Barb by Proxy

Background Noise: Sitting in Limbo
Random Thought: I'm really moving
Mood: huh

Well, this is my last blog from New York, for a while at least. They're turning off my cable tomorrow, and by Sunday I'll be back in the land of hands-for-maps and the Big Ten. I've had a good run here. Done things I'm glad I did--I went to the top of the World Trade Center in August 2001, eaten at Tavern on the Green and seen a friend's band play at CBGBs. I've partied with rock stars (in the sense that they have 2 nationally released albums and tour as their only form of income), drank with A-listers (Jimmy Fallon) and C-listers (Micheal Showalter), and seen many more famous faces. I've lived in Williamsburg, Harlem, the Upper East Side and Brooklyn. I gambled in Atlantic City, partied at gay bars (even the one with the fish tank in the mens bathroom that was in Sex in the City), and watched the sun go down and come up from a Lower East Side rooftop. Eaten more Odessa than should be legal, and drank more PBR at Satelite than is neccessary. I've been a lot of places, seen a lot of things, and done a lot of living. Been inspired to write about 50 books. Now it is simply time for a change. Something softer (like the Baz Luhrman song--"Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard"), something where more of my friends will visit me, and somewhere that I won't have to live all aspects of my life in a space smaller than most people's garages. It's time to breathe fresh air and walk a little slower, with less elbow.

I'll miss things, surely. My friends, though as I've sustained myself on once-yearly visits with my best friend I think I'll manage. I'll really miss movies being out early, and sometimes at all (especially while I'm in Michigan during the Jarhead/Brokeback Mountain/ Rent / V for Vendetta/ Walk The Line/ Pride and Prejudice/ Syriana/ Derailed/ Prime month of November (I'm certain they'll at least show Goblet of Fire, so that's something). $10 ABT tickets, and off-Broadway runs with really talented celebrites. Free movie screenings galore. I'll miss the little convienences of 24-hour everything. Tim the bartender. Pita Pan. Great street vendors. And, most definitely, the sheer essence that is New York City--energy, vitality, diversity. But I'll live. I'll visit, and come back. And get most of those things in Chicago. Friends will be able to visit a place bigger than a postage stamp. I'll get a new favorite bar and bartender. Find a new great little park to read in and an out of the way falafel place.

So, sayanara until Monday, when I'll be safely ensconced in Michigan with a working internet connection. Wish me luck.

Good Bye, New York.

Background Noise: Last Beautiful Girl
Random Thought: Get the animals, two by two, and get that ark in gear!
Mood: exhausted

Okay, kill me now, I'm quoting Paris Hilton. But the beauty and strength of the new iMac G5 is indeed, well, hot. It's about time someone realized that if you can fit an entire workable system into the space of a laptop, you could turn it on its end and flip the screen around. Hardrive tower? Ancient history. Flat panel screen with one function? So yesterday's news. And did I mention that it's hot? Look at this set up and tell me it doesn't make you want to buy a huge, polished wood desk and place this smack dab in the middle with a wireless keyboard and a Mighty Mouse. And nothing else, just let the sleek lines and uninterupted power emenate from your workplace. makes your fingers itch to sit down at one, right. To suprise people by swinging it around, grabbing the remote and giving a presentation from your desktop without everyone hovering around behind you trying to see the screen. To fill the rest of your desk with books and research notes and not have to worry that you are encroaching on the space of your machine. To simple stare at it, and think--now stop making the iPod smaller and with more features, and just make it hold more songs! I'm about to buy two and electical tape them back to back so I can just move the headphone wire back and forth so I really can take my entire music collection with me. Okay, rant aside, I'm drooling over this. Because its, you know, hot.

Background Noise: We Used To Be Friends
Random Thought: Joss Wedon and I would host terrific dinner parties.
Mood: Edgar Ramirez, ahhh

Entertainment Weekly

WEDNESDAY, October 12, 2005

DVD and Video

Ace of Case No. 1 fan Joss Whedon on ''Veronica Mars.'' The ''Buffy'' creator shares his thoughts on the teen-sleuth show by Joss Whedon

SUPER SLEUTHS Father-daughter detective duo Bell and Colantoni

Last year, Veronica Mars' best friend was murdered. Some months later, she was drugged at a party and raped in her sleep. Welcome to the funniest and most romantic show on TV, collected on DVD in Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season. On the surface, VM is a simple Nancy Drew update: High School Girl Solves Mysteries. It's impressive how well it works as just that, because week to week, nothing is harder to pull off than a genuine whodunit, and no show does it better than VM. But obviously, it's what lies deeper that not only makes the show remarkable but defines it. Mysteries are its central metaphor; Veronica solves little puzzles because she, like all of us, cannot unravel the bigger ones. Her life now turned upside down (additionally, her sheriff father's been fired, her mother's run out, and her True Love has inexplicably deserted her), she's developed a knack for seeing through people and their inevitable fictions. She also has cameras, audio taps, and databases, courtesy of the reduced-to-private-detective dad she works for. She's a super-sleuth, but the show never forgets that her power is born of pain, and that the kids who don't need to see — or avenge — every secret wrong are actually happier and more well-adjusted. Yet our identification is always strictly with Veronica, the girl buffeted by the base duplicity of her peers and the unfathomable vagaries of her own heart. The teen-soap element of the show is just as compelling as the season-long murder mystery. Nobody is who you think they are. Everyone shifts, betrays, reveals — through their surprising humor as well as their flaws. The show is filled with deft, glorious wit. Creator Rob Thomas and his scribblers give VM more laughs than many sitcoms, and they never grate against the emotional brutality. (So where's a commentary, Rob? The extras are frustratingly thin.) Almost everyone in the ensemble shines, particularly Jason Dohring as Veronica's hypnotically incorrigible nemesis, Logan, and the always impressive (Galaxy Quest, anyone?) Colantoni as Keith Mars, the world's greatest dad. (Seriously. Greatest. There should be a mug.) At the center of it all is Veronica herself. Bell is most remarkable not for what she brings (warmth, intelligence, and big funny) but for what she leaves out. For all the pathos of her arc, she never begs for our affection. There is a distance to her, a hole in the center of Veronica's persona. Bell constantly conveys it without even seeming to be aware of it. It's a star turn with zero pyrotechnics, and apart from the occasionally awkward voice-over, it's a teeny bit flawless. Season 1 works as mystery, comedy, and romantic drama, often simultaneously. But what elevates it is that in a TV-scape creepily obsessed with crime-solving, VM actually asks why. It knows we need our dose of solution as a panacea against the uncontrollable chaos of life's real mysteries. And it shows, feelingly, that having the answers is never enough.

Background Noise: Garden State
Random Thought: A Hell of your own making is infintely more desolate that one devised for you
Mood: Bounty Hunter-hotness induced coma

Okay, so I've drug myself out of my Choco-is-so-damned-fine-please-be-half-naked-more state of awe to urge you to rush right out to Capote. Okay, so it's not open yet. But check times and make plans, for goodness sake! Get over the Capote-lisp that Phillip Seymor Hoffman personifies and revel in the process that gets caught up in the emotions that confound desire and ultimately paralize the brilliant mind and egotistical man that changed writing forever. Truman Capote is remembered for writing In Cold Blood, the first true-crime novel, ever. (Yes, he's mentioned as the writer of Breakfast of Tiffany's, but his book is such a different creature than the Audrey Hepburn movie that everyone remembers, that it scarcely counts). Sure, crimes were reported in newpapers, and serialization was popular. But you wouldn't be reading about those misbegoten Menendez boys, Ted Bundy's childhood propensities, or the FBI-insider recollection of the JonBenet case without Truman's tale of Kansas murder. Plus, the interplay of Catherine Keener's Harper Lee and Hoffman's Truman Capote is phenominal. His relationship with Jack Dunphy is true and honest and broken, much like the rest of Truman's life. See how wonderful minds work off each other and how that is both inspirational and debilitizing.

Background Noise: 30-Minute Meals
Random Thought: Yum, bar food
Mood: Pleasantly cool

As I was listening to MusicChoice last night, I was struck by an odd coincidence. Glancing at the screen to see what was on, I saw this:

Artist: Black Sabbath
Song: Black Sabbath
Album: Black Sabbath

Now, how often does that happen? Eponymous album titles are no rare breed, but upon examining the hat trick of names that Black Sabbath had accomplished, I realized that I could only think of one band with such an occurance (I was unaware of the Black Sabbath example until about 1 am this morning)--Bad Company. According to a quick search, Wikipedia gives me what they claim is an incomplete list: Art In America, Bad Company, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden. Maybe there are more, but still. A rare moment in music history.

Background Noise:Over the Hills and Far Away
Random Thought: E- I.E., IO (from the NYT crossword today)
Mood: zzzzzzz

Well, maybe you all don't, but I just got my first real compliment comment! No offense to Anne, but I expect her to pipe in with soundbites to my posts. And I've had trouble in the past with spammer's junking up my comment box. But Dina is the real deal. Thank you so much for your lovely comments. I was delighted to see that not only was your link not to a site selling me porn, Viagra, or instant-win DVD players in exchange for my soul, but that you yourself are a highly entertaining individual. For those of you who aren't Dina, check out her site, Daily Dish (aka Whine & Dine). She's a winner, and not just because she lists me as a site to check out, which I've returned the favor for so that future readers will have the benefit of reading it. Anyway, thanks for the comments, it put a smile on my face. And to everyone else, go Whine & Dine. Go, be off with you!

Background Noise:Cocaine (too bad MusicChoice didn't play this for my Kate Moss post)
Random Thought: Cats like to chase the remnents of your featherbed
Mood: New York is crying that I'm leaving, hence the rain

You heard it here first, I'm breaking up with the news. It's been over for a long time.

Like many people, I feel in love with the news on September 11, 2001. Prior to this relationship I'd flirted with it in the past, but never with any seriousness. As a political science student I liked to keep up on the workings of the world, and as a film major I liked thinking about the role of TV and news in our society. I'd grown up with local news as an ugly necessity for traffic reports and school closings. Headline News and CNN were minor distractions, filling the screen time between my other loves--movies, music, sports.

Then I got sucked into my relationship with the news. Suddenly I had to be around the news, in fact I couldn't get away if I tried. Networks went commercial free, CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, and C-Span all filled my life--at work, at home, in any place you went with a televison. Even non-news stations got guest anchors or piggybacked on network coverage. And it was addictive. Like any love, the honeymoon period was all highs--the news was giving me important information. Everything I needed. The news was always there for me.

Like most new loves, all the attention became stifling. One sided--no room for dissent or discussion. No nights out with the girls. It was a demanding significant other, one that demanded the attention, and followed you wherever you went. A jealous lover, jealous of time spent in a movie, at dinner, or outside without an outlet.

During the first break-up, where we let each other down gently. I knew that news was going downhill fast and I was unable to continue in the destructive relationship. I needed joy with my dire warnings, and expanded horizons, and the ability to see more to a story. I left the news to other people, who were still in love. I figured we could still be friends. See each other occasionally.

For a while, I thought that the news might be crawling out of it's hole of depression--no longer only fixated on all things evil and the emminent demise of life as I know it. Then Katrina sacked the Gulf Coast and the news went right back into the downward spiral I'd been happily avoiding. Not that I didn't want to know what was going on, but I didn't need 24-hour coverage of wind, or looters, or empty threats. I just wanted the facts, the solutions, the resolutions. How I could help, what this meant. Not hours and hours of newscasters mumbling and dredging up anyone who would talk to them in order to fill the screen. And I realized that the changes in the news were irrevokable--something had changed in it and I didn't like the new news. Too flashy, too melodramatic, too uninformative. I realize now that I merely had a love affair with the news.

Plus, I have a new love. We've been friends since 1996, and started our relationship about 5 years ago. I realize now that we've been in love since November 2000, and I was simply misguided in my attraction to the news, briefly tempted by the attention. But it's official, seeing the news again after so long reinforced my belief that what I have now is true love, and that it will last. I admit it here first, though if you know me you probably already suspected.

I'm in love with The Daily Show.

Background Noise: American Woman (Guess Who version)
Random Thought: Packing Sucks
Mood: exhausted. see above

Old news, I know. Kate Moss is on coke, ergo she is being bumped from a bunch of her labels. H&M, Chanel, and Burberry have all broken with her. H Stern, Christian Dior, and Roberto Cavalli are questionable renewals. Huh.

Okay, I realize that having a coke whore for a spokesperson is a little sketchy. And possibly not the kind of persona I associate with H&M. Though, to be fair, she is modeling the Stella McCartney line for them, and I kinda feel that Stella might in fact have done a little of the white powder in her day. And I pretty much expect that at least half of the Cavalli and Dior consumers induldge in nose candy of the narcotical variety.

What gets me is the assumption that consumers really connect the face to the product. Kate Moss's position in the clothes doesn't make me want them. Either I think I like it or I don't. The fact that she's the one strutting down the runway in them isn't a factor. I can't think of anyone I know who bases their purchasing decisions on the 'face' of a product. Moss doing coke doesn't make me think less of them. Does anyone honestly buy into the idea that spokespeople present a lifestyle we are supposed to aspire to? They're just pretty bodies to drape expensive material on.

And here's my real question. Is anybody truly suprised that Kate Moss does coke? I'm not. The tabloid coverage and subsequent discussion about the reports act as if the Queen Mum was photographed shooting heroin in an airport bathroom. Really, people, Kate Moss with a drug problem is neither shocking or suprising. Let's move on.

Background Noise: Oklahoma v. Texas
Random Thought: I can watch Central Michigan on ESPN Classic (they're playing Army), but not the Michigan/Minnesota game? Pffht.
Mood: Satelited

Okay, so that belated list of films to see and miss. In order, from worst to best...

See Into the Blue if all you want to do is ogle Paul Walker or Jessica Alba half-naked and washed in golden tan. The story is jaded, the suspense non-existant and the twists unbelievable. I'll give Josh Brolin props for being believable as a smarmy treasure hunter. And Paul Walker gets a gold star for being so damn hot. Yup, that's about it from the Bahamian waters.

What is it about Julianne Moore that makes casting directors and her agent say "Yes, you are the perfect put-upon Eisenhower-era housewife. Lets give you circle skirts and an oppresive life, and allow your talent to exhude fragility and latent rebellion suck the audience into this narrow role of housewife. They'll eat it up." Which works when she's suprising no ones as much as herself with an interracial affair in Far From Heaven, or tiredly accepting her fate as the living in The Hours. What Prizewinner of Defience, Ohio fails to do is make her situation ever seem that dire. It's all pastel frosting over what is supposed to be a haggard existence that comes off looking like The Greatest Generation's Little House on the Prarie. Aww shucks, Fathers, and Oh, Mother, I just wanted what was bests intersispersed with bouncy jingles and impossibly cheery and stalwart children. Woody Harrelsonm, miscast in the role that he plays as a china in a bull shop without a purpose, is always the villian as the alchoholic husband whose lack of responsibility is supposed to be the catalyst for the family's hard times and the mother's state of defiance. She never reaches it. What could have been heartbreaking was bland and what could have beenone woman's stand against her situation was really her putting a bandaid on skinned knee.

Separate Lies also suffers from a miscasting--that of Rupert Everett as Emily Watson's devil-may care aristocratic lover. Their love is meant to jumpstart an whole laundry list of intrigue and betrayal but he never comes across as the kind of man you'd risk it all for. He is too smooth, too lacksidaisical and wimpy. I think the intensity of Clive Owen or the presence of Ralph Fiennes would have made her stray from husband Tom Wilkenson more believable. That said, the film was full of raw emotion on the part of Emily Watson and a supurb performance by Wilkenson. The two together make what is a very British situation play for everyone--you truly think that they would go through all that they do, riding the ebb and flow of loving someone who loves someone else and loving them just the same. See it if you get a chance, or catch it on HBO at some point.

Let me just point out that in the past week I've had two NYU-educated people ask me "Isn't that a musical" in response to my adoration of Oliver Twist. People, please. Perhaps you've heard of Charles Dickens? He wrote a little. And even if you've never read the book, you should at least know who the Artful Dodger is. Here's my challenge. If you've read the book, see the movie because the characters are fabulous and the story is tight. You'll feel for Ben Kingsley's Fagin and I dare you to not want to take Harry Eden's Dodger home with you. If you've never read the book, see the movie because you'll get the heart of the story in a succinct and beautiful way. Polanski does with a lengthy classic what Mira Nair could not do with Vanity Fair--make it accessible and complete. Obviously, it has to make cuts somewhere, but you never feel gipped for what isn't there.

The basis for Shopgirl is a novella by Steve Martin, and the movie never tries to embellish what isn't there or muddle up emotions that are messy enough in their honesty. It is a lyrical flow of relationship milestones, without all the extraneous scenes that too many movies insert for time filler and gratuitous sex/awkwadness/cool locations. There is only the journey through love and to love, quirky in a real way and completely unencumbered. The story unfolds like the movements to a symphony--beautiful alone but compete together. See this movie to be reminded that relationships are all disfunctional in their own way, that we don't need contrived plot devices to them up--we do just fine with our daily existance.

If the messiness of life is your thing, you should love Elizabethtown, ciritcs be damned. Yes, it's uneven. Yes, it's kinda weird to hook up with a filght attendant you've known for a few days while processing your father's death. And yes, the family is full of odd characters of small town effusiveness and relative nerousis. And isn't that the way life is? Especially surrounding something as monumental as death. Emotions run high, you lose focus, and everything seems to gel into chaos theory. Nobody's life unfolds in a perfect story arc--and thank you Cameron Crowe for giving Orlando Bloom's Drew a meandering path of grief and realization. No cliched epiphanies. No neatly tied resolutions. Just life as it comes and how you learn to take in stride when you have to. Please disregard the expectations of another Almost Famous, or this year's Garden State. Just let Elizabethtown be itself. You'll like it there.

In Her Shoes does what few "chickflick" movies manage--human nature. There are no villians or damsels in distress. No white knights and no righteousness. Just people being people. It's basis is the love and hate you can only feel for your family, and how sometimes you only know them through your own-hued glasses. Understanding is a long road, and love is something that exists even when you wish it wouldn't. Take your sister, your best friend, your mother, and then tell then to all do the same. It would have been too Hollywood to make the plain sister the underdog heroine of the piece, and give the pretty one a personality of shallow materialism. But that isn't how the book read and that's not how the movie portrays them. (I even liked Camerone Diaz in a movie for the first time, ever.) It is simply circumstance and choice, things you struggle with all your life. And its about how there is always a place for those people in your life who make you whole--even when time and distance have torn you asunder. Laugh, cry, be thankful for those who make your life full no matter what.

Now, run, don't walk to Good Night, and Good Luck. It's a mere hour and a half and may well be the best way you've spent 90 minutes all year. It chronicles a few months in the mid 50s when a few people at CBS set to go against Sen. Joseph McCarthy and HUAC and the tactics they were using in the hunt for Reds (those evil commies, always popping up to ruin things ). Everyone in this film is a study in resolve and understatement. They do what they have to, what they believe is right, without ever coming across as preachy. And it never succumbs to blatant parallelism to our current political situation. It would have been so easy to slip in a few monologues about future generations, an impassioned speech about how things have to be set right as an example. But they avoid being so trite and direct. The movie isn't even really about denouncing McCarthy, it is about the condemnation of his methods. It's about six brave individuals who stood up and said that there must be decency if we are to achieve justice. Who stood up to everything they knew and took a chance because they believed that Americans had a right to know what was going on--the process, not just the beribboned result. It's moving to see people stand up for something so controversial and to do it with such intelligence and logic. Now, go. Go now.

Serenity, Now. No, that was an order. Get up and go. One of my top ten movies of the year. Possibly the best sci0fi movie I've ever seen. In the company of Empire Stikes Back and the origional Matrix. Even if you never watched Firefly, see this movie. You don't need any background to understand the characters or the situation they're in. It's a futuristic world you can believe is on the horizon and a government that doesn't seem so farfetched in its duplicity. Sure, they're cowboys in a flying ship. But it takes no stretch of hte imaginaiton to understand the situation they have fallen into. And you really feel for the passengers aboard Serenity. Joss Wedon's humor is in full force, the kind of laugh in the face of an apocolypse that made Buffy so great, but without the pressure of creating a Big Bad every week to muck it up. It also assumes that the audience has some modicrum of intelligence, so there are no long-winded explainations of the technology, the politial climate, or circumstances that brought them all together. You'll pick up on the nuances of this future, and the unique phrases and jargon are just there, as much a part of their life as space travel. No exposition needed. You'll get it. More so because it seems so natural. Much of the crew is relegated to a more supporting role in the movie than the show, but when you've only got 2 hours, sacrifices must be made. And they aren't flat, just undiscovered. Ripe for a sequel, I say. Just go, root for Mal to do the right thing and for the disatvantaged to find refuge.

Now, get. There are movies to be seen.

Background Noise: Gilmore Girls, An Affair To Remember
Random Thought: A Russian theme, I like that
Mood: ahhh

This is just proof that when you run a red light and hit a car of old ladies, the PTBs are taking care of things. Should you commit such an act, not only will their vengence be rained upon you as witnessed here, but you will also be subjected to millions of listeners and downloaders laughing at you thanks to a well timed phone conversation by a passerby. Listen here.

Background Noise: Everyday Italian
Random Thought: Kittens grow so fast!
Mood: I'm moving!

Okay, so photos are giving me a headache, but click on the little boxes where the pics should be to see the kittens!

Belated photo evidence of the kittens we rescued. None of the actual event, but this is the grate they were 3 feet under, with the little hole by where the pipes go in that we brought them out of.




Here are Fuser (grey looking down), Zeppelin (grey looking at you),
Veruca (orange facing away), and Virgil (orange facing forward)


and close ups of Zeppelin and Veruca.


And Zeppelin, love at first sight.

Background Noise: Everyday Italian
Random Thought: Packing blows
Mood: Huzzah!

So, it's been a while since I let my random thoughts hit the page. I've been a little busy, and preoccupied. I was all set last week to give Barb's movie review, then things happend and every time I sat down to blog about it, something new was in the works and I told myself that I would get it down when the next piece was resolved. Then the next, and the one after that, escalating until it's been about a week and a half. So I postpone the latest installment of What To See to bring you this late breaking news...

I'm moving to Chicago. In a week.


(process)

(let it sink in)

(okay)

Right. Okay, technically I'm interiming in Michigan, where I'll stash my belongings and start job hunting in the Windy City. Once I get a job, I'll be relocating to Atrium Village. The one bedroom unit that is 3 times the size of my current apartment for the same price but with a balcony, dishwasher, closet space, parking space, elevator, doorman, pool, tennis courts, included water, gas, heat and A/C. Not to mention within a 10 block radius of 3 theatres, 2 bookstores, a kick-ass grocery store, bars, restraunts, trains, shops and parks.

In case you were wondering, I went out last Thursday and Friday on little notice to interview with a company that I'd spoken to here in NYC. It was a marketing company with open positions in Chicago that I'd rather gouge my eyes out than work for, but helped solidify that what I need is a change and that I adore Chicago.

New York will always be my true love, but like any good loe story we have to have our seemingly insurmountable obstacle get in our way first. Ours happens to be the mounting frustration I feel at being so close to everything wonderful and unable to touch it. I hate living so far away from everything I like to do--theatre, movies, museums, good food, the park, etc. I also hold a strong disregard for many of the things in the areas that I can afford to live in here--bodegas, tiny grocery stores with crummy produce and cheese sections, the L train, no diner, hard to find NYT, lack of entertainment. Basically, I hate having to tack on an hour after anything I do to incorporate travel time. In Chicago I'll be able to hit a movie then be home after a 15 min. walk. Go to the bookstore and spend more time browsing than I do getting there and back. Knowing that I'll be able to grab a Times even if I'm not there by 10 am becaus they'll stock more than four copies. Plus, it has some of that mid-west charm that I miss here in the city where people proclaim "you're so nice" as if I'm a rare breed of creature they've yet had the chance to meet. Cleaner, cheaper, closer to home. I'll see my parents for Thanksgiving for the first time since 1998. Make it back for the family golf outing without having to sacrifice my 4th of July trip to the lake. Live in an area that undertands and appreciates college football, hockey and the idea that umbrellas in the snow is just plain weird.

So, there it is, I'll be proxying from the central time zone soon. More updates later, I have to pack a little before my going away party tonight.

Ta ta.