Toil, sweat, and tears

It sucks to be repeated told you are overqualified for jobs. But on the upside ... at least they call to tell you? Um.

To console myself, I've begun a cycle of running to the beach, experimenting with various recipes and other cooking-related phenomena, and vegging out. I couldn't get into Veronica Mars after 8 episodes, so I've started The Wire. However, the neffy makes it hard to watch DVDs because he's learned how to turn the TV and DVD player on and off.

I have, however, managed to get some solid vegging done during his naps or when he and the rest of the fam are at church. . .

I'd seen the last hour of Blood Diamond several times, but I finally watched the film in its entirety. And I liked it. To be fair, though, the fact that it addressed the issues of both conflict diamonds and child soldiers got it on my good side immediately. Unfortunately, that's also the downside: the movie was more a vehicle. Leo's romance with Jennifer Connelly was a little out of place, and the story could have worked without it as well as her, and possibly him. (But, as La Otra Hermana pointed out in one of her few political commentaries that I agree with, tales about "Africa" are generally only understood by "the West" through a white experience there.) Also, I didn't quite buy Leo's mercenary -- though well-acted, the character's sudden transition from arms- and diamond-smuggler to noble humanitarian wasn't that smooth or believable.

But in all, I really liked the film. It had a compelling story with, for the most part, interesting characters. It got preachy at times, but then I guess it had to.

Sin City was different. For half the movie, I was really disturbed. For the other half, I was fascinated by the graphic-novel adaptation style and narration. In a few interlocking stories about serial killers, prostitutes, mobsters, corrupt cops and politicians, some of the plot twists were predictable; some induced cringes, as crime tales can do.

Overall, it was well done. The visuals alone were creative: comic-style animation based on real footage, drawn in black and white with only certain key colors to contrast.

I'm a sucker for narrative form that is somewhat disjointed and often incomplete, and that's part of the reason the movie fascinated me. The stories weren't necessarily that unique, but every level of presentation was.

Post-exam boredom

There's nothing to do but sit around and wait now. Really, all I've been doing is job searching, jogging around West Seattle, trying to cook different foods, and meeting up with friends and family.

Oh, and vegging out. As usual.

When I first saw previews for Nacho Libre a long time ago, I was not interested in watching it. Then Mi Hermana called to say that her hubby the Latino Studies Ph.d candidate was watching a bunch of old Mexican films starring a well-known wrestler, and that they were going to watch Nacho Libre because it parodied many of the old movies.

So of course I put it in my Netflix queue.

Clearly, I did not get the parodic references. But it was a little obvious that the whole movie was, in fact, a parody of something -- most of the scenes were way too random. (Mi Hermana told me later which scenes she remembered from the original films.) (Also, how sad is it that I recognized the little weird kid from Hannah Montana?)

At any rate, Jack Black plays a Mexican priest who masquerades as a wrestler. He's the cook at the parish orphanage, and has a crush on a nun. His wild-man sidekick makes fun of him for being fat, and he makes fun of his sidekick for believing in science. Suffice to say, I laughed my ass off -- something I was not expecting to do at all!

Book Three in the Artemis Fowl children's series didn't take that long to read. A former colleague gave me the first book as a going-away present, and I'm now hooked. Not in a Harry Potter way, but still vested in the series in ways that are possibly unhealthy for an adult.

The Eternity Code follows our teenage criminal mastermind as he attempts one last scheme: to blackmail a multimillionaire using fairy technology. Naturally, the dwarves and trolls and gnomes and fairies and centaurs don't like this, and send a retrieval team to the human world.

I like this book the best so far, perhaps because the two underlying themes are that people can change and that aging and growing up are not necessarily bad, scary things. Artemis has been slowly growing a conscience along with friends as the series progresses, and in this installment his long-lost father renounces the family business of evildoing and pledges to do nothing but good. Meanwhile, the Fowl bodyguard deals with having to retire early and pass the torch on to a hot-headed successor.

Ah, summer! Time to come up with a more extensive reading list...

Pre-exam denial

The comprehensive exams have been written, fretted over, and emailed ... but before they even started, the procrastination continued.

Perhaps because of the impending four-day intensive exam (though our department admin assistant was kind and emailed them a day early), I felt little connection to the 18-year-old protagonists in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

I'm not the biggest fan of the graduation genre to begin with, whether it's high school or college. I just can't relate. Loved the friends I made at all the schools I've attended, but I still couldn't wait to get the hell out and get on with life.

At any rate, Nick and Norah stars Michael Cera, who doesn't seem to be able to leave his Arrested Development typecasting, which fits well with this high school breakup tale about a music geek who can't get over his ex until he meets this really cool chick who also likes the same type of music he does.

It's cuter than that, actually. As the graduation genre goes, it was slightly more creative in that it revolved all the drama around the indy band scene. (Also, positive inclusion of Asian-Americans and gays!) I just had a hard time relating to all the underage drinking and clubbing and friends-with-benefits and band-chasing --some of us barely (or never) had that experience in college, let alone high school. And the cynic in me kept thinking the teenage lovebugs wouldn't last in their planned long-distance relationship, even if they both go off to universities in New England.

In fact, I spent most of the film shaking my cane at the TV screen.

Oh, do I sound jaded? If so ...

Quantum of Solace -- pure and excellent eye candy! As Bond films go, it was definitely a disappointment after Daniel Craig's debut as 007 in Casino Royale. (But honestly, how do you beat that? It was amazing.) Still, this second Craig-as-Bond film was decent. It tried to follow up on the whole "explaining Bond's psyche" theme, but I thought that was unnecessary.

Cool gadgets and flashy computer technology, good chase scenes and exciting fight sequences. What more is needed to take one's mind off of studying?

Triple X

The neffy has been over a lot. He claps for himself now, when he accomplishes something new ... like dragging a kitchen chair to the fridge and climbing on it just to grab the magnets we deliberately placed out of his reach.

Following his innocent and youthful example, I've been similarly celebrating ... or rather, dragging out the celebrating in order to avoid studying statistics. Birthday drinks, brunches, and happy hours have also given me good excuses not to study for the upcoming Master's-qualifying exams. I've officially been a thirtysomething for over a week now, and love it!

In other news, because La Madre used all her vacation time to visit the new neffy in Michigan and the soon-to-arrive new niece, I skipped my graduation ceremony.

So I was a little shocked and disturbed to hear on the local Seattle news that, had I walked, I would not have been allowed to shake my dean's hand as is the tradition because of H1N1 paranoia.

Guess the mumps scare the week I left disappeared rather quickly!

Domestic policies

La Madre, for some strange reason, wanted to watch At First Sight when it was on TV a few nights ago. It reminded me of Charlie, an old film based on the short story "Flowers for Algernon." The plot of those stories: a mentally retarded man undergoes experimental treatment that suddenly makes him a genius. He learns how to navigate in his new world, and attempts to convey what it was like in his old one. Then the treatment reverses, and he has to return to his former self. We read the short story in 7th grade and had to watch the movie. We compared. We contrasted.

Here, of course, it's blindness that is the focus, but the plot is essentially the same: Val Kilmer is a blind man who falls for Mira Sorvino, who convinces him to undergo experimental surgery to make him see. He finds it difficult to cope with the changes in worldview (no pun intended). Then the effects of the surgery diminish, and he becomes blind again. Apparently it is based on a true story as well as a book by Sir Oliver Sacks.

I was underwhelmed.

At any rate, it was kind of predictable, and even La Madre called it boring. (This from the woman who will voluntarily watch Doctor Zhivago in its entirety.) Afterwards, we watched a Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV movie about a Polish woman (played Anna Paquin) who rescued 2500 Jewish children from the Nazis.

Whereupon I realized that if this was at all indicative of the next two weeks of my life, I would need several good stiff drinks.

In between writing cover letters, reminding the neffy why we don't hit auntie, jogging to the beach, karaoke-ing, and studying for the upcoming qualifying exams, I managed to watch The Hebrew Hammer.

In a nutshell: the Hammer is a Jewish superhero out to save Hanukkah from Santa's evil son, who wants to abolish the elves' labor laws and the North Pole's highly tolerant holiday attitude in favor of an anti-semitic, pro-Aryan, Christmas-only season. The Hammer enlists the help of the Kwanzaa Liberation Front to save the holiday season.

Clearly, it is a Comedy Central movie. Good for a laugh while doing crunches! But I liked it and its general (if undeniably satirical) spirit of inclusion and self-parody.

Also, who knew Adam Goldberg worked out? Just sayin' ... there's a scene where he's frolicking around in boxer briefs, for which I stopped doing post-jogging stretches in order to watch uninterrupted.

No song unsung

IknowIknowIknow, this is probably overkill because I've posted this to listservs and Facebook, but watching this video of a Britain's Got Talent contestant is providing me with a whoooole lotta procrastination inspiration as I churn out my last two papers.

Plus, I sing the song at karaoke every now and then. :-)

And I listened to the Les Mis soundtrack nonstop when writing papers during ye olde undergrad years.

With all the frills upon it

Mi Hermana and I both have burned champurrado (Mexican hot chocolate that is also commercially available in Swiss Miss-like packets). So it was nothing short of an Easter miracle that the two of us managed to prepare a damn good Mexican/Filipino/Anglo Easter brunch:

From top, clockwise: nopales (cactus) con juevos y tomates, lumpia (Filipino egg roll), peas and asparagus (steamed with the ham), jamón, and fruit salad with mint and orange juice dressing. I forgot to put the potatoes on my plate, but Mi Hermana made them, and Mi Cuñado y su madre said they were good.

All washed down with mimosas!

Accidental analogies

In a great unfortunate juxtaposition that vegging out sometimes brings, while packing for Ann Arbor last week, I watched the episode of 30 Rock where Alec Baldwin applies Harry and the Hendersons to everybody's life ... right before watching Mrs. Brown.

I barely recognized Billy Connolly or Gerard Butler, though that was possibly the point. Dame Judi Dench was, of course and as always, superb. Her reclusive Queen Victoria was a poignant portrait of a widow latching on to someone (Connolly's Brown) as a comforting tie to her late husband.

More unexplained, however, was that of Mr. Brown -- aside from a general "God save the Queen" reasoning, viewers don't really get a sense of why the heck he's such a devoted servant and subject.

It was awful, not being able to get Harry and the Hendersons out of my head. I saw the whole thing through the lens of taking a creature out of its element: Brown is just a wild Scot who belongs in the Highlands, where he learned plain talk and loyalty and to never doubt his instincts. To illustrate this, there's a scene where Brown and his brother run naked into the freezing ocean, another where he alone notices (and charges at) a potential assassin, several where he shows how dutiful he is by not gossiping with or like all the other servants, and many more where he helps the queen get out of her state of mourning just by treatin' her like other folk and makin' her have some real no-frills fun. Unlike Harry, Brown doesn't get to go home after showing the aristos how enjoyable life can be if you're unpretentious and direct; (spoiler alert!) he dies in captivity.

Gaaaaaack! Damn 30 Rock! I haven't even seen Harry and the Hendersons in decades!

Thankfully, I had the next book in my addictive medieval murder series to erase Alec Baldwin's Harry lectures from my mind.

To Wear the White Cloak brought the LeVendeur family back home to Paris, amidst more antisemitic riots and crusading knights. Unlike the previous books, this one had a comedic ring to it: bumbling clergy employ bumbling country servants to spy on our heroine and her family, who are entertaining bumbling country gentry and pretentious merchant socialites alike. It was one of the biggest comedies of error I've seen in a mystery series. Enjoyable, of course -- just a marked contrast to the tone of the first books.

The flight to Ann Arbor was uneventful, and the Pingüinita has been taking up most of my time. The new neffy is cute as all heck, and I need to figure out a nickname for him. He's a rather chill baby; all he does is sleep. The Pingüinita has been a diva ever since birth; and now that she's both getting her toddler molars and encountering a baby rival for adult attention, she's determined to command even more presence.

So far, we've been to playgroup, a toddler dance party at the community center, and several A2 parks and playgrounds. What strikes me most since I saw her last (over Thanksgiving) is how much she repeats sounds and can talk. The one that never ceases to crack me up: "eyes" are "ass" (or, more accurately, "assssss.")

Freedom and Unity!

(The motto for the state of Vermont, where the legislature just overrode the Governor's veto on a marriage rights bill..)

The Green Mountain State is now the first to give gay and lesbian couples marriage rights via the legislature rather than the judiciary.

From the Burlington Free Press:

Vermont legislature overrides veto
MONTPELIER — Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote. . . . The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law. . . . It’s now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain

(That's the state motto of Iowa...)

Iowa Supreme Court says marriage ban unconstitutional (NYT)
It was unanimous! Woot.

Reading the opinion while packing for Michigan, and I can't stop smiling.

A bump on the head

Oh yes, the veg-out continues. I've figured out I'm more productive if I alternate activities: Hulu, sort through Census data, Netflix, read one scholarly article, meet up with friends, research state policies, Boggle online, work on paper outline, Scrabble online, read about survey methods, meet up with friends, etc. . . .

I realize that The Squid and the Whale got rave reviews, but I found it boring. The portrait itself was believable and tragic -- a couple divorces, and their kids become part of the battle terrain as well as side-takers on it. All the snide, under-the-breath comments that people make about family members or exes were very real and depicted very succinctly. But the movie was just that: people being cruel to each other. There was no before or after, and very little sense of why else it was tragic.

We never saw the family when it was supposedly happy, so I didn't find myself caring all that much when it became fractured. Jeff Daniels (though he looked uncannily like my father, with his beard) was great as the arrogant literature professor; but then again he was pretty arrogant, so I found it hard to empathize. Likewise with the eldest son, who is only just learning to navigate a relationship. Laura Linney was okay as an up-and-coming writer whose looming success threatens the ego of her famous ex-husband. But the youngest son was the only one of the family that evoked any sympathy from me: in trying to be fair to all of his loved ones, he ends up hiding his own suffering and acting out in various self-destructive ways.

Also, I'm kind of not a fan of films where the title has to be explained in a monologue towards the end of the film itself. It reads like a bad short story assigned for a high school class. ("In the story, what does the squid represent? The whale?") Most of the time, I think subtly is the best approach. It's better if viewers aren't smacked on the head with it.

Last weekend, Xtina found out that someone she knew was in Northeastern's production of The Vagina Monologues, and we managed to book it across Boston in a record 45 minutes to buy tickets and get seats. It's always a good show, and I hadn't seen it in a few years. It's also one of those shows that I think is best seen as a college or community theatre production (the last time I saw it was an all-Asian American cast). Somehow the subject matter, both raising awareness about violence against women and celebrating female sexuality, are more poignant and personal that way.

A coworker suggested Eat Drink Man Woman. I hadn't realized it's the same plot as Tortilla Soup (also in my queue): widower chef with three daughters deals with their problems as well as his own aging and loneliness. I got SO HUNGRY watching the endless scenes of Chinese food being prepared and served and eaten. The story itself was generally predictable but cute; it was obvious which men, if any, the sisters would marry or hook up with. And my coworker gave away who the father ends up remarrying, so that wasn't a surprise either. Still, it was cute. And unlike Squid, the food metaphors didn't have to be explained.

Lastly, Living in Oblivion. Films about the film industry always seem like inside jokes I'm not quite allowed to get. But this one worked! Steve Buscemi is an indy film director trying to make a movie on a shoestring budget. He is perpetually thwarted by vain or frustrated actors and the bizarre mishaps that arise from a cheap set.

I liked the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream sequences. It lent another layer of dissection to the notion that the film industry is a "dream factory" where both our fantasies and fears are embodied.

And again, it didn' t smack the viewer over the head with anything.

Brave old worlds

In the ongoing state of denial about the economy and student debt, I figured a good "first" would be going to see a type of show I've never seen before, while supporting a friend. So I went to see one of The Common Man's old roomies in a figure skating exhibition. It featured all skill levels, and was intergenerational, free, and local. Plus I got to unabashedly sing along to the rockin' numbers during some of the routines. (It's MIT, I didn't look weird or socially awkward or out of place at all...)

Then, because Netflix Online Viewing is also free, I watched St. Elmo's Fire.
I tend to hate high school graduation coming-of-age tales, so I appreciated the fact that St. Elmo's Fire was not a teenybopper flick. And though it overly glorified "college days" to the point of extreme annoyance, overall I thought it did a good job of covering the emotional transition out of the sheltered, privileged life on a small liberal arts campus (or university, in this case, since the characters are all recent Georgetown alumni).

Problem was, I had problems sympathizing with the characters' quarterlife crises and coping with the "real world". Maybe nine years out it's just hard to relate!

The other fascinating thing was watching it twenty years later, when women have made significant (though as yet incomplete) strides in terms of careers and financial independence. The main struggles of the female characters involve being valued for choosing to work and not get married. And there were relatively positive references to gays and being gay! For the mid-80s, I think both of those issues were big. Also, the movie scored points for having an open ending: normally it irritates me if there's no resolution, but I make exceptions for vaguely existential situations where the uncertainties of life are the resolution, not the particular scenarios of the film.

Switching saints . . . The Difficult Saint was Book Six of Sharan Newman's medieval mystery series to which I've become addicted. After returning from Scotland, our feisty, intelligent twelfth-century heroine travels to what would be present-day Germany, to prove her sister innocent of murder charges.

In Book Five, Newman shocked her readers (okay fine, just me) with a horribly violent ending. In Book Six, she kills off one sympathetic character and has yet another horrible thing happen to another main one. She's also been slowly building up a scene for violent (and historical) anti-semitic riots, and in the sixth book it all finally explodes. In fair Trier, where we lay our scene. Between anti-semitic mobs, warring German barons, and scheming Church officials, there's a murder mystery to be solved.

Mysteries are always good escapist tools for avoiding digging through Census statistics! As are fairy tales, quite literally...

I read The Ordinary Princess back in middle school when I read all of M.M. Kaye's books. (This is her one children's story; the rest are murder mysteries or historical fiction.) Twenty years later, I still love it. It's a cute, short tale about a princess who is cursed by her fairy godmother to be "ordinary", and so goes largely unnoticed by her kingdom and potential suitors. She is, however, free to be herself.

It's no secret that I typically despise fairy tales because of their gender dynamics. This book isn't at all a feminist retelling; indeed, it does nothing to challenge either the classist or heteronormative assumptions about fairy tales, princesses, or marriage in general. But it's cute. Like the movie I started the weekend with, it had slightly daring ideas for its time.

Speaking of the times ... Census data are calling.

Systems analysis

A friend posted this (where else?) on Facebook. As I'm starting to dig through all the research for my final final final graduate paper ever (WOOT), which focuses on various economic disparities related to digital access, I found it hilarious.

(pictures for sad children -- more here)

¡Fiesta Trio!

Neffy #2 arrived on Tuesday! He was 7 lbs, 9 oz and 20" long.

(Mi Hermana's C section itself went well, but she reacted badly to the morphine, apparently... and the new neffy had to spend his first few hours in the ICU. They're both fine now, and will leave the hospital tomorrow.)

As if the Pingüinita didn't already look like Dora the Explorer (as well as a penguin), now she has a baby brother to complete the cartoon portrait!

Remotely controlled

I spent the last week of spring break taking recuperative, narcotic-induced naps; in between, I sorted through La Madre's very eclectic DVD collection.

The Italian was a Russian film, a cute but rather sad tale about an orphan who discovers his birth mother is alive and runs away from his orphanage to find her. He is then chased by the orphanage directors and adoption agency representatives, who all want to make a lot of money by adopting him off to an Italian couple. Hence the title.

It probably sounds like a comedy. It is not. That's all I have to say about that. But it's cute, in its own depressing sort of way.

Then, because I knew not what I did and can probably legitimately blame it on the drugs, I watched Evan Almighty. To further unjustify my actions, I thought it was Bruce Almighty. (Took me fifteen minutes before realizing they were two totally different movies, though Evan is apparently the sequel to Bruce.)

It was cute. Ridiculous, but cute. It would totally have made Sunday School fun twenty years ago (also, I have no doubt it is being shown in various houses of worship nationwide). Steve Carell is a modern Noah, a newly elected Congressman (coded as Republican) who is told by God (who else but Morgan Freeman?) to build an ark for a coming flood. His family and fellow politicians laugh at him, of course, and in typical Carell fashion there are bizarre antics. But the flood is actually (spoiler alert!) the result of greedy, irresponsible corporate actions condoned by greedy, irresponsible Washington Beltway insiders.

I liked the environmental stewardship message; I was vaguely uncomfortable with the message about religion and government overlapping so comfortably, especially at God's behest. Also, the flood scenes with no significant damage to DC buildings or human life were a little unbelievable. It's all in good fun, though. Great movie for kids!

The Pursuit of Happyness was painful to watch. Whatever true story it was based on is, of course, an amazing one. But the way it translated to the screen made it seem as if it could be everyone's story, too.

Will Smith plays a broke, struggling salesman who perseveres and by the sweat of his brow joins the ranks of the uber-successful. He starts out in dire straits as it is, then keeps shooting for a competitive internship at a prestigious investment firm, for a 1-in-20 chance of landing a high-paid position. Like Job, every bad thing imaginable happens to him along the way, but he never loses sight of his goal. His wife leaves, his landlord throws him out, he becomes homeless, his kid's child care provider turns out to be no good, he loses a shoe in one scene ... Complete with footage of Reagan speeches, the film also juxtaposes lines outside homeless shelters with the luxurious of investment bankers. Look! Will Smith works hard and makes it -- everybody else should, too! Ignore all the structural and moral problems with an economic and social policy based only on notions of complete self-reliance! This story can be the rule, not the exception!

It was enough to inspire me to wean myself from the highly addictive drug regimen so I could go outside and play and see peeps before I left. All I had to do was pull myself up by...

A person's a person, no matter how small

Lesson learned the hard way #1763: hyperventilation is a scary, scary thing, especially when your hands and face go stiff and numb, and even if you can hear the fire department medics' sirens coming five blocks away from the very popular neighborhood farmers' market where you are having a very public anxiety attack.

Now heavily sedated after a trip to the ER, I am left with nothing to do but sleep and watch DVDs, get through a stack of books, and be a human jungle gym for the neffy.

Outpassage was very, very, very bad sci-fi. The only reason I finished reading it was because I held out hope it would get better. It didn't. It was so bad, I don't want to grant it any legitimacy by summarizing it. The idiot plot involving aliens as humans' religious salvation and a social revolution with no defined goals. Arrrgh. Anyways....

After much hype, The Queen was a bit of a disappointment. It was certainly good, and Helen Mirren was brilliant in her portrayal of the Queen in the week immediately following the death of Princess Diana. Michael Sheen was equally as good as the newly-elected Tony Blair (though I couldn't stop thinking of The Daily Show interview where Jon Stewart slammed the real Blair for supporting Bush in the Iraq war). James Cromwell was also a natural double for Prince Philip.

The film focused more on the role of the monarchy in modern Britain and the interplay between Blair and the Queen. Whether or not any of the conversations or relationships depicted in the film were real or accurate is left to the imagination and possibly state secrecy. As with many movies made about events during its audience's lifetime, I kept thinking "I remember that!" and it was a little weird having cinematic liberties intrude into my own memories. And the metaphor of the stag the Queen keeps encountering in the Highlands is a tad obvious. But overall, the movie is good.

From one royal family to another, Curse of the Golden Flower was a fictitious story about a scandalous coup inside the Royal Palace, involving a bizzare, almost Hamlet-esque, uh, fall of the house of Usher. If I may mix my literary references. It is kind of a disturbing tale of glorified domestic violence: Emperor and Empress plot against each other, three princes are rivals for the throne, and there are all kinds of unknown incestuous situations happening behind the veiled rooms of the Forbidden City.

The storyline isn't all that compelling. But like other Zhang Yimou films, this one had all the wonderfully vivid colors and visual contrasts, as well as the neat martial arts choreography and battle sequences. The golds, reds, blacks, greens, and blues were magnificent.

There was also a lot of cleavage in the ladies' costumes (I do not remember this from Hero or House of Flying Daggers... but it made the scenes at court somehow more distracting and reminiscent more of 18th-century France.)

Happier fare was very much needed after that bloodbath.

Horton Hears a Who used to be one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books.
Obviously, the 80-minute cartoon added greatly to a twenty-page book (there was also a weird anime breakdown midway through the film). I don't recall many of the specific details, but some of the subplots didn't ring a bell, though they fit in with the theme that "Everybody counts." Horton, our favorite elephant jungle resident, hears the small village of Who on a tiny clover plant, and goes to great lengths to get the rest of the jungle to believe him and not destroy the ecosystem -- I mean, the tiny world that exists.

Also, all of Whoville crying "We're here" to get Horton's cohorts to realize they exist couldn't help but be completed with "We're queer!" I had to do it, it was irresistible.

Qualifying exams? What qualifying exams?

My, my, how can I resist you?

Why did nobody tell me Colin Firth was in Mamma Mia!???!!! I had a great shock finding it in La Madre's pile of DVDs, right next to Passion of the Christ and Babe: Pig in the City.

(Come to think of it, when I mentioned karaoke last summer, she might have mentioned going to see the movie with some coworkers.... And the storyline involves mothers and daughters and is full of song and dance numbers about children growing up, so it's something La Madre would buy.)

It was pure ABBA cheese, with a corny plot, but it was awesome. (I'm on vacation, everything is awesome.) I was only vaguely familiar with the plot of the play: bride-to-be invites three of her mother's ex-lovers to her wedding, hoping one of them's her father and can walk her down the aisle. Everybody breaks into ABBA songs every few minutes. The story takes place on a paradisical Greek island, and the locals are the (haha) Greek chorus/backup vocals. The ending credits are disco numbers. It is, indeed, one of the gayest things ever.

Amanda Seyfried, who plays the bride, looks 12 years old, which was really kind of disturbing and jarring, especially since her childhood friends are clearly decades older. But Meryl Streep was absolutely brilliant and clearly had fun in her role. Pierce Brosnan singing was, frankly, hilarious.

And it had Colin Firth! Happiness in a DVD box.

We seek him here, we seek him there...

Unexpectedly hungover on Valentine's Day due to unexpected drinking with a classmate on Friday the 13th, I thought reading the book she lent me was appropriate.

Having seen several film versions, the story of The Scarlet Pimpernel is all too familiar: mysterious Englishman rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. I didn't know the books were a series, so the movies I've seen must combine several plotlines. Otherwise, the Jane Seymour version (which I've seen the most, and really love) was pretty faithful to most of the book.

The part it wasn't faithful to was actually a relief. Something about having the "cleverest woman in Europe" "humbled" by walking miles, being captured and gagged by French spies, and sitting helpless in a useless attempt to try and save the man she loves (he's so clever, he doesn't need her help) from the harm she put him in in the first place just didn't sit well with me. I know, I know, it was written as a play in 1905 and takes place in 1792, not exactly eras strong on female autonomy and empowerment. (There's a lot of over-the-top, overly romantic pining and swooning going on, too.) Also, I guessed the "trick" of the daring escape at the end of the book, which is very different from the movies. That detracted a bit from the excitement of it all.

Other than that, it was a good adventure story.

What dreams may come

I think I'm almost done reading all of Connie Willis' books, an obsession going back a year and a half that kick-started the newfound appreciation for science fiction. There's one more novel that's hard to track down, but other than that, I've read most of her stories.

Note to self: do not read anything that might even tangentially address the death of loved ones in a hospital, the week before the anniversary of one.

Oops.

The plot of Passage: hospital-based medical researchers interview patients who have had near-death experiences (NDEs), and then test drugs that replicate them and map brainwave patterns, in an effort to explain what neurological function NDEs serve. Their lab observations and hypotheses compete directly with a resident celebrity author who believes NDEs are communications with angels and dead loved ones, conveying messages and even conferring psychic powers from the Other Side. It taking place in a hospital, there are many, many references to death and dying. Two other main characters are an ER nurse surrounded by an increasingly dangerous and violent patient pattern and a little girl waiting for a heart transplant who is obsessed with learning about high-casualty historical disasters. Foreshadowing, anyone?

Though not as despairing as Doomsday Book, Passage is still one of Willis' more depressing novels. I finished it today, since Intellectual Property class was cancelled, and ending up tearing up through the last half of the book. Geez. It's well-written, of course, and in Willis' quirky but cool way is full of odd trivia -- famous people's last words, random facts about the Titanic, Hindenburg, and Hatfield Circus tragedies.

In a way, this one book of Willis' combined ideas from a lot of her others: the sham spiritualists of Inside Job, the factoids and laboratory setting of Bellwether, the examination of the subconscious from Lincoln's Dreams... Part of me is still not willing to classify her as a sci-fi writer, though she's won a ton of Nebula and Hugo awards in the field. I guess it's because the themes of her most of her books are "normal" enough to be set in everyday and anyday scenarios . . . and also because I'm still clinging to my own stereotypes about what constitutes science fiction. It is also cute that most of her stories are somehow tied to the Denver area, even the ones that take place in alternate histories. Kind of like how Michael Moore always, somehow, manages to connect his documentaries back to Flint. (I, for one, am always partial to the hometown tip-o'-the-hat.)

Good book, just wasn't expecting the heavy subject matter.

Makes trademark law seem so lighthearted!

Form and function

It sucks to have both the grad student version of senioritis and the busiest semester ever. The result is a sort of binge-and-purge of late nights reading exhausting case studies and afternoons goofing off online. Throughout the week, it's a mad scramble to read and write assignments, and review material for exam study group sessions. Also, it does not help that two classes are heavy on Supreme Court decisions, which can be unnecessarily verbose.

Gods and Monsters somehow ended up in my Netflix queue. I'm not the biggest horror film junkie or early-film buff, so I'd never heard of James Whale. Apparently the story was loosely based on the life of the early Frankenstein films' director, who was also openly gay.

The movie takes place in the '50s, with Ian McKellen as the aging legendary director and Brendan Fraser as his gardener who reluctantly agrees to pose for one of Whale's personal projects.

The beauty of the film lies in its patchwork of scenes -- there are flashbacks to Whale's childhood, his wartime experiences, the heights of his early career. Then there are the nightmarish scenes of shadowy figures, appropriate both for conveying the imaginative capabilities of a horror film director and for a film about confronting the horrors of the one's history, existence, and future. It's a beautiful, if depressing, tribute to the hazy mirror that films in general hold to the human experience.

To counter that heavy blow (and to avoid homework), I finally watched Wedding Crashers. The premise is well known: two commitment-phobic buddies crash weddings to pick up chicks; one of them eventually falls for a girl. Most of the movie had promise -- it was funny and had quirky, bizarre characters and situations. I was disappointed in the ending, though: it was too quickly wrapped up with the predictable dramatic scene of every romantic comedy. (One of the many, many reasons I hate romantic comedies, incidentally. Why does there always have to be a very public rejection and a very public reunion, one or both of which is frequently at a wedding? It's a little annoying.) At any rate, the movie is hilarious overall.

Finally, to pretend I was sort of getting work done, I read The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters, which came to my attention while browsing the local indy bookstore's sale table.

I didn't love it. Didn't hate it either, it just didn't captivate me. I know Chip Kidd is supposed to be some kind of graphics design genius, but I wasn't impressed by his writing. There were sentences here and there that struck me as funny or unique, but ultimately not memorable.

The story itself is kind of crap, and fairly unoriginal: boy goes off to college, meets hot but disturbed alternative artist chick, and together they wisecrack their way through class with a professor intent on crushing their souls. But two things save the book: first, the tangents about the nature and role of graphics design in American culture. Those were succinctly but artistically-phrased insights into art as mediator, art as power, art as product. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of them, and there's way too much pontificating by the characters on artistic conventions and misplaceed fame. (How hip, to be un-hip. But I get bored with and easily annoyed by that kind of pretention....) I was also not a fan of the anachronisms; the story takes place in 1958, but there are product references that are out of place.

Lastly (and appropriately), the book cover itself is fun. The front cover is a rhebus; the title pages are chopped off at various points. And the sides of the book have phrases written on them that aren't readable until the book is opened. At first, I thought someone had written illegibly on the book, until I started reading and then happened to look at the sides; there are two different phrases superimposed, one read while holding the book properly and the other holding it upside down, which was why it looked like some stoned student had scribbled on the side.

It was pretty cool.

I can pretend I was doing homework by figuring out which parts of it are copyrightable, and where exactly the idea/expression dichotomony can be determined by statute....

Stuck in lab

Hmmm, not a good weekend for the new-found sci-fi appreciation.

Though I am normally a fan of good cheesy fun, Spider-Man 3 did not qualify. The CG work was great, but the conquer-your-evil-nature theme was way overdone (Spider-Man's final internal struggle is inside a church, for crying out loud), and definitely did not need to last over two hours. The movie seemed more concerned with wrapping up loose ends from parts 1 and 2. If I thought it was worth over-analysis, I'd rant more about how I suspect the Spider-Man series depicts unhealthy messages about how mutant "science" destroys "traditional family values", but I don't think it is.

Also, I've never been the biggest fan of Tobey Maguire; I dunno, his supposed "boy next door" image has always come across to me as creepy and clingy. But Topher Grace was great as Peter Parker's rival photographer.

Rather than starting a paper, I finally finished the last in the Hitchhiker series, from the large volume that Xtina lent me. The fifth installment, a short story entitled "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe", is more of a prequel. Technically the story can stand alone, apart from the rest of the series. It was short and had some insightful lines. But it didn't really grab me. Also, wikipedia tells me there's a highly political inference to the story (which I approve but didn't catch).

Finally, because an old friend raved about it, I watched the pilot for the new FOX series Fringe. I don't mind bad TV (witness CSI: New York), but this one didn't quite grab me either. It seemed like a fairly unoriginal combination of Eleventh Hour, House, 24, and Alias . . . starring Pacey from Dawson's Creek. It even takes place in Boston!

Sigh. No choice but to start writing that paper now...

Costs and benefits

I intended to finish The Audacity of Hope over winter break, but never got around to it. What the hell, finishing it on MLK Day, and the day before the Obama inauguration works as symbolically as any other day, I suppose.

A few years ago, I read Dreams from My Father and still think it's one of the best memoirs of the evolving journey that is multiracial identity. This second book is obviously more politics-oriented: each chapter is a different large issue, explored through Obama's Senate experience and personal anecdotes.

The last four chapters are the ones most worth reading, I think: "Faith", "Race", "The World Beyond Our Borders", and "Family".

The general theme for each issue is that Democrats approach policies in this area one way, Republicans another, and that people are bitterly divided. It's the speech he gave at the 2004 DNC in Boston, revised and amplified and repeated again and again. The call for cooperation and mutual is hammered home pretty hard: Obama even goes out of his way on each issue to point out where he sees understands where conservatives are coming from, and where he thinks liberals need to back off. And then he lays out broad solutions that are undoubtedly Democractic and incredibly articulated. Bernie Horn mentioned in his book that Obama gets framing -- and that's absolutely clear here.

There's nothing very specific, though, in terms of actual policies. But I know that crafting intricate legislative strategies wasn't the point of the book. And though I do have a few minor quibbles with a few of the positions and statements mentioned in the book, overall it's a great general introduction to the biggest issues in contemporary American public policy.

The one chapter I had a hard time getting through was "Opportunity", which was basically my Econ class (which I also have a hard time staying awake for). So to make up for zonking out on the econ-heavy chapter, I watched Robert Greenwald's Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price.

The slightly creepy thing was that Greenwald had no narrator -- I counted once where a disjointed voice tossed out statistics. The bulk of the documentary were the voices of former employees, current employees, union organizers, community activists, and snippets from CEO speeches and Wal-Mart commercials.

I'd heard the allegations of gender and racial discrimination, environmental irresponsibility, and union-busting; those have been highlighted pretty well in the mainstream media. But Greenwald brought up two new charges that struck me as particularly awful, if true: that Wal-Mart underpays and underbenefits its employees so much that they encourage them to seek public assistance, potentially straining local resources; and that Wal-Mart does little to keep its parking lots safe, encouraging crime. I have no idea if other large retail conglomerates have similar practices or problems (I do know that parking lots in general, not just Wal-Mart's, are where many crimes occur), so maybe Greenwald is blowing both out of proportion. But at least he raises the issues of corporate responsibility, and that Wal-Mart as the wealthiest company in the world has the duty to set the example in its community relations and employment practices.

A key missing piece was community complicity in the success of Wal-Mart and the reasons for it. After starting with a barrage of interviews of small business owners in small towns driven out of business by the arrival of Wal-Mart. But there was no explanation for why people flock (or are forced to flock out of economic necessity) to the newer, larger chain store, other than the low prices themselves. The film ends with the inspiring tale of community coalitions organizing and successfully stopping Wal-Mart from building in their communities.

Another issue I found fascinating that Greenwald touched on only tangentially was in the area of municapal zoning: that downtown business areas in small towns are dying as giant retail lots are built on the outskirts of towns and in suburbs, thus redirecting traffic routes and contributing to urban sprawl.

At any rate, the documentary definitely hammered home its points. I think it intended largely to preach to the choir.

Aaaaaand, now I have to go read for Econ*.



*Technically it's a Public Policy class on current affairs, but the course is entitled Economic Growth with Equity, and the guest lecturers and discussion leaders are all economists, including one Nobel winner. I forced myself not to drop the class partly because it's highly relevant right now, and partly to save face for not knowing the exact focus of the course before blabbing to both my department director and the dean of policy affairs (who are co-teaching) about how excited I was to take it. In my defense, the registrar's office had only a vague description, and last semester the course focused on Policy Advice to the Next President. Ahem. We live, we learn..

La vie, elle continue

There's a point in your busiest-ever semester (of grad school, at least) where you just crack. Patent laws, copyright infringement, the rights of journalists, and color-coded charts of last quarter's unemployment figures inexplicably blur. Procrastinating on Facebook doesn't make it all go away, but a three-day weekend with almost-arctic temps certainly helps to cloud those pending deadlines!

For some odd, out-of-touch reason, I didn't know Clerks was a Kevin Smith film. I was expecting a bad popular slapstick comedy (and honestly wanted one) when I put it to the head of my Netflix queue before Winter Break. Yes, it's taken that long to get around to watching it.

It was not the brain candy I craved. The existential agonies of a convenience store clerk and his video store clerk buddy were out of the blue. It was great stuff (I'm a sucker for indy flicks with characters who rant and ramble about the meanings of life), just unexpected.

The film gives a little too much weight, I think, to agency alone -- the main character's "Why me?" (or rather, "I'm not even supposed to be here!") is repeatedly answered by pointing solely to his own life choices, even though the parade of customers remind him of how his destiny, for lack of a better word (what else can counter free will?), is unfortunately wrapped up in others' life choices. There was an overt preachiness that didn't sit well with me once applied outside the microcosm of the convenience store itself. Of course, I liked it for exactly that reason! More procrastination material for snowy weekends.

On a side note ... Good Lord, did we all really dress like in 1992? And I'd forgotten that lisping was a brief fad then ... the character of the cheating ex-girlfriend reminded me of that, and it annoyed the hell out of me.

At Torgo's suggestion, I watched Man on Wire. As promised, it was brilliant.

A story of a French highwire artist's attempt to walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, the structure of the documentary itself was captivating. There are the interviews with Philippe Petit himself, his accomplices, and others; the re-enactments of the "heist"; a theatre, stand-up style monologue with Petit; and then there is actual footage from personal home videos. It's a great tale, skillfully presented. The story itself is what it is, and Petit and his helpers clearly love retelling it, recounting how the combination of the beauty and the danger of it made it so breathtaking.

Petit is clearly slightly crazy as well as a bit full of himself. But that doesn't detract from his achievement. It does, however, make the last few minutes of the film bittersweet and heartbreaking, as the viewer realizes how the pivotal act itself changes him so much. It's the quintessential dilemma in art: art for art's sake fundamentally changes when it collides with fame, and the casualties are usually very human and very tangible. As a portrait of art and a commentary on beauty and life, the film is strikingly poignant.

When I looked up the year Petit's book was published I found several references to the fact that 9/11 was deliberately kept out of the film so as not to detract from Petit's daredevil and artistic accomplishment. But realistically, all viewers were watching it with 9/11 in mind; and the fact that Petit's book about the feat came out post-9/11 also points to some retrospective attempt to inscribe meaning to the endeavor. (I, for one, also couldn't get the recent plane landing out of my mind every time I glimpsed the Hudson from Petit's vantage point atop the WTC... but that's a different rambling about the lives of cities themselves.)

The very absence of a world-changing event, of course, is still the essence of art and continual renegotiating of its meaning to different audiences. It's still art and still beautiful, but for different reasons.

Lastly, an overdue veg-out ... The Mummy films are decent, cheesy fun. (When the first one came out, I watched it for Brendan Fraser; now, I shake my head in embarrassment at my youthful folly. Why -- why??? But we live, we learn....)

Anyways, Part Three was equally as cheesy, and easily the dorkiest of the series. I chose to ignore all the various cultural stereotypes and characters (from the eccentric English nobles to the exotified Chinese sorceress), because there'd be no end. I will also admit that I was playing word games online while El Otro Cuñado watched it on Christmas Day.

Yetis help fight the evil Chinese general who wants to resurrect the powers of an ancient mummy. Yetis! That sort of puts everything in perspective.

(And Foremost)

Borrowing, as so often, from the FG (and also because I'm buried under coursework for a journalism class on the First Amendment in a Digital Age and a law class on Intellectual Property), here's a wordle to inspire both art and procrastination:

Source: http://www.wordle.net/

A cup of kindness yet

Every year I steal this from -- er, "am inspired by"-- a friend, who likes to reflect on all the "firsts" from the past year.

New experiences from 2008 include:

• A nephew -- He arrived in February, and I met him when he was two weeks old, making him the smallest baby I've ever held. Currently at 10 months, he is crawling around, can happily punch me on the nose, and has been hiding items in my suitcase. In June he got to meet his cousin, which was a cute family reunion.
  
  
• An internship -- Believe it or not, I'd never had one, in high school or college. Spent May through August at home in Seattle interning for a great state PAC and learning a lot about local campaigns. Which brings to mind...
  
  
• Doorbelling -- Tons of work experience in legislative affairs and political advocacy, but none on electoral campaigns and strategy. I went doorbelling for candidates for the first time, something I was absolutely terrified to do for a candidate (the only other time I'd done it was in '01 for an environmental nonprofit, with bad experiences.)
  
  
• Picking a winner in the presidential primary (and the general!) Let's just say the people I voted for in the '00 and '04 primaries didn't make it past Super Tuesday, and I had no luck in the general elections in those years either.
  
  
• A white Christmas! A real one, with about 8" of snow! Turns out the mere dusting of snow about 18 years ago pales in comparison to Seattle's recent "Snowpocalypse."
  

Overall, 2008 was a good year. It definitely had its share of drama, but hopefully I can learn and grow from all that. And, as always, every New Year's reflection, I'm humbled by the fact that I'm surrounded by so many wonderful friends and family who continue to inspire me.

Life is boundless, bittersweet, beautiful. Here's to 2009!