A film called brick, and it's drowning slowly...

I need a brick to get through this cinematic slop

While I'm apt to judge (it's my comparitive lit background making some sense of the 28,000 dollar loan I've incurred), I'm more inclined to cry tears and throw myself into useless hysterics over the atrocity that was "Brick" the film that seemingly NEVER ended, NEVER inspired, NEVER entertained and certainly NEVER should have been awarded, "Best New Vision" and other lame awards that brick induced judges award films such as these.

I can assume some responsibility- I didn't research the film, it's plot or premise, and so I wasn't prepared for the absurdity of this token genre. Apparently the film adopts a 'film noir, a la 1920's cool feel', but does so with a California, present date, high school setting. High School! Please, filmmakers of now, and filmmakers to come, if you're to f*#k with convention, at least leave it in the hands of established adult type actors. This reversion in time made the film grossly unbelievable, mockable, and catered to ill-equipped actors who made everything SOOOO dramatic that I would laugh at moments of supposed clarity and DEEP, INTENSE, SUSPENSE.

F that noise.

The dialect, or lingo and/or diction provided the characters (fast quips, some lame language that was coded and pretentious) didn't fit the setting. First, they all live in California or some similiar warm locale. I'll give the Gilmore Girls some credit. They are from New England. Everyone speaks quickly there. It's expected. In Cali, they are all doped up and slow and people speak with a lame, surfer drawl. Secondly, the main character (our super detective of sorts) isn't developed as a character in the least. We learn, near the end of the film that he's some dumb loner that no one cares about anyways, so why should the viewer feel any empathy when he puts himself in these outlandishly stupid situations (repeated beatings, running from the law - although, ha ha, the law is the Student body vice principal) time and time again. He's just a dumb masochist and his shitty acting provided the storyline absolutely no credibility.

A new notes for whoever sat through this film without busying themselves ( text messaging and internal grocery lists and ex-boyfriend confrontations), and consequently missing moments of 'importance' :

Did our hero have a home and if so, why hadn't his mother been informed of his gross truancy at school, oh, and his 5 day hiatus from home?
Did our hero every shower during said hiatus?
Why didn't our brain get any play from hot Laura?
Why didn't the producers just get Rachel Bialson to play Laura? They're not fooling anyone with this second-rate look alike.

All in all, this movie was a painful reminder of just how much of a masochist I must be.
I'll provide it one Hula hoop. The hoop I hang from my neck in effort to cut off the oxygen.

"She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture..."

I'm having a love affair with "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. I won't even allude to the beauty of this book. I'll reserve that for high praising posts to come.

Here's a sampling of a feast of a novel,
"She wondered why it was that when she thought of home it was always in colors of the dark, oiled wood of boats, and the empty cores of the tongues of flame that flickered in brass lamps."

Just know, I fully anticipate 4 Hula Hoops, and a continuous spin.

The weather is warm and the streets crowded with runners and walkers and pups and frissbee throwers. Living by the lake has become something so much more when it takes all of 30 minutes to find a parking spot some 6 blocks from my house. I can't really complain if the weather holds, however. The walk is rather lovely.

I enrolled in the "Women of the World Run": a 15K held May 7th through 3 of the 4 Disney theme parks. In lew of the Walt Disney marathon and half marathon that I've dutifully run each year (well, the past two years really, but I was hoping of making it a regular thing), I'll consider this my endurance effort of mass proportion and magic. Disney isn't Disney anymore without a race bib and pasta party to show for.

I love being a runner.
I am so sportastic.

525,600 ways to ruin an evening....

An evening at the Cadillac.
Scene I sees Mother, Donna, Michele and I seated at a crowded booth at Petterinos. It's lovely to dress up and play Chicago socialite. Our server was akward and rude- reminiscent of my Nick's classic Fishmarket days. I think that's why I was so revered. I wasn't a robot- but that's in the long, forsaken past and I will not dwell on the many nights I filleted Dover Sole tableside. This entry has a much different purpose in mind.

Why was the family congregrated on a Sunday evening? In the thick of the loop? In tweed and skirt and smiles?

Well the obvious answer would be to see RENT!, the Broadway coveted musical of course!

The sister and I weren't all that excited. In high school I worked with many of the theatre kids. Hell, I dated a few of the gay ones, and I can have instant recall of their many, obnoxious and endless renditions of Rent! the Broadway coveted musical.
It... was.... hell in high school. On stage, after years of distance and consequent healing, it still is.

The subject matter- interesting.
The score or songs or whatever you refer to it as in musical theatre - decent
The costuming - fairly intriguing
The all encompassing package - TORTURE

I may be biased in that I'm a huge fan of all musicals Disneyfied. A natural progression of music meets talk, talk meets music. There has to be dialogue in this world. The sane can not handle anything but.

Endless, noisy, obnoxious repetition. A storyline that NEVER ends. A crowd that anticipates everything in loud, representative fashion (kind of creepy how they know everything that hasn't yet happened).

But a few highlights:
My sister, turning to me, rather audibly saying "Why don't they just get a job and pay the rent?"
My mother, rather audibly, saying, "Wait? Now who has AIDS?"
and my mother, ex-post show yelling through the crowds, "I left my stage bill in the toilet!"

It's not that it wasn't a good production. Good acting, fabulous stage presence, incredible music. It just tries too hard to be something it was once and should NEVER AGAIN BE.

I wouldn't recommend.

1 out of 4 Hula Hoops circulated.

about as purposeful as polishing wood...

I had that mail order Catholic soul, that you get from a girl from the bush who's only thought is of getting into town.

Thursday morning breakfast song:

The possibility of Sarah Lawrence has reaped positive effects. To begin, I've curbed my sitcom intake. As I'd mentioned in posts of old, 'Everybody Loves Raymond' makes my brain bleed, but I watch it, diligently because I can't think of anything else to do. Oh! Silly Hula! I've a bookshelf that's so dangerously stacked it tilts inward at what could be a 30 degree angle. Evenmore, I'm surrounded - and I should really surrender to the bookstores, all cozy and kitschy, that are within a blocks radius of every perimeter surrounding my apartment. So that's just what I did/do. I read like it's my job and I think I'll dedicate a bittle of this blog - maybe make it purposeful in scope, or in the very least, keep it from being all self-indulgent (besides, that's the beauty of livejournal!) or a bore a condensed area for ramblings.

Therefore, tangent aside, I've a lovely book to recommend:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (of The Virgin Suicides acclaim) is the first book, in a long while, that I've harbored a love/hate relationship for. Allow me to explain. I like the book. I think it was a bold effort, executed flawlessly in terms of syntax, style and devices. Eugenides is kind of a master of his time with word games. I didn't, however (and much to my dismay) come across any passages that kept me from moving forward. As an avid reader I long for such passages. The paragraph or line or snippet of dialogue that's so intriguing, so lovely in sound or size that you can't keep from reading it over and over again. Eugenides, rather, keeps things concise. He shows more than he tells, but his prose is so determined, and seemingly so assertive and sure of itself that you feel he's simply telling you a story and that you, the reader, aren't doing much work at all. That's quite a feat on the part of Mr. Eugenides, especially considering the entire novel is dedicated to characterization. Even more tricky is the historical lineage he provides. There are so many characters, and so much of a back story that it's a wonder the reader can keep up at all. However, somehow it's easy. Transition from time and space are seamless and the characters are so well developed that the reader will more than likely invest a great deal of concern in each and every one of them. A critique I have, however, is that with so many characters a few, key and essential, seem to fall off the map for 100's of pages at a time. Eugenides obviously realizes this as he has the narrarator explain the missing objects, but that seems too easy- a tricky literary device that seems haphazardly placed.

I found the first 400 pages of the novel a marvel. It wasn't until the end, which, ironically, explains the premise, purpose and denoument of the story, that I became a bittle agitated. Let me explain: while this story is masterfully told - a long, slow read that places you in both lush and trash ridden settings, and allows you to feel the love of incest with great success- it takes an entirely different one in the last 100 or so pages of the novel. I believe this was deliberate but it didn't work on me. Within the last section the prose moves much more quickly. So fast that I wondered if I were reading the same text. Eugenides also seems to focus on plot much more than characterization in this last section. Newer, and seemingly important characters that are introduced are hardley given a second thought after their one or two page cameo. Furthermore, an incredibley important and decisive climax to the story seems second-thought- rushed and terribly overworked. Now, I'm sure others will debate me in saying the first 3/4's of the novel dictated or symbolized a 'female', 'circular and descriptive' writing style, while the last section played off the masculine writing prototype. For those unaware of the premise, the book explains the story of a pseduohermaphrodite. But I don't buy such change in literary style. I think if it was intentional it's being too overtly symbolic and therefore endangering the beauty of the prose.

Because I was such a fan of the first 3 sections I can not dismiss the beauty of this novel and therefore recommend it with a rating of 3/4 Hula Hoops.

Has anyone else dabbled in the Eugenides? Thoughts/opinions/love?

How I abhor this place, its sweet and bitter taste...

...has left me wretched, wretching on all fours-Chicago, I'm yours.I've been known to call on Chicago as my disappointing lover. Some nights wild, other nights ho-hum.

I live adjacent to the lakefront path and I run against wind, and see nothing but sky scraper, but that's all of very little asthetic value when your eyes are your own.

Oh, I know I can't be cry-eye all the time. I've friends and family and an birdie of an apartment, but somehow the city still seems sub-par. I think I may mold such opinion because I want allowance, an excuse, a mandate to move. New York City and all things new. They call it the city of second chances. I believe I may be ready to cash in on mine.

There's the issue of Sarah Lawrence.

God, do I love her.
The elite of all elite. A writer's wonderland and the thought of it points me to prose. Seats me in coffeeshops in the late hours of the p.m. where I now forfeit another episode of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' (a show so problematic I'll skip the diatribe) to write words and thoughts and phrases. I still can't write. The prose too pointed, too aware, too constructed.

I want to write words that run. That race and finish. I want to run and finish. I want to make beautiful what everyone already sees in this city. I just want to see.