It's All About Me and...The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Me: “I’m really enjoying the new Barbara Kingsolver book!”

My cousinsisterfriend: “Oh? There’s a new one? What’s it about?”

Me: “This sweet Mexican-American closeted gay man in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He starts out living with his man-obsessed, diva mother in Mexico, but then becomes the cook for Diego Rivera and then Trotsky until…”

Cousinsisterfriend: “Uh, Pam? I read that book. A couple years ago. It’s not new.”

Me (who would be embarrassed at this point in front of anybody else except my cousinsisterfriend who knows EVERYTHING about me but still loves me deeply): “Oh. Well. It’s new to me?”

Cousinsisterfriend: “Enough about you. Let’s talk about me…”

Though the scintillating conversation that followed would probably interest you greatly, I’m going to risk disappointing you by telling you about Barbara Kingsolver’s most recent novel The Lacuna. I’m sure you’ve all read The Poisonwood Bible by now, and if you haven’t you never will (unless you haven’t but always wanted to, in which case please hop over to your local library and get it out. Now. I mean it. Right. Now.) It’s been so long since I read The Poisonwood Bible that all I remember is that it was my favorite book of the year if not the decade, so I started The Lacuna with a “Go ahead, make my day” kind of attitude, which is not really fair to Barbara K. but that’s where I was at that moment so tough patooties. Maybe ol’ Babs was of the same mindset because this book took a while to draw me in. It did eventually, and I liked the book a lot, but I didn’t want to marry it or anything like I did with The Poisonwood Bible. Ultimately, I categorize The Lacuna as a must-read because of Kingsolver’s ability to provide important commentary on the world-altering crisis in “journalism” today (the quotes indicate my loose application of this term) through a gentle, purposefully unassuming character.

Harrison Shepherd is such an humble, less-is-more character that he doesn’t even have a name that sticks. Nor a home. He is neither Mexican nor American. He is neither classically male nor female. He is a smart man partially educated at a school for imbeciles. He wants to fade into the backdrop but he can’t help but to let his culinary and, more importantly, literary talents drop a spotlight onto him. And, poor guy, this novel isn’t really about him at all – even though the entire story is written through his journals – for he is merely a screen upon which the nonsensical media madness projects itself.

“In the beginning were the howlers.” (God, I love a good first line of a book!) “They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten. It would start with just one: his forced, rhythmic groaning, like a saw blade. That aroused others near him, nudging them to bawl along with his monstrous tune. Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from the other trees, farther down the beach, until the whole jungle filled with roaring trees. As it was in the beginning, so it is every morning of the world.”

Wee Harrison Shepherd and his fantasy-based mother mistake the monkeys for demons that will eat the flesh from their bones. As Harrison grows up, the howlers become journalists who would rather spread fantastical lies than do a smidge of honorable reporting. They howl about Diego Rivera’s murals. They howl about Lev Trotsky’s attempts to take down Stalin. They howl about Japanese civilians living in America. They howl about Communism under every rock of the McCarthy era, the jungle cry that crashes disastrously through the small, protect world Harrison carves out for himself.

While I’m reading about Kingsolver’s delicately created world in the mid-20^th century, my ears are reverberating with the clumsily reported soul-eating news stories of today, spewed by the media mouthpieces and inhaled by people who call themselves Birthers and Tea Partiers and Charlie Sheen fans. The howlers today shrilly hurl brightly wrapped feces of misinformation, which many Americans gobble up with greedy glee like free Happy Meals falling from the sky. Without question or comprehension. For to question would be to doubt…and a pit bull in lipstick does not abide by doubters. Or thinkers. Especially not thinkers.

As an FBI agent is investigating Harrison Shepherd as a Communist during the Red Scare, Harrison suggests ever so politely that the Constitution grants him the rights to know who is accusing him of wrongdoings. The agent responds, “Whenever I hear this kind of thing…a person speaking about constitutional rights, free speech, and so forth, I think, ‘How can he be such a sap? Now I can be sure that man is a Red.’ A word to the wise, Mr. Shepherd. We just do not hear a real American speaking in that manner.”

"Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments.” – Sarah Palin on Bill O’Reilly’s show in May, 2010.

''You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming. Then you get the scientists — eugenics. You get the scientists — global warming. Then you have to discredit the scientists who say, 'That's not right.' And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did.'' —Glenn Beck, linking Al Gore's campaign against global warming to Hitler's campaign against the Jews, 'The Glenn Beck Program,' April 30, 2007

One last quote, if you don’t mind, from The Lacuna. Harrison is writing a letter to Diego Rivera soon after Independence Day in 1946, “The radio is the root of the evil, their rule is: No silence, ever. When anything happens, the commentator has to speak without a moment’s pause for gathering wisdom. Falsehood and inanity are preferable to silence.  You can’t imagine the effect of this. The talkers are rising about the thinkers.”

Make no mistake. Kingsolver’s “new” book isn’t strictly about the ways the 24-hour news cycle is killing all that is good and just in the world. In fact, you could read the whole book and hardly register this jibe. But her underlying message kept leaping out at me. While I was reading this book, I was trying to avoid the Sheenification of America - as we takes sides by either joining in the death parade or contemplate the macabre dancers (or contemplate the contemplators) or write about how we won’t write about it. And you all know that, like any good prestidigitator’s aim, while we’re watching Charlie Sheen, we’re not watching the gluttonous devouring of basic American civil rights.

Did I mention The Lacuna made a great beach read too?

["It's All About Me and..." are my versions of book and movie reviews. If you'd like to read more, click here. I also write straight-laced, about-the-book reviews on Feathered Quill.]

It’s All About Me and…Paper Heart…and The Ugly Truth

Yes, a double feature, which is basically as unusual as a double rainbow in my world but rarer, like a double rainbow with a friendly leprechaun who, with a sly smile and a between-you-and-me wink, willingly hands over his pot of gold. It was six o’clock and both kids were at a friend’s house for the evening, so my husband and I decided to get Indian food and watch a movie. Big night in our house! Woohoo!

We scanned what was streaming on Netflix and settled with Paper Heart, a romantic comedy sort of-documentary with a comedian named Charlyne Yi  and the guy from Juno (Michael Cera).  The premise is that Yi isn't sure she believes in love or that she’ll ever fall in love. She's trying to figure out the whole love thing, but not in a desperate, crying-over-martinis-with-your-BFF girly way.  Yi’s approach is scientific and rational. It’s none of my business, but Yi seems to have an ample smattering of Asperger’s if you ask me. (Not that you did. So nevermind.) But she’s definitely socially awkward. Still, there is a lid for every pot, and it seems wonderfully serendipitous when she meets and kinda-sorta falls in love with the guy from Juno. Yes! As luck would have it, she discovers love right in the middle of making her documentary about trying to figure out love! A cute movie. Quirky. I liked it.

Now I’ll tell you why I kinda-sorta hated it too. The whole thing was a set up. It wasn’t a real documentary at all. Yi and  Cera were dating before they started making the movie, so it’s unclear what parts were real and what were fabricated, which pissed me off. (I know, I know, careful readers. Just a couple blogs entries ago, I was waxing artistic about how energized and joyously challenged I was by the documentary/mockumentary/prankumentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. Seems contradictory? Well, I’m complex. I’m fickle. I’m a woman. Get over it. I don’t mind a movie getting tricky with me about art, but don’t mess with my romantic comedies, kay?)

Once Paper Heart ended, my husband looked at the clock and says, “Now what?”

It was eight o’clock or as hubby plaintively cried, “It’s not even Cuddle Time yet!” (Cuddle Time is 8:30 when he puts our daughter to bed.) And I had this moment of awareness, a flash-forward eight years, to what we’re going to be like when our kids leave the house for good.

I blurted out, “Oh my god! We can’t be married anymore! We don’t know how to be alone together anymore!” We were laughing at this point because the Cuddle Time comment killed me. (I know you don’t get it. You had to be there - and to have lived in our house for the last fifteen years - but believe me it was a good one.) But still, I was shrieking, “What the hell are we going to do for the next few hours? What the hell are we going to do for the rest of our lives?”

“We’ll be really busy with all our stuff,” hubby said with a confidence so thin I can see through it. “We’ve got a lot of stuff.”

This is true. We do have our stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff. But still…gulp…

It occurred to me that I’ve seen people without kids post stuff on Facebook about watching a double feature or sometimes even a movie marathon. I thought they were speaking metaphorically, but it dawned on me that maybe they were serious. We felt pretty freaky-deaky and daring as we decided to watch another movie. And we discovered that the beauty of the double feature is that you get to select a different class of movie for the second one. It doesn’t have to be a guaranteed good movie, because it’s not the main feature of the evening. The pressure is taken off of this side B movie because we’ve already been entertained.

The Ugly Truth was the perfect side B movie. Formulaic but entertaining. Katherine Heigel was very nice to look at. Plus it got points for being a romantic comedy. Our expectations were so low that we both enjoyed it very much (after all, its only competition was Cuddle Time.) Heigel played a high-powered TV producer in Sacramento who was too high-powered to be lucky at love. (Pretty friggin’ sexist if you didn’t notice.) She was forced to work with a man she finds utterly repugnant, played by Gerard Butler (not my type), a macho apparent-playah who hosts a quasi-Howard Sternish relationship advice segment on Heigel’s show. But deep inside he’s a nice guy. And deep inside she’s not a controlling she-bitch. And – believe me, I’m not giving anything away by telling you this – they argue so fiercely that they fall in love.

So the movie comes to its predictable conclusion, and we click off the TV. We have spent the evening watching people try their hand at figuring out the whole love thing. Our kids will be home any minute and my husband and I sit contentedly in the dimness of our family room.  It’s quiet and cozy and nobody has left a sock or a wet towel on the floor in five entire hours. 

In some ways, I suspect, this is what love really feels like.

It's All About Me and..."Exit Through the Gift Shop"

by Bansky

Is Mr. Brainwash the Stephen Colbert of the art world?

Exit Through the Gift Shop is purportedly a movie that set out to be a documentary about Banksy, the popular street artist, but turned into the story about Thierry Guetta who turns into Mr. Brainwash, a DIY film-maker who turns into a just-add-water-and-shake insta-artist. Or is he?

Shepard Fairey's most
famous work to date

Ok, let’s back up since I may have lost you already. Taken at face value, Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary about the exciting world of street artists as captured by a kooky French exile named Thierry Guetta who is obsessed with videotaping every moment of his life. When Guetta becomes enraptured by the aesthetic hijinks of street artists like Shepard Fairey, he naturally videotapes it all. Guetta captures the thrill of this guerilla art, where creators straddle the line of legality in an art form that, in one painted blast, both defaces and beautifies a space. Guetta scores his greatest coup when he gains access into the highly guarded inner circle of Banksy, the most elusive street artist of all. In an effort to get the possibly mentally unhinged videographer out of his hair, Bansky encourages Guetta to stage his own show. Much to the surprise and horror of Banksy and Fairey, Guetta – who assumes the name “Mr. Brainswash” and whose work steals liberally from Warhol, Banksy and Fairey – wows Los Angeles with a widely acclaimed art show. And gets rich in the process.

Work by "Mr. Brainwash"

As I watched the Exit Through the Gift Shop, I was chuckling away in dismay. Mr. Brainwash comments upon and makes a mockery of Banksy and Shephard Fairey, who comment upon and make a mockery of Warhol who commented upon and made a mockery of, say, Leonardo da Vinci and the entire art establishment. Though Banksy, Fairey, and Warhol all provide valuable commentary on mindless consumption of mental imagery and the power of advertising to alter our very beings, there is a statement being made in this movie about art as an establishment. This is a common theme for Bansky, who in one day snuck into deviously hang his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum.

And now we’re at the timeless question, What is art?

Graffiti artists force-feed us this question. They take normally private and exclusive art to the public streets, indeed the ugliest streets, often the spaces we would rather not see. In addition, the elements of illegality and danger only enliven the art form. You can’t help but to marvel at the fact that someone risked injury and arrest to bring me this artwork – this imbues the message with inherent meaning. Sometimes meaning that is not that is not there. (What is the message of Fairey’s “Obey” anyway?) Which then becomes a statement on mass brainwashing produced by the repeated images of advertising on each and every citizen (hello, Mr. Brainwash?)

You still with me? It’s complicated, right? The multitude of mental layers spurred on by Exit Through the Gift Shop takes the movie into the category of brilliant. People have been having animated conversations about art in Starbucks across America. There’s nothing bad about that! (Except for Starbucks, which I oppose on moral grounds.)

Ok, now here’s the thing. It is widely believed that Banksy, who directed the movie, may have created the whole thing as a prank. Yeah, I’m serious. They’re saying Thierry Guetta is a fictional character created to get a point across (in the same way that Stephen Colbert plays, well, Stephen Colbert.) With risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist (I do love a good conspiracy theory!), it’s worth noting that “guetta” means “watch” or “look out” in French. 

So perhaps the joke us on us all along. And the joke is especially is on the art world that embraces Mr. Brainwash and any poor schlub who bought his work. Or is it? Because if Mr. Brainwash is Banksy in one of his supreme pranks, then maybe it is art after all…

Personally, I think the movie is a hoax. I mean, Bansky directed the movie. If it were real, then that means that Bansky directed a movie that makes street artists look like hacks and chumps. Any man who risks his life to paint the wall along the West Bank in Israel does not consider himself to be a hack and a chump. Bansky and Fairey devote a good portion of their artistic endeavors toward pointing out our vulnerability to mass brainwashing through media and commercial sponsorship, as did Warhol before them. If Mr. Brainwash is Bansky’s creation, he’s played a splendid prank on large screens all around the world.

And that’s pretty flippin’ cool.

Or is it?

It's All About Me and..."The Social Network"

[It's All About Me and..." is my unique version of book/movie reviews. They are not your typical reviews, so don't complain if you learn more about me than about the book or movie under review.]
Yeah, the so-called “Facebook Movie.” Of course I’m writing about the Facebook movie because if you know me at all you know that I’m willfully addicted to Facebook. But - surprise! -I’m not reviewing The Social Network as a Facebook denizen. I’m reviewing it as a mom.

The Social Network opens with Mark Zuckerberg (played brilliantly by Jesse Eisenberg,) a Harvard University student who is about to create a new world inhabited by 500 million people. He is at a small table in a crowded bar talking to his girlfriend, a sweet-faced Boston University student who shares similar geeky interests. Or at least she wants to share his interests. Actually, we really don’t know what she wants because the “date” consists of her trying to make sense of Zuckerberg’s hyper-speed cogitations as he talks and talks and talks.

                 

Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States?...How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all got 1600s on their SATs?...I could sing in an a cappella group but I can’t sing…or I can row crew or invent a 25 dollar PC. I can’t do the first and I’ll get bored doing the second so…

On and on he goes. And my heart sinks because I know what this is called. I know what he is doing. And I know who he is. He is “monologuing.” He’s about to get dumped. And he has Asperger’s.

I’ll pause this review for a micro-moment for some background. According to Autism Speaks, “Asperger's Syndrome is a neurological disorder that, like others on the spectrum, is marked by difficulties in communication and social interaction.” To my eye, Asperger’s is a cluster of personality traits, some of them weaknesses and some of the strengths, which present a distinctive display of commonalities across individuals. Though it is obviously insulting to say if you know one Aspy, you know them all, there is a grain of truth in there. Therefore, within the first five minutes of The Social Network, my Aspy alert was blaring in my head. Lights flashing. One, two, three cherries dialing up. Ding, ding, ding.

From that moment on, I felt like I was watching a different movie from the rest of the theater. It was as if I was residing in a parallel movie universe, watching the same flickers on the screen but seeing very different images. While the Mark Zuckerberg character was droning on and on (his about-to-be ex-girlfriend laments, “…it’s just that since the beginning of the conversation about finals clubs I think I have missed a birthday,”) I am shrinking in my chair, groaning, clenching my fists into my stomach. I am thinking, Am I sitting here in a theater with a hundred strangers watching my son’s future?

In the obvious sense The Social Network is about the high-speed, turbulent rise to fame of Mark Zuckerberg as he develops the new frontier of global socialization. Most viewers marvel at his genius single-minded absorption (a classic Aspergian trait.) But really the movie about his frustration with his inability to, quite frankly, have friends (another classic Aspergian trait.) Zuckerberg’s attempts at friendship and social acceptance are horrifically clumsy and tactless (uh, yeah, another classic…oh you know the rest. ::sigh::) As the movie continues, I can almost see the thought bubbles over other viewers’ heads: “This guy is a totally a-hole.” But my thought bubble is screaming: “He’s not an a-hole! He has Asperger’s!!!”

Oh dear. With apologies, I realize that you loyal few have read all this way for no review at all. For I now must declare myself incapable of seeing The Social Network with any objectivity whatsoever. Plus, you’ll probably see the movie completely differently than I did anyway. So should you see it? Yeah. Sure. The people I was with thought it was a great movie. It’s definitely an original and well-told story. You’ll feel like you got your money’s worth, I think. So go ahead and see the movie if you haven’t already.

But, please oh please, when you see The Social Network keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg is not an a-hole.

He just has Asperger’s.

It's All About Me and..."Motherhood"

["It's All About Me and..." is my unique version of book/movie reviews. They are not your typical reviews, so don't complain if you learn more about me than about the book or movie under review.]

I know, I know. You either have not heard about this movie or you heard it sucked. And though I won’t wax melodically and claim Katherine Dieckmann wrote and directed the perfect film, I will strongly encourage some of you to see Motherhood. Which ones of you? Well, the moms out there, particularly the stay-at-home moms who have spent time crying silently on the bathroom floor in the middle of the day, grieving the creative, smart, sexy women they once were. Yes, you. You fabulous creatures.

Uma Thurman (who grew up in Amherst!) stars as Eliza, the mom in Motherhood, which covers a chaotic but special but typical day in the life of a stay-at-home mom/mom blogger/“former” writer who is raising two kids with her understanding though passive husband (Anthony Edwards) in New York City. (Greenwich Village co-stars brilliantly in this movie.) Like the blog Eliza writes in the only available dribbles of open time throughout her day, the movie comes off as a series of short essays and one-liners about the joyfulness and soul-slaughter of a life spent catering to the bottomless needs of others while earnestly trying to create well-rounded, grounded human beings. 

One of the pleasures of Motherhood is that it made the small, everyday, mind-numbing, monumental efforts of my last fourteen or so years seem worthy of cinematic representation.  Indeed Katherine Dieckmann defends herself in The Huffington Post, “This is why I decided to write a movie that insists a mother's life is worth watching, even if its shifts are small, closer to eddies than raging rivers.” Clearly, Dieckmann has spent some time crying on the bathroom floor.

Ultimately, the biggest flaw of this movie is that it is unfinished. Perhaps the forced ADD of mothering prevented Dieckmann from spending those extra few weeks in the editing booth putting a smooth finish on the movie. Perhaps she consciously chose to leave the movie raw and unsanded. Certainly Motherhood has its flaws, but that shouldn’t stop you from watching it.

There is one scene in particular that really resonated with me. (“Resonate,” by the way, is one of my favorite terms of the 21^st Century. I can’t help using it with as much sincerity as possible while still holding my tongue in my cheek.) After a day of much hassle and drama, Eliza finally blows a gasket, gets in the Volvo and drives off. (Ok, driving to New Jersey is not my personal idea of spiritual escape, but hey, who am I to judge?) This impulse to get in the car and drive, just drive, anywhere (like, say perhaps, an improv theater in Chicago?) seems to be a common fantasy. I remember when I was around twelve, my mom lost her shit one day and drove off. I found her destination-free drive so confusing and fascinating. I remember questioning her on where she had gone and why. I’m sure my constant peppering didn’t make her decision to turn around and come back home seem like the best course of action at the time.

The Onion recently posted a funny report on this impulse to choose the flight of the fight-or-flight response called “Mom Just Locked Her Door”. “Mom, 46, has not emerged from behind the locked door, nor has she given any indication as to when or if she will return to the kitchen to resume making dinner, sources said. Speculation persists as to what could have provoked Mom's tense exit, with some citing the failure of Tyler to pick up his toys from the staircase, and others placing the blame on Katie and Joseph's repeated failure to set the table as requested, or on Dad failing to put his book down and help out for once.” I won’t spoil it for you by printing it here, but the last line of this article literally made me spit on my computer screen in familiar outrage.

If you ever see me with flames shooting out of my ears while white-knuckling it behind the wheel of a rattling 2005 Subaru Outback, heading west on the nearest highway, you’ll know I’ve snapped. Don’t try to flag me down (in fact, avoiding direct eye contact would be advised). At some point halfway through New York, I’ll probably sigh deeply, pull over to pee and buy a cup of tea and a muffin, and then turn around and head back home. Because that’s what we do. Good mommies always make a u-turn eventually. 

It’s All About Me and…"An Echo in the Bone" by Diana Gabaldon

["It's All About Me and..." is my unique version of book/movie reviews. They are not your typical reviews, so don't complain if you learn more about me than about the book or movie under review.]

For the record, I am not a romantic person. Passion, I got an extra dose of, but the girlygirl I-want-to-make-a-scrapbook-of-photos-cut-out-of-Bride Magazine romantic gene? Uh, not so much. I especially can’t stand contrived romantic gestures. I despise Valentine’s Day, which I see as a commercialized Hallmark agenda aimed at making people in relationships feel pressured and single people feel crappy. Candlelit dinners at fancy restaurants make me want to burp the alphabet as loudly as possibly and talk about nasty fungal infections. And although I am above-average happily married, I don’t enjoy celebrating anniversaries. One year, we were driving somewhere and passed a blinking sign that read “Traffic delays expected today, August 18.” As if in a race, my husband and I both hurried to say, “Happy Anniversary!” That is exactly how I like to celebrate an anniversary. Seriously. And don’t get me started about how I feel about receiving fancy gifts. My poor husband can’t walk into a jewelry store without suffering a spasm of PTSD.

But I am only human, not some heartless she-devil. Sometimes I stumble onto something I find so deeply romantic I want to write a song about it. There are moments that turn me into a puddle of mush, for sure. A funny-sexy turn of phrase, a smokin’ hot thought, and every cell of Michael Franti. Romantic comedy movies are a weakness too. I’ve already taken plenty of sh*t when I confess my cinematic romantic Achilles heel is “Notting Hill.” (Shut up. I love it. And no, I don’t think “A lot Like Love” or “Love Actually” are better. Seriously. Shut up.) Another confession: I’ll save the New York Times “Vows” article for a special, quiet moment to be savored with cookies and tea. (Last week’s was tasty, both the biscotti and the love story.) And my final, ooey-gooey, love-muffin confession is a literary guilty pleasure I’ve been enjoying over the last decade, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.  I squealed like a schoolgirl when I found the seventh book in the series, An Echo in the Bone, on the shelf of our library. 

The Outlander books are big, thick hunks of passion, historic fiction, sword fighting, arse grabbing and plain good storytelling. They tell the story of Jamie Fraser, a Scotsman from the 18^th Century. His wife is Claire Randall Fraser, an English doctor from the 20^th Century. Yes, there is time travel involved in this romance. I know people who automatically reject any book involving time travel, but if Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger didn’t alter this sweeping literary litmus test, then kindly move along to another book. Your loss.

Although in real life my taste in men runs in toward slender, funny geeks, James Fraser is a splendid literary lover. He is a hulking, redheaded, kilt-wearing vat of testosterone who secretly is a kitten on the inside. He is utterly devoted to his woman. For instance in Outlander, Jamie says stuff like “When I hold ye between my two hands and feel you quiver like that, waitin’ for me to take you…Lord, I want to pleasure you until ye cry out under me and open yourself to me. And when I take my own pleasure from you, I feel as though I’ve given ye me soul along with my…” well, you get the picture. He can slice a man in half with his sword and then hold a woman like baby bird. It’s not as Harlequin Romance-y as it sounds, and for some reason Gabaldon makes it work by mixing in enough strong female kick-ass characters with smart historic fiction and solid plotlines.

After ten years of dedicated readership and all 848 pages of Echo in the Bone, I can’t wait for the eighth juicy offering in the Outlander series. And if that makes me a hopeless romantic in your eyes, well, I have only this to say to you:

Bite me.

It's All About Me and..."Date Night"

Tina Fey. Steve Carell. Nuff said, right?

No? You still need more convincing? Well, maybe you should flip along to the next blog because you and I might not have anything more to say to each other. I love improv and there is nothing more delightful to me than watching Improvisers Gone Big. (Like “Girls Gone Wild” but with less perky boobs.)

If you’re still here, perhaps you’re on the fence about Date Night because, like a friend recently told me, he’d heard some iffy review although he confessed in a secretive whisper, “I deeply love Tina Fey.” Ok, I’m rubbing my hands together with anticipation because now we’re speaking the same language. Now we can have a reasonable conversation about Date Night.  (Ok, I realize this is a one-way conversation, with me doing all the talking. But if you know me in real life, you won’t be surprised by this conversational status.)

I’m just gonna go ahead and hit it hard from the top by right away giving you the number one thing I loved about this movie: Date Night is a good, old-fashioned entertainment movie. By “old-fashioned,” I’m talking about the 80’s here, like Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours and other movies that may or may not have “Beverly Hills” or Eddie Murphy in them. Date Night is funny without being crude or mean. It’s light-hearted without being intellectually insulting (or intellectually taxing.) It’ll probably make you feel good without being too sickly sweet. It has great acting without starring Meryl Streep. It contains exciting action sequences, mercifully without being in 3D. It has a bit of a story without making you feel guilty for not saving the world.

Fey and Carell play a married-with-kids suburbanites having a long overdue night out on the town in New York City. They are just ordinary folks, who find themselves in extraordinary situations. They end up getting mistaken for a pair of criminals…and chaos ensues. Yes, admittedly, a formulaic plotline (think North by Northwest and while you’re thinking of that movie, go ahead and put it on your Netflix list because chances are you haven’t seen it in a long time, if ever, and that movie rocks big time. Plus Cary Grant is quite delicious in it.) Personally, I immediately forgave Date Night for its predictability. In fact, I’m a gal who likes what she knows and knows what she likes, so it felt even more comforting to be able to relax into this movie without worrying about jarring surprises. But hey, I always order the same thing when I go to restaurants (bi bim bop at Kim’s Korean in Hadley, deluxe crunch roll at Zen in Northampton, chickpea and red curry burrito at Bueno Y Sano in Amherst) because I love never being disappointed.

Carell and Fey have wonderful chemistry. Maybe I’m being naïve, but there seems to be no way they weren’t having a sincerely good time together making this movie. Make sure you stay for the outtakes at the end for proof that the smart, smart director of this movie let them do what they do best, improvise. I particularly love the game they play at restaurants when they take turns supplying the voices for other patrons. Classic improv game fare, and oh so yummy. My favorite was the one when Fey is narrating the voice of some pretty blond and says, “"That's amazing, Jeremy, but I'm going to go home now and fart in a shoebox." And then you hear Tina Fey, the actress, mutter under her breath, “That’s not…that doesn’t make sense.” (She tells it better. Check out the clip here.) I felt like I was at an improv rehearsal with them, watching them battle to see who could make the other one break character first. Priceless.

Like most of the best comedians out there right now, both Fey and Carell started out in the Chicago improv scene. For those of you who don’t know, Chicago is the birthplace and mecca of modern improv comedy, with iO (formerly ImprovOlympics) being the epicenter of the improv universe. Many of the comedians you love have gone through there. Here’s a taste of iO alums: Rachel Dratch, Jason Sudeikis, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Angela Kinsey, Neil Flynn, Jack McBrayer, Scott Adsit, Mike Meyers, and Stephen Colbert.

Oh, and guess who else recently went to iO? Yeah. That’s right. Me. Sure, sure, I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who got to perform in the Theater That Del Built, but I went there. I visited. I watched. I laughed. (Read this in a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. voice.) I have been to the Promised Land, my brothers and sisters. I braved the crowds at the Chicago Improv Festival. I climbed to the top of Mount Funny. And I can say it is all that and more, yeah, all that and more. Not only is Date Night a fun, feel-good flick, but it made me feel even closer to the improv gods and goddesses at whose alter I pray, depositing my ticket stub as a sacrificial offering, lighting a candle in hopes that the goddess of laughter will smile down upon me again. Hallelujah and amen. (Back to regular voice now.)

But you’ll probably just like the movie because it’s funny.

It's All About Me and..."Eat, Pray, Love"

Obviously, I’m way behind the ball as far as my eating, praying and loving literature goes. Elizabeth Gilbert’s book has been out since 2006; but due to my regular book reviewing gig, I’m only just getting to it now. Which is fine. Because some books are worth waiting for. And this is one of them.

For those of you who haven’t yet read it (and I’m assuming most of you are men,) Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir about Elizabeth Gilbert’s year of self-reclamation after divorce and heartbreaks. Yes, plural. This poor woman was kicked spiritually while she was down by the young man whose heart, soul and body she collided with soon after her divorce. Liz’s lowest point finds her sobbing buckets of tears, anguish and mucous on her bathroom floor. When this woman goes down, she goes down in big, flaming style. At this moment, she receives inspiration, in a message from “God” so to speak, to move on - first to bed for a proper night’s sleep, and then to travel the globe in search of guidance through gastronomy (Italy,) gurus (India,) and a guy (Indonesia.)

Did I mention that my new BBF (best book friend) Liz is funny, really really funny, in that sardonic, self-depreciating way that makes me laugh in recognition of finding a literary soul sister?  Liz on the perfect pizza: “I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return.” On the challenges to self-imposed celibacy: “Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year-old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me…perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon...” On roosters in Bali: “Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters. (‘We are ROOSTERS!’ they holler. ‘We are the only ones who get to be ROOSTERS!’)” Liz gets roosters, which means we have to love Liz.

The whole time I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love, I felt like I was holding my cousin Jackie in my hands because Liz’s story is Jackie’s story. Blur a few minor details and substitute Detroit for Italy and Costa Rica for India and Detroit (again, sorry) for Indonesia, and the resemblance is uncanny. Jackie went through all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly in the same big, flaming style.  As I was reading, I kept emailing Jackie stuff like, “You are so with me as I read Eat, Pray, Love I can’t stand it.” To which she responded, “Thanks for the note. That book so described my journey: especially the part where she is lying on the floor in the heap of towel, sobbing, as her young lover looks down from the bed and says, "What is it now?" That was [my former boyfriend]: my shaman lover, my friend, my midwife through the darkness.”

I should say that Jackie is more than just a cousin to me. She is my cousin-sister-friend. When we are together, there are no walls between us. e.e. cummings would have called us jackieandpam. When we were growing up, we told everything to each other, we went everywhere together. I think I was 10 years old (so Jackie must have been 11) before I realized that everyone doesn’t accompany her cousin to the bathroom when she has to pee. This cousin connection pervaded our family.

“Is Jackie going to be there?”

“Is Pam going to be there?”

To this day, those questions are the absolute next breath after either of us is informed of a family event. If I could put my ear to the canyon of my childhood, I would hear echoes of “Is Jackie going to be there?” “Is Jackie going to be there?” “Is Jackie going to be there?”

The other day, I asked my mom how old we were when Jackie and I became such good friends. She said, “Well, when you were a baby, she really liked you, but you didn’t really react to her much.”

At first I got all adolesent pissy. I almost said, “Uh, like , I meant after I was old enough to hold up my head by myself. Duh. When did we become friends-friends, y’know?” But then I, a.) realized I wasn’t 16-years-old (thank the goddess,) and b.) began to appreciate the unintended beauty of my mom’s response. That’s the thing. She has to go back to my infancy to remember a time when we weren’t jackieandpam.

And though many miles separate us, as well as temporal and logistical hurdles, we remain connected in our hearts.  When we are together, we float in a stream of constant communication. None of it small talk. (One of my favorite Jackie lines: “Enough about me. Let’s talk about me.”) I still tell Jackie everything, even the stuff I don’t want to admit to myself. Our reactions always are honest and heartfelt, ranging from, “Oh honey. I’m here with you,” (followed by welling up of tears) to “Uh, yeah. That’s really f@#*ed up,” (followed by uproarious laughter.) Most of our reactions are both these sentiments at the same time.

Our family tolerates our behavior as if we were naughty kittens. Put us in a situation where laughter is frowned up, and we’ll be the ones giggling into our shirts. A Passover Seder is like a whispered comedy club for us. Recently in the middle of a bar mitzvah, I nearly had to go to the hospital trying to stifle my outburst in reaction to her deadpan comment, “A woman in her 40’s absolutely can’t be without her tweezers. A mole is a friggin’ garden for hair!” Heads turn to see who is snorting ferociously in the middle of the service. Usually the elders just give us the evil eye without saying anything to us. They know we can’t help it.

We’re jackieandpam.

It’s All About Me and… “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress”

Although I have never been “ditched by [my] husband for a guy he met on Gay.com” like Rhoda Janzen, author of “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home,” naturally I have had my share of unrequited love. I remember one time many moons ago when I was whining to a therapist about a man:

“I just don’t understand it. He never calls me anymore. He doesn’t return my calls. It’s like I don’t exist to him! It hurts so much. What did I do wrong? What is wrong with him? Why is he doing this to me?” blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

The therapist finally cocks her head and interrupts my litany of woe with a dry zinger: “Pam, haven’t you ever been dumped before?”

“Of course I have,” I respond.

Pause.

Pause for another beat (‘cause I can be kind of slow on the uptake.) Pause still longer for the concept to sink in.

“Oh. My. God. He dumped me? No way.” (Denial phase.)

“He dumped me?!” (Anger phase.)

“But if he only remembered how much fun we had together, he would change his mind!” (Bargaining phase.)

“He dumped me?!” (Here comes the depression.)

“He dumped me. Huh. Wow.” (This is as close as we are going to get to acceptance, so let’s just move along. There’s nothing more to look at here, folks.)

Silly me. I just thought it was a bump in the road. Turns out it was the end of the road. ::dope slap::

In “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress,” Rhoda Janzen tells about the end of the road of her marriage and then how she literally got plowed off the road by a drunk driver. One day her husband leaves her for a guy he met on Gay.com, and six days later she is horribly injured, unable to walk, utterly alone in a house she can’t afford. Talk about a shitty week.

But Janzen is a woman after my own heart because she relates her whole tragic tale with great humor, sarcasm and well-placed bitterness, sometimes aimed at her hideously cruel heel of a husband and sometimes aimed fairly on herself for putting up with her hideously cruel heel of a husband. I tend to agree with her on both counts.

From her Mennonite heritage, she brings a hitch-up-your-britches-and-carry-on type response to the epic rough times in her adult life. She deflects the bullets with sardonic wit and supreme comic timing before trudging gamely on to the next battle. She writes, “Two months after the move to the expensive lakefront property, Nick left me for a guy he’d met on Gay.com.

I don’t know why it made it worse that the man’s name was Bob, but it did. Bob the Guy. From Gay.com. It’s funny how when your husband leaves you for a guy named Bob, you begin to revisit memories from the summer before, when hindsight sheds new light on your husband’s role during the highs and lows of your convalescence. What you once thought as evidence for your husband’s tenderness you begin to imagine as guilt for dating guys with big wangs…The truth hurts, especially when you’re slow to see it.”

And boy oh boy is Janzen slow to see it! Wowee, what this woman puts up with. Clearly it bugs the crap out of her that after living through all his nastiness, her husband bails on her for a guy he met on Gay.com. That’s always how she phrases it too, “for a guy he met on Gay.com.” At first the redundancy is amusing, like a “Saturday Night Live” punchline that gets funnier at each retelling. But then it seems to get sadder and wounded and downright pissed off. As it should. For slowly so slowly, readers follow as Janzen relates her evolution. But it’s a long path. She writes, “Big life lessons always kicked in tardily for me. I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer, a slow learner. The postman has to ring twice, if you get my drift.”

Yeah. I get her drift. We all have failed to answer the postman’s first ring when it comes to relationships, right? It’s like, ‘Ouch. That hurt. I wonder if it will hurt if I try it again? Ooh. Yeah, lookee there. More rejection. Yup, it hurt again. But maybe this time it will be different…’

So half the time, I’m reading Janzen’s memoire and thinking, “I hear ya, sister,” and the other time I’m reading it and thinking, “At least I’m not that screwed up.” But most of the time, I’m reading it and smiling, even while grimacing, because the book is extremely entertaining and well crafted. Plus, it provides a unique insight into the Mennonite culture, so you’ll feel like you’re learning something as a little bonus prize.

Want to try on “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” before you buy it? Slip into this hot number by Janzen that was in The New York Times entitled The Tractor Driver or the Pothead? If you’re not laughing joyfully and thinking the dress is a good fit, then feel free to continue to browse. Might I recommend a velour pantsuit perhaps?

It's All About Me and... "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

Naturally, the only reason I watched Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was to ogle John Krasinski. John - since he is #3 on my Celebrity Boyfriend List, I feel as though I earn the right to call him “John” – is most famous for playing Jim on The

Office. Although I enjoyed his work in Away We Go, which he starred in with my celebrity doppelganger Maya Rudolph, he succeeded in capturing my heart once and for all in his charmingly goofy role in It’s Complicated. To steal even a moment of a scene from Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep is quite a feat, don’t you think? But then again John Krasinski has perfected the whole charmingly goofy thing...plus I am an absolute sucker for geeky, funny guys. It’s a match made in stalker heaven.

After eagerly imbibing in It’s Complicated, I just had to go back and watch the first couple seasons of The Office, which I had missed since I’m a Johnny Come Lately to the series. Oh. My. God. The whole flirtatious, push me-pull me, heart-on-his-sleeve thing he has going with Pam the receptionist makes me melt every time. Delicious. So, yeah, I tuned in to Brief Interviews with Hideous Men for the eye candy and his shy smile, I must admit. Plus, John directed and adapted this film from David Wallace Foster’s book, so I figure if I ever have an opportunity to meet John, we will have fodder for our deep and lengthy intellectual discussions. After I make him my love slave.

John’s movie is a compilation of brief interviews with men (duh) being asked about their relationships with women by a young graduate student working on her thesis (played by Julianne Nicholson, who looks a lot like my friend Sarah K.) We never hear the actual question, though most men tend to relate tales of sex and sexual dysfunction. Personally, I enjoyed the interviews, which to me seemed to be improvised (though perhaps it’s due to the fact they are so artfully written?) Many of the actors indeed are improvisers, and they put in compelling performances. Will Forte’s (“Saturday Night Live”) riff on how much he loves women was hilarious though eerie. (I definitely wouldn’t date his character.) 

The film opens with Ben Shenkmen’s interview when he confesses his compulsion to involuntarily yell “Victory for the forces of Democratic freedom!” in the throes of passion. (Check out the clip here.) This first interview captures the tippy balance of attraction and repulsion, a theme around which the film circumvents.  There is a certain churlish repugnancy to Shenkmen’s character (I certainly would never date him either!) But then the whole “Victory for the forces of Democratic freedom!” is so random and funny that it pulled me back in.

I’m not sure these men are particularly hideous, per se. Perhaps it’s just that they’re telling the truth. Still, it’s hard to watch this movie without thinking, “Men are such [insert intensely non-flattering term here,]” which may or may not quickly be followed up with “But since I’m not gay, I guess we have to make due with what we got.” (The “making of” video presents an interesting series of interviews with the very much non-hideous actors who are contemplating the attraction-repulsion balancing act at the core of the movie.) Though there are an abundance of thoroughly disgusting views perpetrated in this movie, I found myself laughing a lot while watching Brief Interviews of Hideous Men as well as making plenty of pensive “Huh” and “Hmmm” noises as well. Most critics panned this movie, but if it made me laugh, gasp and think, it can’t be that bad. In fact, I definitely recommend it. (Then again, I didn’t read the book, which always helps when watching a cinematic version of a literary work.) I’d love to hear your reactions to the movie – it’s a good one to watch and then spend a couple hours with friends in a café breaking it apart.

Spoiler alert: if you’re watching Brief Interviews of Hideous Men to revel in all that is yummy about John Krasinski, you’ll probably be disappointed. He plays a real asshole who is hard to like.  I definitely would not date his character. No way. Icky poo poo. Maybe these men all are hideous after all. But then again…

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