Military Reminder August 28, 2007

Not knowing anyone in the military the personal sacrifice so many men and women make on a daily basis is hard to fathom. So today when I went to pick up my parents at the San Diego airport, very close to Camp Pendleton, I got a heavy dose of that reality.

As I was waiting for their plane to arrive I saw about 20 carts filled with military luggage. Just cart after cart filled with the tell-tale army green duffel bags and camo garment bags.

When I rounded the corner I saw a group of service men. Some were in their dress uniforms and others were in civilian clothes but they all had a serious, official demeanor. Inspite of the size of the group they weren’t making a lot of noise. There were just there talking quietly, and those with family were constantly being hugged. At one point I saw a father hug his son and grip him so tight. I don’t think he ever wanted to let go.

I don’t know if they were getting ready to ship out, were coming back from leave or what but their sacrifice hit me like a ton of bricks. They all looked so young. It made me wonder what they were leaving behind. Were they married? Did they have kids? Girlfriends? Jobs? Dreams? I was overwhelmed with emotion. No longer was it just a news report.

It was a good reminder that regardless of how you feel about the war we have to support the troops.

Unpacking Finale August 27, 2007

It only took me eight months to fully realize my goal of unpacking.

That is correct. The boxes and totes that once mocked me are now put away. The voices have been silenced, for a little while anyway. With the help of a friend and the looming threat of a parental visit forced me across the finish line. It is a glorious feeling to know that it’s put away.

There were some difficult moments. I had to sit and sort through photos of what seems like past lives. It’s amazing the number of people that drift in and out over the course of time. For some it was a happy remembering of fun times, for others it was just sad disappointment. I got distracted, bored and even procrastinated to the last possible second to get this done, but I did. I overcame the tediousness of it and managed to trash even more stuff.

At the end of the day, i feel like I accomplished something much bigger than just unloading boxes. I am moved in. For the first time in seven years I have fully inhabited one location. I’m going to call that growth.

Let us all stop to do the happy dance.

Nanny Diaries [2007] August 25, 2007

For once the reviews were right, this movie falls flat. Normally I read reviews just so they lower my expectations enough that I find something redeeming about the experience and generally enjoy it. Not this time. And I am guilty of dragging others along with me for the ride down. I am so sorry Tina and Lisa.

Annie Braddock [Scarlett Johansen] is a wanna be anthropology student who takes a short break from her life to figure out who she is. She does this by becoming a nanny for an upper eastside family, The X’s. [Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti] They will remain anonymous because they represent so many.

She is of course abused and taken advantage of with no days off, insane hours and dragged to seminars on “how to better communicate with your nanny.” Grayer, the son, is a needy, neglected cute boy who just wants someone to love him. His is the only realistic performance in this movie, and its over the top.

Meanwhile her friends and family are less than thrilled with her choice. Annie’s single mother, Judy, who sacrificed everything so she could have more is thoroughly disgusted and ask her to call her, “when this phase of her life is over.”

Her requisite best friend, [Alicia Keys] is the exact opposite of her - confident, driven and know what she wants all with an urban attitude of sophistication and wit - doesn’t understand why she takes it.

Everything about this movie is cookie cutter, down to the love interest. In the X’s building is Harvard Hottie who serves as a distraction in the otherwise depressing employment. It could have been a clever satire instead its cheesy drivel.

I was hoping it would be clever and funny like Devil Wears Prada where you love to hate Glenn Close. Instead you just pity Mrs. X she’s too pathetic for anything else. I feel the same way about Annie. Scarlett Johansen is lacking a certain innocence to be believable in this role.

I would definitely wait for video, if at all. Nanny Diaries is a pseudo-Disney-teen flick.

MeetUp August 18, 2007

I’ve found that meeting new people in your 30s is difficult. Social networks are fairly closed. Unlike college or your 20s where there is a constant stream of new people in and out of your life.

I was talking to my friend Jeff about this over the weekend and he told me about this site he joined called, MeetUp. My first reaction was - are you sure it isn’t HookUp. He assured me that it wasn’t anything of the sort.

What it appears to be is an online network to meet people interested in the same things you are. I found groups for everything from cooking to knitting to photography and languages. Once you join a group you are emailed their activities that you can choose to attend.

He has met a ton of people through this site that like to club hop. Together they’ve been to the Viper Room and other LA and OC hot spots.

Interesting concept. I don’t know if I have the courage to show up to an event full of strangers. Although he assured me that there are new people every time so you never feel out of place.

I still don’t know if I’d have the nerve to try it. Something to think about I suppose.

La Vie en Rose [2007] August 16, 2007

Tonight Debbie asked me to go see a foreign film with her. I was up for it. I appreciate the different perspective on the world. So off we went to see La Vie en Rose.

It is the story of famed French singer, Edith Piaf. A tragically talented soul whose pain was poured into her voice. I knew nothing about her before the film and left wanting to slit my wrists. It is an incredibly bleak film that jumps back and forth from the end of her life to the poignant moments that put the depth of emotion into her singing. Everything in this movie is bleek, grey, and muted. There is no joie de vive simply survival and tragedy. She is on a perpetual downward spiral from the very beginning.

She was born in 1915 to poor parents. Her father served in the military and her mother was an aspiring singer. Her mother left her with her grandmother to persue her career while her father was in WWI. A sickly child she was neglected and poorly taken care of. Upon his return he left little Edith to his mother, who also ran a brothel. There she is largely ignored by her grandmother but embraced and loved by one of the prostitutes, Titiene. Her father returns for her when she’s about 7 and forces her to work behind the scenes of the circus. She begins to sing because he needs her to make some money. Her perfomance of the french national anthem is a show-stopper, one of the highlights of the film.

Crowds are drawn to her voice. It is her one outlet and the only thing she knows how to do. She is discovered on the street and begins her ascent to stardom. However it doesn’t bring peace or happiness only more pain, loneliness and isolation. After a car accident she develops a morphine addiction. Her only love is to a married man who dies in a plane crash. The list of her life disappointments are many and endless. We are transported from one bad moment to another until eventually she is unable to perform and is bedridden.

The timeline of this movie is confusing. It jumps back and forth so many times from the end of her life to the past that you’re never really sure where you are in her life. The only way to really tell was by how bad she looks. And at nearly 2 1/2 hours its a lot of sadness, drama and tragedy.

I would have to give the same review that Edith Piaf got on her first concert in NY - it’s a tragically pathetic showcase of her life. It lives at the extremes. The sense you get of her is that she was a drug-addicted diva with only a string of failed relationships and a passion to sing. No one’s life ever boils down so simply or categorically. I wanted more of a portrait of the artist. I learned from researching her on the internet that she wrote a lot of her own music.

Marion Cotillard’s performance as Piaf was stunning however a bit clownish at times. She seemed to be overexagerating facial features or mannerisms that made it seem a bit overdone and drew away from the story or what she was trying to accomplish. Everyone else in the film is a supporting character and isn’t really given any significant place to do anything. None of the relationships are fully explained. It is a one-woman show.

Break Up Strategy August 12, 2007

I was talking with a friend today, who recently broke up with her boyfriend, about post break up strategy and how we sabotage ourselves into making really bad decisions.

In the beginning you surround yourself with good friends, lots of chocolate and kleenex. Then once you get past the crying phase you head into the anger phase where you destroy photos and other evidence of said relationship. Every thing wrong with him and the relationship is crystal clear in your mind. Your friends finally tell you what they really thought and every nagging doubt you ever had is front and center in your mind.

Gradually, you stop being mopey and angry but this is when you enter the scary negotiating and bargining phase. Even after suffering through all of the pain and trauma of calling it off, or being dumped you still wonder if maybe you’ll get back together. You choose to believe that there is hope, maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy. Maybe your differences weren’t that big. Perhaps he really was “the one.”

See this is when the thought of having to date again begins to take root and your friends try to set you up to help you move on. You meet a couple of freaks and the next thing you know you’re making calls to the ex. You tell yourself it’ll be different, you’ve learned so much through the experience. THESE ARE LIES. YOU’RE BEING DELUSIONAL.

So we decided that while you’re crying and angry it is important to start a list of the reasons why you broke up. You’re already replaying every conversation leading up to the break up in your head anyway, you might as well write them down.

Your reasons don’t need to make sense. They don’t need to be rational, but write down in graphic detail every reason why the relationship didn’t work. Then when you’re on this destructive train, thinking maybe he wasn’t so bad you’ll remember why you are not with him anymore.

We both have gone back for second helpings of the ridiculousness thinking things change but fundamentally they don’t. If you can white knuckle it past the bargaining phase, rooted in loneliness and a fear of the unknown then you can truly accept that the relationship is OVER and leave it in the past where it belongs.

He really hasn’t changed and neither have you. You will continue to have the same annoying conversations, fights, disagreements and issues the second and third time you try to make it work. LET GO. You can’t even begin to think of moving on until you put all delusions and hallucinations to rest.

This list will also come in handy when in a few months he gets lonely and calls you. It will also be helpful if you see signs of the same things in the next guy. This is how we can learn from our mistakes instead of being destined to repeat them.

Becoming Jane [2007] August 10, 2007

Sweeping vistas of the English countryside. A girl with a mind of her own. Unsuitable suitors. A family’s precarious financial situation. The arrogant yet alluring young man that rebuffs our heroine inciting her ascerbic wit and wry observations.

Is this Pride and Prejudice? No it’s Becoming Jane which promises to shed light on the romance that inspired many of Austen’s novels. Anne Hathaway is Jane, an energetic, proper, intelligent woman born to a poor clergyman needing a good marriage to help her family’s finances. The object of her affection is Tom Lefroy [James McAvoy], a law apprentice dependent on his uncle’s benevolence to survive.

So neither Jane nor Tom have the means to marry. Their only option is to ruin their reputation or live within the confines of their circumstance. Jane, bound and determined to make her living “by her pen” stays true to her convictions and follows her heart, over her mother’s desire for her to be safe and secure.

Becoming Jane is an insider’s tale for Austen fans who have consumed her novels over and over. We hear familiar lines. See familiar landscape. Watch as our Spend favorite characters are born out of her experience. Every aspect of this movie rings as something we’ve seen before. No new spin is put on Austen’s story. It plays a bit as a Where’s Waldo of story plots in her six novels. Hathaway plays a decent Jane, successfully making the leap from Mia, Princess of Genovia to bonified actress.

Overall it is a sweet period piece. A tragic love story about a girl who choses to be true to herself above all, even if she doesn’t get all of the desires of her heart.

Becoming Jane is a great girl’s night out.

Syndicated Sitcom Faves and Foes August 10, 2007

I had trouble going to sleep last night and turned on the tv hoping it would help me doze off. I don’t know why I think that’ll work I have to get up, find my glasses, find the remote, and reposition myself in bed to see the tv, at this point I might as well just get up. But alas I hold out hope.

As I’m perusing the channels I realize that there are many syndicated sitcoms on at 2 a.m. and I have a clear list of favorites and those I avoid like the plague. The benefit of having a blog is that I get to share both of these lists with you.

Syndicated Sitcom Faves
1. The Cosby Show - it’s still funny, and quite often laugh out loud hilarious. While many shows date themselves, the humor the everyday family situations in this show continue to ring true and the show is great.
2. Sex and the City - This show honestly is on the fence. The edited version can get cheesy especially when you know they’ve cut out half the show. But still I tune in like the Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda groupie that I am.
3. Friends - This show is like a family member to me. It started the year I started college (1993) and I love it. I know most of the episodes, can quote from it, it is just part of my life and vernacular.
4. Will & Grace - I especially like to see the early years, they’re funnier.
5. Everybody Loves Raymond - I did not see this show the first time around, so they’re all new to me. Very funny.

Syndicated Sitcom Foes - I was just trying to think of another f word
1. Home Improvement - this show is just the same joke over and over. I have no idea why it lasted as long as it did. Not funny.
2., 3. & 4. Seinfeld - I realize this might be blasphemous to some but aside from several classic episodes (The Contest, Pirate Shirt, Soup Nazi) the show is just really tired. I don’t need to see it again, once was enough. Other shows that fall into this category are I Love Lucy and Three’s Company. Other than a few classic episodes the rest are forgettable. Except with Three’s Company I think they’re all forgettable.
4. Brady Bunch - not even if there is nothing else on.

I just realized I need to divide those shows I dislike into another category of shows - why in the world are they in syndication to begin with, maybe they were purchased in a package deal. We are just perpetuating bad tv here:
1. Yes, Dear - did anyone ever watch this show?
2. Coach - huh?
3. My Wife & Kids - this show descended into stereotypes after season 2
4. According to Jim - this show is trite and ridiculous.

These are the things I think about in the middle of the night.

Boneless Buffalo Wings by any other name August 6, 2007

I made a startling realization today as I accompanied a friend driving through KFC for their new teriyaki boneless buffalo wings.

Boneless buffalo wings are really just chicken nuggets. Let that sink in for a second. We’re being charged for bone out wings. It’s a chicken nugget with the sauce on them instead of on the side.

I don’t know why that struck me as incredible insight, but it did, so now out of my benevolence and desire to share, I pass it onto you.

Entertainment Book August 6, 2007

Whilst meandering the OC Fair last weekend I was suckered into getting the OC Register because of the free gift - an Entertainment Book.

I am so excited to try new restaurants and eat at old favorites at a discount. i am such a sucker for a coupon.

Here is to new adventures with my book.