’s not because they’re shallow consumers of pop trash: over the course of four books and five movies, Bella’s needs, wants and impulses are by the strongest power manifested -- stronger than the vampires and werewolves combined. Her inmost wishes are the steady heartbeat that propels the action forward to an absurd degree.

She wants to date vampire Edward, she dates Edward--even though he is dangerous. She wants to keep her second suitor, werewolf Jacob, in her life, she keeps him in her life--even though he keeps messing with her relationship. She wants to sleep with Edward (a lot) even though he might accidentally kill her, and she finally gets to, and she loves it. She wants to deliver her dangerous baby despite the fact that it is literally destroying her body and she gets to. Everyone loves her baby, too, including Jacob, who will one day marry it, but that’s another story.

Bella wants to be a vampire even though Edward and Jacob hope she can stay human and have a good human life, but her suicide by demon-childbirth leaves them no choice but to turn her vamp (the final shot of the latest film in which her new vampire eyes open is a stunning one), so now she’s a vampire--and she loves it! And (spoiler alert) in the second installment of Breaking Dawn, her desire to hang with her human relatives despite her new thirst for their blood will win out, as will her desire for the bad vampires to leave her family alone. She ends up being the strongest vampire around, too; now that she’s immortal her desires take physical, supernatural form and allow her to shield her loved ones. But this new power is an afterthought, almost redundant. For the entire series, what Bella wants, Bella gets.

. . . But as for the substance of her wants, therein lies the perversely haunting twist. I’d argue that Bella's desires are direct responses to the patriarchy we actually live in. In fact, Meyer has created for her heroine an inverted version of our unjust society. In this invented, inverted world, Bella is allowed to want sex, and vocalize it, and initiate it, while her partner is the gatekeeper who makes sure she is safe and married before she gets “hurt.” In her world, the men around her urge her to abort her fetus for her own safety, but she gets to “choose” to deliver it even though it kills her. In her world, her boyfriend can urge her to attend college and better herself while she can push for an early marriage--and be right! In her world, she can reject her body and trade it in for a new one that is agile, strong, lithe. Her choices are consistently to fall into the arms of the patriarchy and trust that it will catch her, and her faith is validated: she gets a perfect husband, angelic child, new body.

Breaking Dawn box office

2011-11-21T22:30:00.000-05:00

From Box Office Mojo:

While it wasn't quite able to reach the series high mark, The Twilight Saga:Breaking Dawn Part 1's outstanding estimated $139.5 million opening is second-best among Twilight movies, behind 2009's New Moon ($142.7 million). That's a small gap, though, and Breaking Dawn still managed to claim fifth place on the all-time opening weekend chart behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Dark Knight,Spider-Man 3 and New Moon. As is typical for the Twilight movies, its weekend was incredibly front-loaded with 51.6 percent of the gross coming from Friday showings (including its midnight tally).

Breaking Dawn Part 1 earned an incredible $30.25 million from 3,521 locations at midnight, which is about even with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse($30.1 million) and up from the last November movie The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26.3 million). It wasn't quite enough to beat Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2's $43.5 million midnight record, though that movie had the advantage of being the final installment and had a 3D boost.

The audience was 80 percent female and 60 percent over 21 years old. That's more female-skewing than Eclipse (65 percent), but the same as New Moon (80 percent). Also, the audience was younger for those movies (only 50 percent over 21 years old), though it's logical for the crowd to age along with the series. Breaking Dawn received a "B+" CinemaScore, which improved to an "A-" among females.

"Breaking Dawn"

2011-11-20T23:00:00.000-05:00

I don't quite get the midnight show appeal. I went because Larry's boss's wife asked me to go (and asked and asked!) Now I can check that off my Bucket List.

I really enjoyed the movie, but my advice is don't go to the midnight show if it bothers you when people talk during the movie. Holy cow. You'd think people who go to that much trouble to see a movie would show it more respect. And I'm not talking about whispering either. Super annoying.

I'm sort of embarrassed, but not really, to admit that I went again on Sunday. I hadn't planned to, but a friend who didn't want to go to the midnight show with me on Thursday was planning to see it with a third friend on Saturday, but they didn't end up going. So I went with her on Sunday, just to be nice, but I didn't mind seeing it again. I definitely got more out of it without the distracting audience. (Bonus - my friend paid on Thursday and I used a gift card that I got for my birthday on Sunday, so I saw the movie twice for free!!)

I thought that the movie was really beautiful. I thought so when I saw it the first time, and still thought so when I saw it again. Bill Condon made a very pretty film. He made excellent use of the locations (Brazil and Washington), judicious use of aerial shots, and he just has a great eye, or a great DP (probably both).

I thought the wedding and honeymoon were lovely and romantic and satisfying. Overall, the first half of the movie was wonderful. The second half had more flaws, but was still enjoyable.

As always, I thought they left out important elements, and I thought they underplayed some key moments. One example is the Morning After conversation that Edward and Bella have on Isle Esme - in the book, they're lying together in bed talking, in the movie, they're standing in the bathroom (!); and how could they leave out one of the very best lines in the book - "Why am I covered in feathers?" and his answer - "I bit a pillow or two." I felt robbed. Another good example is when Jake first finds out that Bella is pregnant. It's a very effective scene in the movie, but in the book it's much more wrenching. Maybe they think the book is too melodramatic, or maybe they think it will come across as too melodramatic on film. Or maybe Melissa Rosenberg is just a dope (case in point, I heard in an interview she said her favorite moment was the wedding toasts she added, which I thought were awful, except for Edward's.)

I thought the birth scene was very effective, but it was also way overly sanitized. Twice the camera pulls back to show Bella afterwards and it wasn't nearly bloody enough. Even a normal birth would be messier than that, but in the book it's described as a river of blood. I understand their constraints, but I would have preferred that they keep the camera close in, rather than making the scene so unrealistic. It took me away from the moment, which couldn't have been their intention.

I loved the place and the way they ended. The exact cut-off point between the 2 films has been the source of much speculation, and I think they chose, and executed, perfectly. The way they depicted Bella's transformation was wonderful and very effecting.

I also have to say that I loved the music. Several pretty songs, and just superb reuse of songs from the first movie, especially during the wedding, and Bella's theme, later in the movie. I read somewhere that Carter Burwell, who wrote music for the first movie, was back this time, so the music is closer in sound to the first movie - must be at least part of the reason that I like it. It's definitely on my holiday wish list!

The only really bad thing is having to wait a whole year to see the rest!

David Frum reaches his limit!

2011-11-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

I always hated Frum because I thought he should know better - he wrote speeches for GWB and coined the (utterly misleading) phrase "axis of evil." It's a relief to hear that he's hit the limits of his tolerance for the kooks who have hijacked his party. Below are some key paragraphs from his excellent NY Magazine essay:

When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

. . . I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

. . . I can’t shrug off this flight from reality and responsibility as somebody else’s problem. I belonged to this movement; I helped to make the mess. People may very well say: Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you work in the George W. Bush administration that disappointed so many people in so many ways? What qualifies you to dispense advice to anybody else?

Fair question. I am haunted by the Bush experience, although it seems almost presumptuous for someone who played such a minor role to feel so much unease. The people who made the big decisions certainly seem to sleep well enough. Yet there is also the chance for something positive to come out of it all. True, some of my colleagues emerged from those years eager to revenge themselves and escalate political conflict: “They send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of theirs to the morgue.” I came out thinking, I want no more part of this cycle of revenge. For the past half-dozen years, I have been arguing that we conservatives need to follow a different course. And it is this argument that has led so many of my friends to demand, sometimes bemusedly, sometimes angrily, “What the hell happened to you?” I could fire the same question back: “Never mind me—what happened toyou?”

. . . On the day of the House vote that ensured the enactment of health-care reform, I wrote a blog post saying all this—and calling for some accountability for those who had led the GOP to this disaster. For my trouble, I was denounced the next day by my former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal as a turncoat. Three days after that, I was dismissed from the American Enterprise Institute. I’m not a solitary case: In 2005, the economist Bruce Bartlett, a main legislative author of the Kemp-Roth tax cut, was fired from a think tank in Dallas for too loudly denouncing the George W. Bush administration’s record, and I could tell equivalent stories about other major conservative think tanks as well.

I don’t complain from a personal point of view. Happily, I had other economic resources to fall back upon. But the message sent to others with less security was clear: We don’t pay you to think, we pay you to repeat. For myself, the main consequences have been more comic than anything else. Back in 2009, I wrote a piece for Newsweek arguing that Republicans would regret conceding so much power to Rush Limbaugh. Until that point, I’d been a frequent guest on Fox News, but thenceforward some kind of fatwa was laid down upon me. Over the next few months, I’d occasionally receive morning calls from young TV bookers asking if I was available to appear that day. For sport, I’d always answer, “I’m available—but does your senior producer know you’ve called me?” An hour later, I’d receive an embarrassed second call: “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

. . . I refuse to believe that I am the only Republican who feels this way. If CNN’s most recent polling is correct, only half of us sympathize with the tea party. However, moderate-minded people dislike conflict—and thus tend to lose to people who relish conflict. The most extreme voices in the GOP now denounce everybody else as Republicans in Name Only. But who elected them as the GOP’s membership committee? What have they done to deserve such an inheritance? In the mid-sixties, when the party split spectacularly between Ripon Republicans, who embraced the civil-rights movement, and Goldwater Republicans, who opposed it, civil-rights Republicans like Michigan governor George Romney spoke forcefully for their point of view. Today, Republicans discomfited by political and media extremism bite their tongues. But if they don’t speak up, they’ll be whipsawed into a choice between an Obama administration that wants to build a permanently bigger government and a conservative movement content with permanently outraged opposition.

Police response to "Occupy" movement

2011-11-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

This is so freaking depressing. And really crazy. Seems like the public objection is so muted. Is this what people think America should be about??? "Peaceable assembly" is in the very first amendment to the Constitution, not to mention a cornerstone of democracy. Where are all those politicians and commentators who love to embrace the Constitution? Where is the outrage?

They look pleased with a job well done.

At least this asshole was suspended.

Cloud design provokes negative reaction

2011-11-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

I originally heard this story, about a Dutch company's design for a high rise apartment building in Seoul, on the radio*, so I hadn't seen the building design. I see the "cloud" but I can see what people are upset about also. Note that this is a proposal for a building that has not been (and now, probably won't be) built.

*I heard this on Morning Joe on Sirius - Joe Scarborough was almost apoplectic about it, which seems a bit of an over-reaction to me, now that I've seen the design.

The history of time

2011-11-16T22:30:00.000-05:00

Terrific essay by Adam Frank on the evolution of time. His book, About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang, was released in September. Below are some of the key paragraphs:

Today hardly anyone notices the equinox. Today we rarely give the sky more than a passing glance. We live by precisely metered clocks and appointment blocks on our electronic calendars, feeling little personal or communal connection to the kind of time the equinox once offered us. Within that simple fact lays a tectonic shift in human life and culture.

Your time — almost entirely divorced from natural cycles — is a new time. Your time, delivered through digital devices that move to nanosecond cadences, has never existed before in human history. As we rush through our overheated days we can barely recognize this new time for what it really is: an invention.

It's an invention that's killing us.

. . . So did 1:37 p.m. even exist a thousand years ago for peasants living in the Dark Ages of Europe, Song Dynasty China or the central Persian Empire? Was there such a thing as 1:37 p.m. across the millennia that comprise the vast bulk of human experience?

The short answer is "no."

But 1:37 exists for you. As a citizen of a technologically advanced culture, replete with omnipresent time-metering technologies, you have felt 1:37 in more ways then you probably want to think about. Waiting for a 1:30 train into the city you feel the minutes crawl by when the train is late. The same viscous experience of these minutes (and seconds) oozes into your life you each time you wait for the microwave to cycle through its 2-minute and 30-second cooking program.

You feel minutes in a way that virtually none of your ancestors did. You feel them pass and you feel them drag on with all the frustration, boredom, anxiety and anger that can entail. For you, those minutes are real.

Measured against the long arc of human evolution, that experience is something new and utterly radical. In 2000 BCE or 850 CE there was no culturally agreed-upon 1:37 p.m. It simply did not exist and it could not have existed. We invented it and all of the time-behavior that goes with it. Then we used that time to imagine entire new ecosystems of human activity into existence.

There is no doubt that this new time we invented has brought us many benefits. If we start at the beginning, however, we can also see its darker, more dangerous side. If we track the bright line of its development through two centuries of science, technology and culture we can see this "modern" time pushing us all to the edge.

Once that vantage point is gained, this new version of time becomes obviously complicit in so much of our unbalancing: economies driven into dangerous waters; Earth's altered atmospheric chemistry; the manic consumption of our natural resources.

Women and minorities in movies

2011-11-14T22:30:00.000-05:00

The title of this article, "5 old-timey prejudices still found in every movie," on Cracked.com no less, made me think it was silly, but it's actually quite thoughtful and makes some very interesting points - I pasted a few key paragraphs below.

#4 Only pretty girls are allowed to live

. . . Take Aliens. There are two main female characters: Ripley and Private Vasquez. One is a hardened soldier with combat experience, a butch haircut and a Rambo-esque bandanna tied around her forehead, and the other is a more traditionally feminine civilian who has no real business being in a combat zone at all. Guess who dies? Here's a hint: It's the one TV Tropes named a section after.

So What's the Deal?

. . . [Michelle Rodriguez has] limited her roles to interesting, strong characters. For a male actor, that means "action hero." For a woman, it means she has to die -- over and over and over again, each time making way for the petite model to take down the villain with her Waif-Fu instead. That's the phrase TV Tropes coined to describe the martial art that allows a woman to thrash trained soldiers twice her size while having no musculature on her frame at all. It's considered empowering when Joss Whedon includes ass-kicking females in everything he writes, but when he needs a badass kung fu killing machine, he casts the pretty, wispy Summer Glau.

The women who develop careers as action stars are not just pretty, but are pretty in the most feminine way possible: Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Milla Jovovich, Michelle Yeoh and Halle Berry. We're guessing that 70 percent of the people reading this article can take each of those women in a fight because we're guessing at least 70 percent of you are not unnaturally thin wisps of humanity. Doesn't matter. The only women we'll consistently let star in action movies also happen to be women so beautiful they get their own cosmetics campaigns, like, all the time. Michelle Rodriguez is pretty, but she's not might-be-an- alien pretty, and so she has to die.

We've convinced ourselves that there's such thing as "ass-kicking supermodels" for the same reason female slasher movie survivors tend to spend the last hour of every film running and screaming at the top of their lungs. There is so much psychology behind that concept of the lone female slasher movie survivor that there is an entire book about the phenomenon and what it means (Men, Women and Chain Saws). The author points out that when the last person standing in a horror movie is a man, you never see him screaming or crying with fear (imagine Arnold's character in Predator doing that), but with women, it's required. For the most part, we won't sympathize with her unless she spends a certain amount of time helpless and terrified.

Joss Whedon can pretend like the ass-kicking supermodels were created as a reaction to the helpless victims, but he's just substituting one weird male fantasy with another. It's as if there's nothing in between "beautiful victimized woman crying while splattered in blood" and "beautiful invincible woman kicking people while wearing skintight fetish gear."

#2 The star has to be white (or Will Smith)

Pointing out that black characters die in movies isn't even clever anymore -- it's the kind of obvious, trite joke that bad movies make about other bad movies. But, inexplicably, it keeps happening. In the original Terminator, every black character shown on screen dies. In Transformers, the "black" robot who speaks in inner city slang dies.

So What's the Deal?

Even in the 21st century, with a black president and posters of black athletes adorning bedroom walls all across the world, white audiences still prefer to watch white characters.

It would be easy to argue that the box office numbers are skewed because, say, Fellowship of the Ring was simply a better movie than Big Momma's House. But you can get the same results from focus groups with everything else being equal. In this 2011 study, white undergraduates were given the synopses of 12 made-up romantic comedies. Along with the summaries, they got cast pictures and fake IMDB pages, which were manipulated so that each movie had six versions of the cast; an all-white cast, an all-black cast and four different versions in between.

Same plot, same characters, same everything -- just different cast members. And unfortunately, the whiter the cast, the higher the likelihood of the students wanting to see the movie.

So how does this play out in real movies? Black characters end up in supporting roles, instead of being well-developed characters. They're just there so we can "judge the other (white) characters by how they treat them." In other words, we certainly don't root for racist characters, and we'll boo racist stereotypes. But our open-mindedness usually stops at the point of actually paying to see a black leading man. Other than Will Smith.

Look at that list of the top-grossing actors again. Other than Murphy and Smith, the only names in the top 50 are Chris Rock, Billy Dee Williams (because of Star Wars) and Morgan Freeman. How many of them were the stars of their big movies? For Morgan Freeman, in his top 10 most successful films he was the lead in only one (Driving Miss Daisy-- a movie about race relations). Was Chris Rock the lead in any of his top 20 biggest movies?

. . . Even if you don't care about racism or moving forward as a culture -- even if you just care about seeing good movies -- this sucks, because there are really cool true stories that would make really awesome movies. Like this one about Haitian Revolutionary Leader Toussant Louverture. Danny Glover's been trying to get it made for years, but he can't get funding because producers keep saying, "Where are the white heroes?"

Again, we can blame the studios all we want. But they've learned from hard experience that for the most part, if they don't play to our prejudices, we simply won't go see their movie.

Upcoming movies

2011-11-12T23:00:00.000-05:00

My friend Suzanne and I were bemoaning the lack of buzzy Oscar bait and holiday movies, so I went onto imdb.com to refresh my memories about what's coming up in the next couple of months. I actually found a pretty decent list of upcoming films. Nothing that I'm over the moon about, but some potentially very good stuff (the list below is the movies I want to see, not everything that's coming). I'm including 2 movies scheduled for January 2012*

Like Crazy (great buzz)

The Descendants (Alexander Payne [Sideways] directs George Clooney)

J Edgar (Clint Eastwood directs Leo DiCaprio)
A Dangerous Method (great cast, interesting story)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (based on a best-selling novel, bring kleenex)

New Year's Eve (I'm a sucker for these multi-story rom coms)

Carnage (adult satire with awesome cast, incl Jodie Foster)

Young Adult (another satire, with Charlize Theron, who I'll watch in anything after The Burning Plain)

The Darkest Hour (apparently brainy sci-fi action movie, with Emile Hirsch, and my current crush, Max Minghella)

Contraband (for cast only - I'll see Lukas Haas in anything)

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (for comparison purposes, plus Mara Rooney; teaser trailer was brilliant, best tag line of the year: "The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas")

MI: Ghost Protocol (for cast only - I'll watch Jeremy Renner in anything)

The Iron Lady (for Meryl Streep)

War Horse (bring a lot of kleenex)

Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut)

Another Earth (looks fascinating)

Melancholia (visually stunning and great performances)

*One for the Money (Katherine Heigl as Stehanie Plum; I haven't read the books but the preview makes it look terrific)

*We Need to Talk About Kevin (awesome cast - Tilda Swinton is getting raves, and I'm crushing a little on Ezra Miller after City Island)

Latest movies

2011-11-11T22:30:00.000-05:00

I managed to see 2 movies for my birthday, and watched another on video. All were flawed, but enjoyable.

In Time - I had rather low expectations for this movie, and it certainly wasn't a perfect film, but it had a terrific premise, excellent casting, and some great use of the time motif, including some wonderful dialog incorporating various cliches. The leads were fun and had good chemistry, but it was worth seeing just for Cillian Murphy, who conveys more with his eyes than most actors do with a whole page of dialog. Fun.

Anonymous - I was more interested in the portrayal of artistic expression as a compulsion, than the conjecture about Elizabeth I's progeny. I found, and generally find, the court drama to be rather boring and overwrought. My understanding is that there is a fair amount of support among scholars for the idea that Shakespeare probably didn't write everything that's attributed to him, and possibly didn't write any of it. The theory that Edward DeVere was Shakespeare is really just a fun exercise in "what if" and has no historical support. I thought the movie itself presented a wonderful and fascinating story, and was very well made, and very entertaining, and quite moving as well. It wasn't a perfect movie, but there were a few really powerful scenes that made the whole thing worthwhile.

Going the Distance (2010) - This movie didn't make a big splash and I can see why. It has some funny moments, and a strong ending, but it loses momentum in the middle, and you aren't rooting for the couple as much as you should be. Entertaining, but not exactly memorable. A quibble - I thought the humor was overly raunchy - for example, late in the movie, Drew Barrymore's character gets drunk in a bar and picks a fight with a burly man, taunting him repeatedly, "suck my dick!" WTF?

More on Penn State

2011-11-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

Students who are rioting and others who are excusing Paterno's response may not realize what's at stake for Penn State. My friend Stessa posted an article on FB, focusing on Penn State's legal liability:

". . . they had notice of particularly dangerous conduct as it relates to defenseless 10-year-old children and not only do they not take steps to remedy the condition but they provided him with the means to perpetrate these acts," Casey [a lawyer in the case] said . . . It is sad, just the breadth of misinformation and denial . . . The legal exposure is substantial and serious, and they are going to need to be held to a day of reckoning."

Hell yeah they are!

I keep thinking of this famous quote:

"All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." - Edward Burke

Someone at Penn State agrees:

Penn State student reaction to Paterno firing

2011-11-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

About 2000 Penn State students RIOTED! They pushed over a news van, broke street lights, and generally caused mayhem.

I guess their take away message is that winning football games is more important than protecting kids? What if that was your little brother?

I heard one of the protesters in an interview saying, "I know what happened is horrible, but . . ." But what? He won a lot of football games? That was years ago? He followed the letter of the law? He's a "good man"? Hard to imagine how to finish that sentence that doesn't make you a complete fool.

Happy birthday to me!

2011-11-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

Overall the election results are pretty positive for liberals like me.

Personhood amendment in Mississippi was defeated.

Collective bargaining restrictions in Ohio were defeated.

Russell Pearce, state legislator in Arizona, was defeated in recall election.

Steve Beshear, Democratic governor of Kentucky, was reelected.

NJ legislature now includes more Democrats.

"Failure of leadership"

2011-11-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

This story makes me want to vomit. This ESPN writer says it much better than I could:

Even now, as the heartbreaking details emerge, pages of grand jury testimony are absorbed and parsed, and a seamy picture of alleged child abuse and the subsequent failures to act comes into clear, indefensible focus, the reflex of the Penn State hierarchy involved is one of tone deafness.

That focus revolves not around the children who most needed the adults to be grown-ups but around protecting the power: the big, untouchable football program with its legendary coach with the big name and the big reputation, the do-gooder charity with the board of directors with the big names on it.

Surrounded by so much bigness, virtually everyone in a position of authority at Penn State has, thus far, seemed to come up very small. Jerry Sandusky might not be innocent, but, as of today, he is legally not guilty. He was charged with 40 counts of felony sex abuse against minors. Despite anger and public opinion, Sandusky deserves the due process of the court of law as well as the presumption of innocence until his case is complete.

But Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz and coach Joe Paterno should be held to a higher standard. So should The Second Mile, a charity that was founded to help children. Whether or not Sandusky is convicted, each was faced with a critical choice with damning information and chose to protect the program. This is what power has become. More accurately, it is what power has always been, in existence to protect itself.

There is no defense for the number of people in positions of authority who had an opportunity to stop Sandusky and did not.

The university, responding to information provided by a graduate student in 2002 that he witnessed Sandusky performing anal sex in the shower on a boy about 10 years old, did nothing. The university did not call authorities and did not ever sever ties with Sandusky, allowing him to maintain an office on campus for years.

The entire edifice of the Penn State monument is crumbling, yet no one involved seems capable of producing the most obvious, and decent, response, to acknowledge that each of these men failed to uphold his responsibilities spectacularly. They failed their communities, and they failed the eight [so far] young boys the state is accusing Sandusky of sexually abusing.

The legendary Paterno failed. He was the first of the Penn State athletic inner circle to be told of the shower incident nine years ago, and all he did was tell his university superiors. Then, according to his son, the great character builder and shaper of young people essentially never gave it a second thought, going back to designing plays for third-and-short and trying to devise ways to beat Wisconsin. Four days after Sandusky's indictment, instead of taking true responsibility and making an immediate and public plan to put the alleged victims first, the coach is scurrying from the responsibilities of leadership he ostensibly has built a life around.

Curley and Schultz, who face charges of perjury, failed. The grand jury report states on pages 6-7 that, a week and a half after telling Paterno what he had seen, the graduate assistant "reported to Curley and Schultz that he witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers." According to the grand jury report, Curley later told the graduate assistant that he had met with Sandusky to advise Sandusky that he "was prohibited from bringing youth onto the Penn State campus from that point forward." But neither official took the allegations to the police or reported them to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare. In other words, all Penn State did was to ensure that if Sandusky sexually abused a child in the future, at least it wouldn't take place on campus.

Spanier, president of the university since 1995, failed, too. He might not face charges, but he has known about this incident for nine years and, as the indictment became public this weekend, chose to use his public comments not to condemn a systematic failure but to defend Schultz and Curley without significantly mentioning the pain and plight of the alleged victims [boys as young as 8 years old].

Finally, The Second Mile failed. The charity, founded by Sandusky in 1977 and which state prosecutors say he used to abuse eight boys over a 15-year period, was told directly of the 2002 incident by Curley and Schultz. Yet the organization -- which counts Paterno, Franco Harris, Mark Wahlberg and other famous lights as honorary members of its board of directors -- did nothing to keep Sandusky away from children or away from the foundation for another six years. This week, now that the entire shameful facade has crumbled, it released a statement claiming ignorance: "At no time was The Second Mile made aware of the very serious allegations contained in the Grand Jury report."

It is incongruous [that's putting it very politely!!] that any adult with basic common sense -- especially those who supposedly have worked with children and young adults for decades -- could conclude that there was no wrongdoing after a report that a grown man was inappropriately in a shower with a child. Being in a shower inappropriately with a child or adolescent is the finding of wrongdoing. Paterno, Schultz and Curley all appear to be using the same defense: that the graduate student who came forward did not detail specifically what he saw. Which begs the question: After being told that an adult, who to that point had worked with children for 25 years, was caught showering in your locker room with a child for any reason, just how much more specificity did Paterno, Schultz and Curley actually need?

Men and women and politics

2011-11-06T22:30:00.000-05:00

Larry and I got into a small argument about the charges against Herman Cain. Basically he said that the ladies accusing him have no credibility because they waited so long to come forward. I tried to point out how hard it is, how embarrassing, how little incentive there is for a woman to accuse a man of misconduct because her character will be questioned. But the larger point is, IMO, that voters don't really care about how men treat women. The political media loves these stories, but in the end, very very few campaigns have been killed by these types of allegations. Clarence Thomas is a justice for life, despite the allegations that he faced. Most voters, most big donors, most opinion makers, clearly just do not care about how men behave toward women.

Coffee time

2011-11-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

Weird story:

A couple weeks ago, I got a free coffee at Brueggers, because we had a coupon from a previous visit. So I tried their seasonal pumpkin spice blend. It was surprisingly good. The next time we went, I was planning to get another cup, but the clerk said they weren't serving it anymore, that the season for that flavor had ended. I thought that was curious - you'd think pumpkin spice would be served at least through Thanksgiving (the women in line behind me said something very similar to this).

Because this seemed so odd, I made a point to stop at the Brueggers near my office, and they had the flavor. I asked the clerk how long it would be served and he said, through the end of the year.

What the heck? I don't know if the other clerk was lying or just confused.

Trip to Israel

2011-11-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

We've been talking for over a year about taking at trip in 2012, for Matt's graduation. When I looked into tours last spring, I realized that it would be a lot more expensive to go in June compared with the off season, so we settled on Matt's spring break from college as the best time (early March).

I investigated tour packages, and I think this Gate1 Travel package covers the things we want to see at a price we can stomach (though it's a lot).

Today I put down the deposit and actually booked the trip. My stomach is still fluttering about committing so much money (almost $10K), but I think ultimately that it's money well spent (though I had really hoped that Bobbie would go with us).

Below is the itinerary from the website~

We fly out of JFK on Thursday evening, with a brief layover in London, and for the return trip, leave Thursday morning and arrive Thursday night at JFK, same layover in London on the way back.

DAY 2, Friday - Arrive in Tel Aviv and transfer to Jerusalem
Free day to enjoy the city; [probably focus on the old city, including the Western Wall, and save Yad Vashem and the Dead Sea Scrolls for Sunday]

DAY 3, Saturday -

Taking the optional package - Masada and Dead Sea - Ascend the towering desert mesa via cable car to visit the excavations of the fortress of King Herod and last stronghold of the Zealots against the Romans. Then journey via Ein Gedi and the Judean Desert to the Dead Sea, the lowest elevation on Earth at more than 1,200 feet below sea level. While at this natural wonder, enjoy the opportunity to float in the water or cover yourself in the mineral-rich mud.

DAY 4, Sunday - Day at leisure in Jerusalem
Enjoy the day at leisure in this fascinating city.

DAY 5, Monday - Beit Shean and Capernaum Sightseeing
Depart Jerusalem, driving via the Jordan Valley to Beit Shean, a city mentioned in the Bible, later a Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine city which was destroyed by an earthquake in 749AD. Continue north following the Jordan River to Yardenit. Drive around the Sea of Galilee, with views of Tiberias, to Capernaum, site of a second century village and synagogue on the northern shore

DAY 6, Tuesday - Day at leisure in Tiberias
Taking the optional package - Golan Heights Tour - Drive to Safed, a holy city in Judaism and the center of the mystical Kabbala. Stroll through the artists' colony and visit an ancient synagogue. Proceed to Golan Heights stopping at Mitzphe Gadot for a tour and lunch at Kibbutz Gadot. Continue to Har Ben Tal site of a former Israeli bunker. Next visit a kosher winery in Katzrin, the largest town in the Golan Heights.

DAY 7, Wednesday - Nazareth, Haifa and Ceasarea Sightseeing
Drive south through the Galilean hills to Nazareth, home of the Church of the Annunciation, the largest basilica in the Middle East. Continue to Haifa, stopping for a view of the picturesque Bahai Gardens. Proceed to the Mediterranean coast, and visit Caesarea. Tour the remains of the Roman and Crusader ruins and the impressive theatre. Visit the harbor and see ancient history come to life with the multi-media presentation. Drive south along the coastal highway to Tel Aviv

Great quote!

2011-11-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

"Don't Shoot"

2011-11-01T21:00:00.000-04:00

I listened to this guy, David Kennedy, on Fresh Air (NPR) and he was just riveting. His book is a Must Read, about efforts to reduce gang violence in Boston and other cities.

Sexy Halloween costumes

2011-10-31T22:00:00.000-04:00

Every year we have to have this conversation! I enjoyed this essay on HuffingtonPost (from the UK), which makes the point quite well:

. . . somewhere between the Thriller video and Kitty Brucknell humping that dartboard on X Factor at the weekend, Halloween became the get-out-of-slutty-free card - a chance for nice, normal girls with a tasteful line in Uniqlo cardigans to crank their assets up to their chin and embrace their slaggy alter egos for a night.

And what's wrong with that, really? Fancy dress has always been a chance for escapism - be it as a teary five-year-old inkeeper, or a hobbit in live action roleplay in a wood somewhere in Norfolk. If your heart's desire is to spend the night as a lascivious incarnation of Little Bo Peep, then by all means go for it. But watch where you put that crook, you'll have someone's eye out.

The problem, you see, isn't so much that Halloween offers the chance to dress slutty, but that recently it seems to have become the only option. It started small enough, with sexy she-devils, minxy vampires and the 'underwear with arbitrary animal ears' get-up so well illustrated in Mean Girls. But then (probably as all the fancy dress shops started selling out of red PVC), it spread. And lo, we were forced to sluttify every costume we could, just to keep up. Nuns, literary characters, historical figures - all now have to come with a side of knee-socks and pouting.

. . . It's a part of the much wider question, continually plaguing us womenfolk - why can't we just wear normal clothes? Proper, functioning clothes, that cover us adequately and don't garrotte us in intimate areas. For the modern woman, day-to-day life can sometimes feel like a feeble battle against the landslide of booty-bearing, quasi-stripper expectations gradually falling in on our heads. Halloween is the epicentre of this.

Of course, I don't care personally about societal expectations because I'm a frumpy middle-aged woman who isn't going to look truly sexy no matter how much pouting and knee socks I add to my costume. But I worry greatly for my 20-something niece and my young daughter, because the message about parading your sexuality is so LOUD and unavoidable.

Free coffee day at Bruegger's!

2011-10-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

I had their pumpkin spice coffee today - it's pretty good. And I can get a cup for free on my birthday! How fun!

Latest movies

2011-10-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

Somewhat disappointing films lately ~

Contagion - I had been looking forward to this movie, but it was a bit disappointing. Not quite as much "there" there as all the build up suggested. The first half is better than the last half - several storylines fizzle out, including the one about the scientist who discovers the virus, the kidnapped WHO agent, and the blogger who manipulates the market to make money (all of these could have been better developed and much more exciting). There's plenty of great moments, but just as many wasted opportunities. User reviews on imdb.com had similar complaints, and not surprisingly, Suzanne had the same reaction that I did. Not a bad movie, but could have been so much better - not in the league of Traffic, which it could and should have been.

Autumn Hearts (2008; aka Emotional Arithmetic) - based on a novel (by Matt Cohen) about survivors of a little-known French internment camp (Drancy, which mostly served as a waystation for Auschwitz), with a great cast and gorgeous setting in Canada. But the ending was sort of odd and even a bit of a head scratcher. Not a bad movie, but not really satisfying (other imdb reviewers felt the same); it reminded me a bit of Adam Resurrected - a valiant effort but not a perfect movie; in any event, I'm not sorry I saw it, for excellent performances and a history lesson.

Brush with Fate (2003) - A Hallmark movie, also adapted from a novel (by Susan Vreeland) which tells the stories of several owners of a beautiful lost Vermeer painting (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) across several centuries. The stories are interesting and well done, but I wonder if the filmmakers realize how misogynistic it seems - we have a woman who feeds her family the seed potatoes, virtually destroying the family farm, then a woman who encourages her nephew to abandon his pregnant girlfriend to protect the family's name, and finally a woman who kills her newborn baby daughter, and then of course there's Cordelia, the character played by Glenn Close; it's like a tour of evil female stereotypes. I think they're trying to say that the painting brings out the best and the worst in people, and depicts what they were willing to sacrifice for the painting (though I would argue that most of the characters' behavior was really independent of their feelings for the painting, except Cordelia, of course, and maybe the farmer's wife). It wasn't a bad movie, but I got pretty fed-up with the way women were portrayed, and I think it ruined otherwise fascinating historical fiction.

Record spending on Halloween

2011-10-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

Halloween spending is basically recession-proof: about $7 BILLION dollars this year, up every year since 2008 (when the current recession began). That's about $2 billion on costumes, $2 billion on candy, and something approaching $2 billion on decorations. Here's the kicker: that includes more than $300 MILLION on PET costumes!

"According to the annual National Retail Federation Halloween spending survey, some 161 million people will celebrate Halloween – the biggest number in the 10 years the NRF has conducted the survey."

Too much history

2011-10-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

I just loved Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Coincidentally, the sections of the textbook for my b'nai mitzvah class, Jewish Literacy, that we're reading now, concerns the same historical time period - namely, the Middle Ages. And I recently started reading Dara Horn's The World to Come, which includes some flashbacks to pogroms in Poland between the world wars. And of course I just finished The Book Thief and recently saw Sarah's Key, both about the Holocaust. It's not that I don't know this history, but I must admit that it's getting a bit overwhelming to read so many accounts of Jewish slaughter. It's not just war or killing either, it's burning people alive, torturing them during the Inquisition, cutting babies from living women's wombs, and on and on like that. I realize the Jews have not been the only victims of these horrific acts. But it does start to feel oppressive - Jewish history is so full of this aggressive and vicious destruction, motivated by searing and inexplicable hatred. I always think of that line from The Chosen: "How the world delights in killing us."

Dramatic sky

2011-10-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

We seem to regularly get these clouds that cut straight across the sky - I assume it has something to do with the lake effect.

Rick Perry's "birther" comments

2011-10-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

A lead story on all the cable news shows last night was Rick Perry's vague endorsement of the birther theory that Obama was not born in the US. I kept wondering why we're talking about this at all. Besides the fact that no one with an ounce of political credibility seriously believes this ridiculous charge (so why is the media still giving it headlines???), but much more to the point, who cares what Rick Perry says? He's no longer a viable national candidate and his poll numbers have totally tanked. Nobody reports on Michelle Bachmann anymore, so why is this guy still getting any attention?

Taking "his" name

2011-10-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

This story on HuffingtonPost came to my attention because it appeared on Facebook, and I read it because I've been thinking about this issue quite a bit lately. The writer is a young (30 year old) "feminist" who's planning to take her husband's name when she gets married, and she's feeling guilty about it, and is somewhat surprised that she wants to.

Of course, I didn't change my name when I got married almost 20 years ago. And mostly, after 2 kids, it's been a big hassle. It might have been different if we'd stayed in Philadelphia, a bigger urban area, but I find in Syracuse that I constantly have to explain or clarify my relationship to my kids. It's just not very common, apparently, for a mom to have a different name. And I have to admit, it's making me increasingly uncomfortable. I suppose I thought I was maintaining my identity, especially with regard to my professional life, but since my professional life hasn't had that much life in it, it now seems, well, unnecessary.

There were quite a few comments at HuffPost to this story - I think mine was about #250. So it's clearly still an issue that troubles people. Many comments that I read basically said, do whatever works for you. And, of course, I agree with that. But there were also comments about building a new family instead of maintaining your connection to your original family, and those are the ones that most resonate with me at this point in time.

Not that I would bother to change my name now, but my feelings about my reasons for not doing so are definitely evolving. I suppose it's also a factor that my father's death is 2 decades past now, whereas when I got married, his passing was rather fresh, and maintaining that connection felt rather urgent.

Sunday in the park with Roxy

2011-10-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

Enjoyed a lovely walk in the park, in all it's fall glory.

Back in CNY

2011-10-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

I got home from Florida around 5 p.m. and headed almost immediately over to the park to walk the dog and get some fresh air, after all day in airplanes and airports.

Weird thing is that I lost my phone right after I took this photo. I've worried about dropping my phone in the park, but it's never happened, and I always thought I was being paranoid. Turns out, not so much!

What happened is that it fell out of my pocket when I jumped over a small stream. I checked there, but the phone had fallen into some bushes, and I didn't actually find it until I went home, collected the family, and Larry called my phone repeatedly until we heard it ringing. Close call. Thank goodness for Twilight theme song ring tone!

Choose two!

2011-10-21T22:00:00.000-04:00

My friend Beth posted this on Facebook. So, so, SO true! I'm not sure I'm even managing 2 most of the time.

More on Twilight quote

2011-10-20T22:00:00.000-04:00

Someone who can only be described as quite an intellectual giant felt the need to weigh in on this Facebook conversation:

Twilight seems to appeal to those that have a higher level of immaturity and are quite pathetic. It's teen girl driven simply because it's boring and you lose brain cells with every page.

The delicious irony of this comment is that my very last interaction with this person was last year at a book club meeting. We were supposed to be discussing Dara Horn's excellent civil war novel, All Other Nights, but this person hadn't even read it. We spent half the time listening to her yammer on about all the reality TV shows that she loves, like Sister Wives and My Super Sweet 16 (talk about the loss of brain cells!!) Her and another woman in the group managed to fit in a little Twilight bashing that night (see my entry on January 28, 2010). I didn't comment at that time, because they were only trying to get under my skin, and I couldn't care less what they think, since they haven't read the book. Ditto this Facebook exchange. The whole thing definitely falls under the category of "pathetic".

Writing conference travel

2011-10-19T18:00:00.000-04:00

Arrived in Jacksonville, FL, and this is the view from my hotel room on the 10th floor of the Hyatt - the St John's river - one of the only rivers in the US that flows south to north.

Posted a funny comment on FB about the Reagan airport: "I always hated Reagan and it turns out that his airport is a clusterfuck." It was really the oddest thing - when I arrived, the departure gate of my connecting flight had changed (from 37 to 23), and to get to the terminal where the new gate is, I had to go through security again. I got to the new gate and I was told, along with several other people, that the board was wrong, and the original gate was correct. Turns out, I didn't have to go through security, because there's a shuttle between terminals. But the shuttle entrance is literally behind one of the departure gates, and almost impossible to see from the hall. I've never seen such a crazy set up.

Another weird side note - someone told me that Reagan National used to be BWI. I said, "I don't think so," but they insisted. Of course it's not (Reagan is in Virgina, BWI is in Maryland); I wonder where they got that idea. BWI is Baltimore-Washington International, which, by the by. is now officially Thurgood Marshall Airport!

Anatomy of a Twilight quote

2011-10-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

This week, a friend posted this quote on FB, comparing Harry Potter to Twilight. (Another friend had posted the same quote about a year ago, and I got quite incensed, because I think it's rather misogynistic to dismiss a popular book just because the target audience is girls - see entry from July 17, 2010). Here's the quote:

"Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."

This quote is widely attributed to Stephen King, and I sort of wondered about that, so I looked it up. Turns out that Stephen King did not say this. He's certainly on record criticizing Twilight, but this quote comes from a woman named Robin Browne. Her rant about Twilight was quoted on Tumblr by a music critic named Anthony Futral. Through the magic of the internets, and as so often happens, the quote has come to be associated with a much more famous person.

I liked this response on the Snopes discussion thread, by a poster named RivkehChaya (nice Jewish girl!) - I couldn't have said it better myself:

Regarding the [original] quote, which is more along the lines of social commentary than literary criticism . . . well, so? Unless Twilight was supposed to be about all the things the critic claims that Harry Potter is about, but failed, and ended up just being about boyfriends, it really isn't a fair criticism. We can debate the worthiness of writing books for adolescent girls that are about the importance of boyfriends, but that doesn't matter. If the book is supposed to be a romance, and it is a romance, and people enjoy it as such, then it is successful.

"I am not the 99%"

2011-10-17T22:00:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine on FB posted this photo. I can see where this person feels like they've made good choices and others can do the same. And, of course, there is at least a kernel of truth in this. But this commentary reflects the prevalent American myth of meritocracy - that everyone who succeeds got there through their hard work and everyone who fails did so because they are lazy or deficit. And of course reality is so much more complicated.

Unexpected bad things happen to people all the time, despite their best attempts to prepare - health problems that insurance won't cover, damage to homes and cars that insurance won't cover. Job losses, family crises, and all sorts of other unanticipated events that put extreme pressure on people's ability to land on their feet.

Do we really want everyone who "fails" to just fall by the wayside? Do we really want to just step over people who fall on hard times, and move on, averting our eyes? Is that really our national value? Is this the Middle Ages?

And I propose that a safety net is required for more than compassionate reasons or moral reasons - when others "fail" (however you define that), the entire society is affected. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link! If we help people at the bottom, it makes the whole country stronger. I really believe that.

I also believe, like many others, that "Wall Street" made a lot of money by cheating, and then the taxpayers bailed them out when the cheating caught up with them. So, while we always had a vested interest in their behavior, we have even more reason to pay attention, and criticize, now.

ADDENDUM

Turns out that this is professionally produced by some right wing group, rather than being the real thoughts of an actual individual.

Weekend movies

2011-10-16T22:00:00.000-04:00

Moneyball - Larry and I went out to see this while his mom stayed home with the kids after Alana's birthday party; fun and interesting, quite a tour-de-force by Brad Pitt. Not sure it will really stick with me, though.

Win-Win - I'd heard raves about this Paul Giamatti vehicle and the praise is well deserved; a very involving story about ambition, relationships, the limits of forgiveness, and the scope of the modern family

Mars Needs Moms - one of the few animated movies from the summer that the kids missed; glad I watched it with them; it was fun, and of course Mom is a major factor!

The American - surprisingly dull and rather pointless; way too much nudity for my taste too. Not sure why George Clooney felt the need to bring this story (from the novel, A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth*) to the screen, except that he got to film in Italy near his villa. So glad I didn't make the effort to see this in the theater.

Scorpion King 2 - Cal and I watched this straight to video prequel while he was home sick during the week. Not amazing but fairly entertaining for what it was.

*This is from the Booklist review on Amazon.com: "Haunting, shocking, and tense, Booth's story is a charismatic blend of psychological thriller, vivid drama, searing morality tale, and profound psychological study. His writing is crisp yet lyrical, simple yet intelligent. Readers looking for thought-provoking literary fiction can't do any better than this." They did not manage to translate this onto the screen!

Committed v involved

2011-10-14T11:16:00.000-04:00

A friend on FB posted this question-of-the-day:

What is the difference between "involvement" and "commitment"? A bacon and egg breakfast! The chicken was "involved," the pig was "committed." In your life, what are you committed to? Or are you just involved?

This was my response:

Involved in my job, committed to my kids.
Involved in my synagogue, committed to my faith.
Involved in my book club, committed to lifelong learning.

Teens and sex

2011-10-13T21:30:00.000-04:00

I heard this report on CNN this morning. I was struck by how misleading the lead sentence is. A large minority of teens say they are waiting to have sex because of moral or religious reasons - that does not neatly translate into "fear the wrath of God." Many, if not most of, religions teach ethical and moral choices based, not on the fear of God or retribution, but on positive outcomes and self-respect. And I am very curious about the breakdown of moral v. religious reasons, which were combined in this report (it sounds like they were also combined in the survey). I think CNN missed an opportunity to say something really meaningful with this reporting - teens embracing a higher sense of morality is great news, and fascinating. Dismissing this with cute but misleading language is rather beneath them, IMO.

Teenagers do not fear warts and bodily havoc caused by sexually transmitted diseases. The ones who abstain from sex are more worried about the wrath of God.

A report by the National Center for Health Statistics that surveyed 4,662 teenagers, asked those who abstained why they had chosen not to have sex. The top reason for both males and females between the age of 15 and 19, was that sexual intercourse was “against religion or morals.” They were least likely to be concerned about STDs.

The report on teenage sexual activities released Wednesday found that the rate of teenagers having sex has declined slightly from the last report released in 2002, but this change was not substantial. It follows an overall trend of decline in teenage sex in the last 20 years.

The data came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national survey.

“This study helps inform public health and to try to understand the factors behind teen pregnancy rates and birth rates,” said lead author, Gladys Martinez, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics.

The report also found increases in male teens using condoms and females using injectable birth control such as Depo-Provera, contraceptive patches at the time of their first sexual intercourse.

Defending "Breaking Dawn"

2011-10-12T22:00:00.000-04:00

It's started already, the bashing and trashing and thrashing of the next Twilight installment. I just don't understand the hostility. You hear very little fussing about the latest movie made from a Nicholas Sparks novel, which are incredibly formulaic and terribly sappy. And tremendously popular. But somehow acceptable in a way that Twilight just isn't. What is it about this particular story that incites such fury? It can't just be the fact that there's 4 books and 5 movies. Look at any popular comic book franchise - Batman, The Hulk, Iron Man, now The Avengers, combining nearly a dozen superhereos. There can be dozens of books, and many movies. Look at the mother of all franchises - Spiderman. They're "rebooting" the series yet again. No one screams and cries and shakes their head and says "Why the hell do we need more of this?" Every new comic book that's made into a movie is met with rapture, and no complaints. Obviously every new Twilight movie is greeted with rapture, but also an outpouring of derision that I just don't understand. It's not like they aren't making movies for other people. It's not even like there aren't any other vampire movies, for those who are offended by the soft-pedaling of the genre - Underworld, for example just came out with the 4th in their series. There's so many movies made for the fanboys, why are they so pissed off about Twilight?

"All the good you can"

2011-10-11T22:30:00.000-04:00

I've always loved this quote and someone posted this beautiful version of it on FB recently. One of the comments were "Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone lived by this." And the short answer is, yes, it would. But I've been thinking about it, and I think that part of the problem is that people define "all the good" in very different ways. I think many people do try to live by this, but their goals are not the same as mine. An extreme example struck me from the reading I've been doing: most of the Inquisitors probably thought they were doing "all the good" they could. Hitler probably thought he was doing all the good he could. It depends how you define "good." I remember talking to a friend a decade or so ago, who thought we should quarantine people with AIDS, not to punish them, but to protect everyone else. That person was certainly motivated to do "good." It's just more complicated than it seems, that's all I'm saying. Maybe that's why I love these dystopian novels so much - because they show different societies which have tried to create something good that's gone awry, or that's ended up with unintended consequences that were arguably worse than what they started with. Food for thought.

JDRF fundraiser

2011-10-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

Surpassed my goal of $500 again this year. So grateful to all my friends and family who help me honor Noah in this small way. We love you, Noah, and we will never forget you.

"Cilantro - love it or loathe it"

2011-10-04T22:00:00.000-04:00

This is so interesting to me, because I'm firmly in the hate column on this popular herb (though I had no idea that my distaste was so widely shared). Sadly, it's used ubiquitously in two of my favorite cuisines - Vietnamese and Mexican.

. . . But what is it about cilantro that some people find so intensely offensive? To begin to find out, Wysocki has used gas chromoatography, a machine that uses heat to separates a complex mixture of molecules -- like cilantro -- piece by piece, allowing researchers to identify each individual compound, by using both the machine and their own noses. The GC, as it's called, warms the cilantro, and as it heats up, that "soapy" smell is released. About 10 minutes later, the pleasantly herbaceous cilantro smell is emitted -- but the typical cilantro hater still can't smell it.

"What we think might be happening is the person who hates cilantro is, in fact, detecting the soapy odor. But what they seem to be missing is the nice, aromatic, green component," says Wysocki, who thinks the smell of cilantro is quite pleasant. "It’s possible that they have a mutated or even an absent receptor gene for the receptor protein that would interact with the very pleasant smelling compound."

Hear that, cilantro haters? You're mutants, says a scientist. (We kid, we kid.)

As the theory goes -- and Wysocki is quick to remind that this is still speculative -- cilantrophobes may not be able to pick up the scent of a compound called dodecenal, which gives the cilantro that lovely fresh scent we cilantrophiles know so well. It's even possible, Wysocki allows, that those soap-smellers may have something called specific anosmia, which is the lack of perception of an odor for a specific compound, when the smell is otherwise intact.

Weekend movies

2011-10-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

Watched some terrific movies this weekend ~

50/50 - the "cancer comedy" with JGL and Seth Rogan. Not as funny as I expected - the previews contain almost all the jokes. Darker and more poignant than it was promoted to be, but very good. (Though you could make the case that it was a tiny bit underwritten - maybe another draft or two could have ironed out a few weaknesses, but I'm quibbling, it was very enjoyable.) Great performances all around, including Angelica Huston and Anna Kendrick, and JGL proves yet again that he can inhabit any role. Side note - I tried not to identify too much with the mom character, because the story is told by her son, but it was hard - I really felt for her.

The Burning Plain (2008) - I got interested in this movie because I wanted to see Jennifer Lawrence in an early role. But, wow! A totally riveting film that reminded me a bit of Lone Star - multiple stories that occur in 2 time periods and overlap in very poignant ways (as you see events through the perspective of several different people). The film is stuffed with excellent performances, including JL, Kim Basinger, and a scorching performance by Charlize Theron. It was also beautifully and carefully constructed so that you gradually learn what happened and how it affected these characters. It's a crying shame that this wasn't seen by more people.

Prom - this Disney offering was better than I could have hoped, with some decent acting and less saccharine than expected. Kids enjoyed it too.

Downward mobility

2011-09-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

I have to admit that I found this Time Magazine column by Rana Foroohar really scary - we're losing financial ground as a nation and it won't be easy to get it back.

More health talk

2011-09-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

I went to my gyn for my annual exam, and she said my last blood test, in July, revealed very low iron (hematocrit=32; it should be 40). And I said, no, it's an artifact of having just donated blood and having had my period just prior to the test. But she was pretty insistent, even after I asked her to check the previous test, from January (hematocrit=39). For maybe the first time ever, I'm just going to ignore her. I love both my doctors (good thing, since I see them a lot) and I totally appreciate them being proactive about my health. But it's starting to feel like they find something every single time I go in, requiring follow up visits and more meds or supplements. Larry goes to the doctor once a decade and at his appointment last week, his doctor said everything looks good. Holy crap! I eat better than he does, he drinks gallons of coffee and smokes cigarettes! But I take a pile of pills and have a new problem every six months! It's not fair. I think the contrast of his clean bill of health along side my doctor finding yet another problem is really too much.

ADDENDUM

Absolutely no schadenfreude intended, but Larry did not get off scot free. His cholesterol is pretty high, 305 (LDL=239) so his doctor prescribed lipitor. I'm not happy, but at least I'm not the only one who's actually showing signs of aging!

Weekend movies

2011-09-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

Spread (2009) - I watched this mostly for Ashton Kutcher, who I think is a much better actor than he's given credit for. Plus it's a different role from the likeable doofus that he generally plays. In this, he's Nikki, a somewhat world-weary pretty boy in LA, almost a gigolo, who trolls for suseptible weathy women as well as beautiful babes - he never spends a night alone. The first half was quite good, evoking the LA party scene, with witty voiceover from Nikki. Then Nikki falls from grace (quite abruptly and, I thought, quite improbably) and falls hard for Heather, a women working the same grift that he is. Of course things don't end well, but that's not why I thought the last third of the movie wasn't nearly as fun as the rest - the first half+ is compelling, but once Nikki gets earnest, the movie gets forced. Not a waste of 90 minutes, but not as good as it could have been. Maybe worthwhile - lots of very hot sex, if you like that kind of thing.

Babies (2010) - I heard good stuff about this one, and it was interesting. However, on the box it says "no matter what parenting style you use, if a baby is surrounded by love, they thrive." So apparently that's the point. But I don't think the film really communicates that - there's lots of shots of babies falling over and crying, with no one responding, and a long scene where an older brother hits the baby over and over again, making him cry repeatedly, and another scene that really bothered me, of a baby laying face down in a shallow puddle, sipping water. I'm not super overprotective, but drowning is the number one cause of death in babies under the age of 1. Also, the showered with love aspect is really missing. Right after the babies are born, they show mommies cuddling with them, and there's some Mommy and Me classes and such, but for whatever reason, the showering is quite absent. During the closing credits, there is a scene with each mommy and baby where they are kissing and cooing, but that's the only time you see that. Maybe if the box description hadn't set up my expectation, I wouldn't have noticed so much. Maybe I'm quibbling, but while I found this movie interesting, I didn't find it compelling or especially satisfying.

New TV season

2011-09-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

So far, not so much.

I made a point to watch Pan Am, which looked so promising, but I thought it was underwhelming. They don't use the situation in an interesting way, and they're trying way too hard. And what's with the whole espionage aspect - super silly.

I watched The Playboy Club, pretty much by accident, and it wasn't bad (my expectations were very low), but I can't see it being a Can't Miss show for me (one of the commentators on NPR said, "They don't even have last names!" - I thought that summed it up very well). Plus the mobster angle is just so tired.

[Side note - both these shows are supposedly attempts to cash in on the nostalgia that proved so popular with Mad Men, but I think the creators of these shows are quite unaware of what makes MM so appealing. MM takes a pretty unvarnished view of the 1960s - all the sexism, racism and classism of the era are on full display; these new shows are timid in comparison; plus the acting on MM is world class.]

I even watched a little bit of Charlie's Angels, just to see what they did with it. It wasn't bad, but certainly not appointment TV for me.

I watched The New Girl with Zooey Deschanel, probably the buzziest show this fall, and which I expected to love, but I thought it was pretty ho hum. I might give it one more week, but maybe not even that. [Addendum - I gave it another week and didn't alter my opinion - just not that funny.]

I watched the first episode of Up All Night, with Christina Applegate, which has also gotten a lot of buzz. It was cute, but not as funny or fresh as it should have been. Might check it out again, but I might not bother. [Addendum - I gave it another week and wished I hadn't. Stupid and not funny.]

Also watched Raising Hope, which we had seen in reruns over the summer and enjoyed, but the premiere episode was kind of stupid, and definitely not something I would make a point to watch.

I checked out Two and A Half Men (both episodes) and I thought it was sort of funny, and sort of stupid and over the top. I wasn't a huge fan of the show when Charlie Sheen was starring, and I can't see watching it now, but I wish them luck.

Suburgatory (on ABC) is being hailed by critics, so I gave the pilot a look. Cute-ish, but not as good as I expected (with Jeremy Sisto in a much lighter role than I'm used to seeing him in). I'll check out another episode before I decide.

It wasn't all dross, however. I discovered that a lot of shows are available On Demand, so I watched a bunch of pilots that I wouldn't have normally seen. Some highlights~

Prime Suspect is quite good (on NBC). (I missed the pilot the night it aired because we were watching The Lion King at the Civic Center, but I taped it.) I didn't expect to love it because the tone of ads were not that appealing to me, but I kept an open mind (Maria Bello commands that) and I'll definitely continue to tune in.

Homeland with Clare Danes, and a bunch of other great people, is weird and compelling (on Showtime). I'll definitely keep watching that.

Hank Azaria's comedy, Free Agents (on NBC), is funny and grown up (I didn't realize that it's a remake of a British comedy). I'll bet it's the very first show to get canceled, but I'll watch it til then. [Addendum - it was the 2nd show canceled, after The Playboy Club; I got to see 4 episodes.]

2 Broke Girls is quite funny, and Kat Dennings does not disappoint. CBS is not pushing this very hard at all (though they gave it the lead-in spot before Two and A Half Men), which surprises me, considering it's pedigree: Sex in the City creator Michael Patrick King at the helm. I can't imagine why this hasn't gotten more of a marketing push; but they're probably counting on it's schedule spot to bring viewers. I thought the second episode was less catchy than the premiere, but I'll still watch it out as long as it lasts (which may not be long).

The critics have not been kind to Whitney (who also produces 2 Broke Girls), which NBC has promoted heavily, and I had no interest in. But once I watched it, I found that I laughed quite a bit. It's a lot less forced than the promos made it seem (and not nearly as forced as The New Girl). One of the very few shows filmed before a live audience, with some fairly adult humor. I hope it lasts.

I actually enjoyed How To Be a Gentleman on NBC, which I watched for Kevin Dillon, but found myself smitten with perennial dork, Rhys Darby (Yes Man, Pirate Radio). [It's been cancelled already as well, the highest rated show so far to get the ax, according to EW.]