Notes on the End of NaNoWriMo 2010

Now that National Novel Writing Month is over, for me anyway, I feel two things quite distinctly. I want both to write more immediately and not to write another word for a long time. (That’s a relative span of time; though I might want not to write for awhile, a very long time for me to go between writing sessions would be a day or two.) There were times during November when I was working on the day’s words and getting up to (and now and then slightly past) two thousand words, and my head would just start to swim and I would sit back in my chair and think that there was no way I could go on. As much as I had looked forward to the start of November, so I could finally start writing down all of the ideas I had been having for the novel, I was starting now to look forward to the end of November, so that there would no longer be this enormous pressure to hit a certain mark every day.

At first I thought it was going to be bad luck that I had to close on the last two days of November, but it actually wound up being good luck. Starting last Wednesday, on the 24th, I made a conscious effort to squeeze more words out of each day than I had been getting, so that I would have a cushion for the last two days. By Wednesday I was closing in on 40,000 words, and was much farther along than I had imagined I would get; and I wanted to make sure that I got all the way to the end. Last year, it quickly became obvious that I was disastrously behind and that I would never be able to catch up. This year, I never got that feeling once. There were days when I got behind, depending on what my work schedule was like, but I was always able to bounce back a day or two later and make up whatever ground I had lost. And then, last Wednesday, I started down the home stretch.

I started to accumulate more words per day than were needed for me to keep pace; I began to amass a word budget surplus; and I kept that going for the next four days, until I got done with the writing on Sunday night and found myself at 49,300 words. It was another one of those nights when I don’t think I could have written another word - not one single additional word; but I was awfully tempted to try, as close as I was to the end. But if I had tried to press on, just to get to the finish line that night, I would have written 700 very bad words; and then I would have had to wake up today and fix (or, worse, delete) those 700 words. So I left it, and when I woke up this morning, I had those 700 words left to go, and they just poured out of me. As soon as I passed 50,000 by the word count at the bottom of my word processing file, I uploaded to the NaNoWriMo website for an official count, and it was a skosh under 50,000, but not by much. Then I took out the date markers, deleted a sex scene that seemed to fit at the time I wrote it but afterward just sounded icky, and changed most of the character names. That put me a few hundred words under, but there was so much more to write now that it was no longer a question of getting to 50,000. It’s even conceivable that I could do some writing tonight when I get home, and tomorrow afternoon - so the question is really going to be how far beyond 50,000 am I going to get?

But I made myself stop at a certain point this afternoon because I wanted to take a short walk around Irvington to celebrate what I had done. (Now that I’m thinking back on it, I realize that I didn’t take any pictures. I had planned to snap some pictures on my walk, as a record of what Irvington looked like the day I won NaNoWriMo for the first time - but I completely forgot to do it.) That’s the lucky part about having to close the last two days of November, particularly today. I almost always work a nine-to-five shift on Mondays (which I. Fucking. Hate.), but got the close shift today because the manager who usually closes on Mondays is on vacation. I finished the last few tweaks on the novel in enough time to walk over to the coffee shop and back before I had to get in the shower and get to work. And even though all the leaves were already down and nothing was really going on, it was a nice walk - on a fairly warm afternoon - and it made me think how nice it would be if I could really make a go of this writing thing and do it well enough and consistently well enough to make a living at it.

And really, that’s why I want to sit down and get right back to writing - because the actual doing of it is the only way I’ll ever be able to get to the point where I can make a living at it; and now that I have accomplished a 50,000 word novel in 30 days - and one that is reasonably coherent and has a distinct beginning and end, even if there are some pretty big holes in the middle that need to be filled - going back to the pace I was at before, barely 500 words a day, seems like child’s play. The story I was working on before NaNoWriMo had begun to drift out of focus because of a set piece with one character that just went on and on and on; and even though I have trashed a piece of writing only to immediately start it over far too many times, I am going to do that one more time and begin anew with the story of a football widow who, despite strong feelings of commitment to her family and strong religious beliefs, finds herself gradually falling in love with a customer at the local farmers market who is also a cook at a local restaurant. He is, of course, more than that, and it’s probably important to point out that he’s a cook at a local Italian restaurant. Now why would I go to the trouble of pointing out that it’s an Italian restaurant? For exactly the reason that you think. This story is also going to get into some themes - religion, marriage, the Mafia - that I have wanted to explore but have never been able to get to coalesce into one particular thing.

I will be doing some copy editing work for a fellow novelist for a good part of the month of December, while at the same time hopefully making notes and plotting the trajectory of this new version of the aforementioned story; but I hope to start on the new novel at the stroke of the New Year. I also plan to change the direction of this here Blog-O-Rama as of the beginning of 2011. There will still be the occasional post on film, the occasional fake tweet, and other such miscellany; but I plan to focus mostly on writing and reading, to continue the progress I have made in 2010 toward becoming a serious writer. But in the meantime, Happy Holidays! And, in the words of the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut, I thank you for your attention.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #4

I just uploaded my novel for word count verification, and here's what I got:



Officially verified word count is 50,391. Title of the novel is "I'm Only Passing Through," and here are the last two paragraphs:


I wasn’t sure what I thought I was doing either but I took that walk around the park and thought about that song and about the girl who had spoken lines from it to me years before they became lines in a song. I no longer ached for her, but the memories could come back at any moment and they could come back strong; and though I no longer ached for her, I sometimes wondered where she was and what had become of her. We had never had our time. I kept hoping to get a card at Christmas or a letter out of nowhere, but it turned out that she really had been only passing through.

As you get older, you can start to understand about a thing like that; but when you are in college, especially when you are new in college, it’s hard to get your head around just how fleeting everything is. This is especially true of time and of friendship. You can’t do anything about time except to stand by idly as it gains momentum and moves a little faster every day. Sometimes there is not much you can do about friendship, because sometimes it is just in our nature to do things that hurt other people, whether we mean to or not. But it does not do to dwell for too long on the past, although it is sometimes necessary to spend a little bit of time in the past to be able to understand it as best you can and to be able to get on with the present. It is just so dangerous to spend even one moment too many on that return to innocence.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #3

The third progress report for this year’s National Novel Writing Month finds me at just past 40,000 words - more than double what I had last year, and still on pace to get to 50,000 by month’s end. However, I was looking at the calendar at work last night, and I realized that November 30th is a Tuesday, which is the one night a week that I have to close at work; and Tuesday afternoons, one of the two afternoons a week when I have Jackson to take care of by myself, are not generally big writing afternoons. What all of that means is that I’m going to have to up the daily output to make sure I have enough time to write what I need to write next Tuesday and upload the finished product to the website for word count verification before I go to work.

And as for the story itself, it has gone in directions I had not anticipated, which is usually what happens when I write. I’ve always believed that it’s healthy to let the story sort of lead you by the hand, as long as you have a general idea of where you want it to go. Unfortunately, this has not yet proved a successful strategy for writing a whole novel - at least not for me; and yet I feel constrained even thinking about working up an outline. This story was supposed to be mostly about one character and a series of short glimpses into his life at various stages, starting in college and moving into his twenties as an adult. But at 40,000 words, it’s still in the college phase, and still in the “main” character’s freshman year. This is territory I have always wanted to mine, but I have never been able to get it just right. I’m not sure that this just right, either, but I have managed to keep it on course and mostly focused - though the focus has drifted from one “main” character to three - one of whom is a sort of alter ego of the “main” character, and the other of whom is something of a foil (also of the “main” character).

Also, what was supposed to have been five 10,000 word sections has turned into four sections of varying length. Each of the three sections has been from a different point of view, and in a different person - both of which were things I wanted to accomplish when I started this project. The final section - which is what I have left to write - will revert back to the same point of view and person as the first section, bringing the focus back around to the “main” character. And if all of that works out the way I have it planned in my head, then I should have a very solid piece of writing in hand at the end of the month; and I will have hopefully exorcised a demon that has been gnawing at me for years. The work will not be ready for prime time, of course; but if it holds up to a re-read, probably after the new year, then it will have been a very successful National Novel Writing Month.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #2

I haven’t done a very good job with progress reports on this year’s National Novel Writing Month project, but I have a pretty good reason for that; and that pretty good reason is that I have actually been keeping up with the pace necessary to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month. I have just started the writing for tonight (November 12th, which I only specify because I tend to write, and do blog posts, near the technical end of the night, as the witching hour draws nigh and then fades into the rearview - so in one sense, the writing I do tonight could be thought of partly as writing for November 12th and partly as writing for November 13th, though I think of all of it as writing for November 12th), and assuming it goes as well as it has gone to this point in the month, I will surpass, by a relatively considerable margin, the entire output I managed during the whole of last November.

I haven’t been in 1667-words-per-day shape for a long time, and no matter how fast you type, that’s a lot of words to get down in one day - especially when you devote a relatively small amount of each day to getting those words down. Of course, now that I think about it, I churned out three progress reports last year, every tenth day, at the same time that I was getting down far fewer words than I’m getting down this year; and if I manage to finish and post this progress report, that will be two for this month, with over half the month left to go - while I’m averaging almost 1700 words a day.

And at the end of today’s writing, I’m at 20,263 words, which is 259 ahead of schedule for the month. In fact, I have only failed to hit the daily pace four out of twelve days so far. There’s still a long way to go, but the story is flowing smoothly and I haven’t felt stuck once yet. The second of the five sections, which I should have finished tonight, is going to go over the 10,000 words I had planned for it. That’s all right, though, because it might bode well for the future of this piece of work beyond the scope of the National Novel Writing Month project.

National Novel Writing Month 2010 - Progress Report #1

Okay, here we are three days into National Novel Writing Month, and I am in a much better place with the pacing than I was last year. I hit the daily word goal exactly on the first day, then was way off on day two, and brought it back today on day three to 5118 words, which is 117 words over what I needed to be on pace for the first three days. (Last year, I didn’t hit 5000 words until November 8th.) While looking at the NaNoWriMo website, I came across something to give me a bit of extra motivation to get the 50,000 words done in the 30 days - “winners,” which are people who get to 50,000 by the end of the month and upload their work for word count verification - can get a free printed copy of their “novel” from one of the NaNoWriMo sponsors. I had planned to include in this post a little bit about what I’m writing, but I’ve run out of time, so that will have to wait for the next post.

Jackson at Waterman's Farm Market

We went to Waterman's with Tom and Dione and Dorothy yesterday, and I have a lot more pictures of that trip that I plan to post a little bit later today, once I sort out the good ones from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones of Jackson, and some of the other good ones are of the dinosaur that smashes the pumpkins.

Deep Thoughts #44 - Special Topical ALCS Edition

Way to go, you wacky Rangers of Texas. An excellent start to the post-Steinbrenner era for the Yankees is to not even make the World Series.

Nowhere Boy

I don’t know how much of this film is historically accurate and how much of it has been exaggerated, or possibly even invented, in the name of narrative filmmaking; but having said that, I am also not entirely sure that I want to know how much of it is historically accurate and how much of it is not. That probably sounds counterintuitive; surely it is desirable for any storyteller, who aims to render a tale not of his or her own making, to be as loyal to the truth as possible. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, however, does not always make for a compelling (or even interesting) narrative film. But while the facts of John Lennon’s young-adulthood might not have been especially interesting to him at the time or to an objective observer even now, the fact of what he became later in life imbues those earlier events with an ex post facto interest that would not have been warranted if he had wound up being just another guitar player from Liverpool.

Here’s what I do know: Aaron Johnson eases into the role of John Lennon as gradually as he portrays Lennon easing into the life of the person he was always meant to be. The transformation - for both Johnson and Lennon - is remarkable, from inattentive young cur who is warned that he is going nowhere, to cocksure, strutting guitar player in the mold (and uncanny likeness) of Buddy Holly. Anne-Marie Duff is ebullient as Lennon’s mother, Julia - an intoxicating synthesis of perky Reese Witherspoon and smoldering Brittany Murphy, whose very being explains so much about how John Lennon became John Lennon. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Lennon’s aunt, Mimi Smith, close to the vest, the older sister whose bearing of the cross of her younger sister is tempered by her love for her nephew. Thomas is devastating in a scene toward the end of the film in which she reveals to John much of the truth, about his mother and about how his aunt came to raise him, that had previously been kept from him.

The film casts a spell that makes John Lennon, the legend, seem almost inevitable. It does this at the same time that it demonstrates that certain tragic facts of Lennon’s childhood and adolescence left indelible marks on him that surely changed the path he would take toward the legend he would become. And if the whole thing drifts toward hagiography, well…what are you going to do? The Beatles are pretty popular, and it’s probably not much of a stretch to say that Lennon was - and is - the most popular of the Beatles. And in the end, art is what we make it. If I look up the history and find out how accurate this film is or is not, it might just break that spell. Obviously, I can’t speak for people who might have been there and who know exactly what the truth looked like (Paul McCartney, say); the film will speak to those people in entirely different ways. Is the purpose, then, to perpetuate a myth? Pay an homage? Simply entertain? I don’t know those things, either - and, once again, don’t care. I like rock and roll, I like playing guitar, and I like the Beatles. The film is chock full of all three, and long before it was over, I knew that I wanted to listen to some Beatles music on the way home. (Fortunately, I have a copy of Revolver in my car.)

Here are some more things I know: John Lennon was not born with a guitar in his hand, which means that at some point he had to pick one up for the first time and be given instruction on how to play it properly; John Lennon was not born one third of a set of triplets that included Paul McCartney and George Harrison, which means that at some point he had to meet those guys for the first time; John Peddie was born in 1975, five years after the Beatles broke up, which means that he was not there to witness either of the preceding items in this list. It is conceivable that two different people who were alive to witness those things might one day tell me the story of how those things happened; it is even possible that they would both attempt to present me with the exact same set of facts; but it is categorically impossible that they would tell two identical stories.

Every recitation of fact has an element of fiction. You know that campfire game that starts with one person whispering something in the next person’s, and so on around the circle until the person who told it first is told it again by the last person to hear it for the first time? It works because stories change in the telling. That’s how myths and legends are born. Maybe it’s a failing of human nature that we want every detail of certain people’s lives to be interesting, even though that, too, is impossible; but it also human nature to be fascinated and inspired by achievement. Maybe it wasn’t an awe-inspiring event the first time John Lennon and Paul McCartney played guitar together (and considering their ages at the time, the odds are probably good that it wasn’t - although the film does suggest that McCartney was the better player when he met Lennon). But maybe it was. We like to think that it must have been - or maybe that it should have been - given everything that came later. Once again, it’s just human nature. We like to imagine.

Spirit & Place 2010 and the Indy Winter Farmers Market

In addition to National Novel Writing Month, November is notable because it contains the Spirit & Place Festival, another one of those things we say we are going to get around to every year but never do. This year’s theme is “Food for Thought,” and one of the events takes place at Irvington United Methodist Church on November 7th. The Irvington SkillShare “Feast”ival will “explore the many ways to be more self-reliant from garden to kitchen.” More details from the festival website here and at the event’s blog. Speaking of food, I ran into my mom and dad today at the final (sigh) Irvington Farmers Market of the season, and my mom mentioned that the Indy Winter Farmers Market will be in a new location this year. I looked that up on the magic Internets and discovered that they also have a blog, and that their new location is in the Maxwell building at 530 East Ohio Street, which is actually in the heart of downtown. They were somewhere up on East Street last year, and way the hell up at 25th and Central prior to that. A location on Ohio Street will make it much easier to hit the farmers market and take in a walk downtown all in one go, especially if Jackson is out of sorts. We only made it to the winter farmers market once last year - which was unfortunate, because they had a lot of great stuff, including a crèpe stand - so I’m hoping we’ll be able to get there a little more often this season, now that it’s more centrally located.

National Novel Writing Month 2010

National Novel Writing Month is almost here again, and I’m going to take it one step further this year than I did last year: I’m going to sign up on their website and post my progress on the magic Internets for all the world to see. I don’t recall exactly how I approached it last year, but I’m pretty sure I just started writing on November 1st without a thought in my head as to what I was going to write about for the next thirty days. This year, I have a vague idea of what I want to write about, and I even have some notes and a very short outline to help me get started.

What I’m not sure about is exactly how I want to approach the writing. Part of me wants to just start writing and not look back, to play with the style of writing I’ve been experimenting with for awhile - long sentences with little punctuation that approximate a sort of stream of consciousness that focuses on moments and details that are important to the narrator without sacrificing the progression of the narrative itself. That’s what I did with the story that was published in Ichabod’s Sketchbook; it was over 800 words, with only one punctuation mark - a period at the end. It’s easy enough to keep your head wrapped around what you’re writing about when the piece is that short - but it’s much harder to maintain focus when the work gets longer.

I want it to be serious work, but it’s going to be difficult to be serious and maintain the breakneck pace necessary to get 50,000 words written in thirty days; and that’s a big part of why I just want to lay into it and see where it goes, where the inner monolgue takes me and what it tells me about a blocked writer and why he’s blocked. (If I can ever shake the monkey of the elusive first novel off my back, I have a feeling that The Blocked Writer is going to become a pretty regular theme in my writing.)

I have a working title and the idea that it’s going to be five sections of 10,000 words each and that it will be constructed similarly to Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis in that the sections are all related without there being much in the way of direct transition between them. I also plan to experiment with point of view and tense, something that I have been interested in doing for some time but for which I have never found quite the right outlet (due in part, perhaps, to the aforementioned goddamn monkey).

Anyone else out there planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month - either officially or unofficially? if so, please add a comment to this post - I’d love to hear about it. Happy writing!

Jack Goes Boating

For his directorial debut, Philip Seymour Hoffman has chosen an oddly likeable little story about life and love that is based on the stage play of the same name by Bob Glaudini (who also wrote the screenplay). The story follows Jack (Hoffman), an unkmept sort going through the awkward motions of announcing his affections for, and then courting, a woman he meets through friends. He’s a limo driver and she’s a telemarketer, and they both exist out there at the edge of life where even the hungriest lions won’t feed because the herd is just too sickly. That’s sort of the long way around saying that this is not Jersey Shore or True Blood, where all the people are very pretty but completely vapid.

The characters here are at least conceivable, even if the eclectic brush strokes are a bit too broad. Jack is a little bit rasta, even though he only listens to his reggae music on his Walkman (yes…a Walkman) and even though we only see the ratty dreads in his hair on the rare occasions when he takes off his skull cap. Connie (Amy Ryan) is even more of a mystery, a shrinking violet with intimacy issues that almost completely mask a strong, confident sexuality. They are supported, individually and as a prospective couple, by their married friends, Clyde and Lucy, who are having issues of their own.

Clyde also drives a limo (for the same company as Jack, whose uncle owns it) and Lucy is Connie’s supervisor, so there’s quite a bit of overlap between the personal and professional lives of the four individuals and the two couples; but Hoffman handles the juxtapositioning pretty well, employing mostly-effective cross-cuts and the occasional montage. The cross-cuts now and then splice together scenes that are maybe a little too brief, as though Hoffman is more concerned with relaying particular bits of information rather than fully setting a scene; but ultimately this is just mildly distracting rather than deleterious. The montage sequences are generally more effective, as they conform more to the languid (but not turgid) pace of the story - and are almost always shot through with ethereal, contemplative songs on the soundtrack, a collection of hipster tracks in the spirit of Zach Braff’s selections for Garden State.

The story introduces a worm of discontent in the form of a chef who teaches Jack how to cook so he can make dinner for Connie. The chef is also Lucy’s former lover, and though Clyde introduces the chef to Jack in part as a way to show that he and Lucy have worked out the issues of her infidelity, it becomes clear that Clyde is not as right with it in his heart as he claims to be. Hoffman does a pretty good job of weaving this subplot into the story, allowing it to help Jack while it brings down Clyde and Lucy. Much of the film takes place in the compact interior of Clyde and Lucy’s apartment, and the small space helps to focus our attention on how the little things, once they get into your head, can bounce around in there and make you crazy.

All of this leads to the third-act dinner party, an occasion set up so that Jack can cook for Connie, who claims that no one has ever cooked for her before. The film jumps the rails here in a few places, but Hoffman mostly keeps it under control; and whatever slips there are do not doom the project. Ultimately, it’s an awkward but sweet story that mostly works, despite a few slips and the occasionally obvious hand of a first-time director. Having said that, though, it must also be said that Hoffman shows tremendous potential for weaving storylines together. Future projects are sure to be of interest.

Jackson!

Deep Thoughts #43

If enough lazy old people complain about PARK(ing) Day - turning parking meters temporarily into little parks - will that be cancelled, too?

Deep Thoughts #42 - Special Topical Florida Retard Edition

Will I put any of our troops in danger if I put my copy of the Holy Qur’an in my backpack and take it with me while I’m out and about today?

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

It’s going to be hard for me to say anything objective about this film because I love the band so much, but here we go. As far as a basic primer on the band, it’s a really good film. For the Rush geeks, it’s still a pretty good film, but you probably won’t learn a whole lot. I learned two things I did not previously know, and which stuck with me after I was done watching the movie. First - what Neil Peart’s voice sounds like. I don’t know that I had ever heard it before. Second - Neil Peart really enjoys playing “Tom Sawyer” on tour. Not only did I not know this, it also surprised me.

He says that he likes to play it because it’s so difficult - and that he gets a real sense of achievement when he plays it right. I had gotten the impression, as the years have gone by, that “Tom Sawyer” was still on the set list more out of a sense of duty to the fans than because of any desire by the band to play the song. It was the opening number at the last couple of shows I saw, and I had started to assume that they played it first to get it out of the way, so that Neil could get to it while he was fresh. Again, doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t want to play the song - that was just the impression I got, that they kept it on the set list but dispensed with it right away because of the taxing drum part.

That was pretty much all I learned. The film is basically a chronological overview of the band, the boys, and the music. You get the early days, then how prog nearly ended them, then how 2112 saved them, then how they finally got all the prog out of their collective system with Hemispheres, then the eighties and how keyboards nearly ended them, then the nineties and a surprisingly frank treatment of the double tragedy that befell Neil’s family, and then the comeback that leads up to today. There was very little on the recording process - particularly how grueling it was to make both Grace Under Pressure and Counterparts - and surprisingly little on how much of a problem keyboards became for Alex during the period between Signals and Hold Your Fire.

(Actually, there was one other thing I learned - that original drummer John Rutsey was basically fired from the band because he wasn’t healthy enough to go on tour. I had always been under the impression that he had made the decision to leave the band on his own - because of his health - once it became clear that they were going to be a big thing and not just a Toronto club band.)

That said, just because there’s not a lot of new information doesn’t mean that it wasn’t enjoyable. It was especially enjoyable to hear the things that Neil had to say, because he’s not nearly as outgoing and locquacious as the other two. I’ve read a couple of the books he’s written, and some things he’s posted online, but it’s a whole different thing to hear someone talk extemperaneously about himself (and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t particularly comfortable doing it). A second disc has deleted/extended scenes and a handful of live performances that run the gamut from 1974 all the way up to the Snake & Arrows tour. My favorite of these was “Entre Nous” from the most recent tour - not only one of my favorite Rush songs, but also one that I don’t think I’ve ever seen live. “YYZ” from the same tour was also excellent - particularly Alex’s guitar work.

Deep Thoughts #41

So-called Christians plan to burn the Qur’an on the 9/11 anniversary. We never do anything in this country to make people want to attack us.

Turn Off Fox Noise

So I got this e-mail from MoveOn, about their new campaign to get people to stop playing Fox News in public places. I’m far too pessimistic to think that the campaign will get through to many people, but I support anything that has the goal of getting more Republicans and conservatives to shut up - even if it’s just the symbolic shutting up of not playing a particular news channel in a particular setting. Plus, if you sign up, you get a free sticker! Click the link above and help exterminate conservative thinking for good.

Ichabod's Sketchbook II

For some reason, I managed to let this one get past me without mentioning it. The launch party for the second issue of Ichabod’s Sketchbook took place at Bookmamas last Saturday evening, and the second issue of the journal is now available for purchase, both live and in person at Bookmamas and also by way of the Bookmamas website on the magic Internets. They are also accepting submissions for the next volume of the journal. Submission guidelines can be found here.

That's What I Love Aboutcha - Your Attention to Detail!

They’ve got machines for just about everything now, and some of those machines even make sense. Those bill counting machines that they have at banks and other places that process lots of cash? Yeah, that’s a good idea. You can run a stack of bills through the machine to double-check your count, and it’s handy for streamlining the process of strapping bills into packs of a certain value. This being America, of course, what they’re mostly good for is convincing us that we don’t need to bother with counting by hand anymore. There’s a machine for that! I’m sure the banks even have the really fancy ones that can identify the denomination and stop counting if they spy a five in amongst the singles, or whatever. I’m sure it saves money and increases shareholder value. It also lets things like this get through:



This bill came to us today in a change order that we got from the bank. I both received the change order from the armored car guy and unwrapped the strap of bills later in the day, which is how I know that this particular note came directly from the bank. Aren’t banks supposed to retire currency that is no longer fit for ciruclation? Many years ago, my brother’s car broke down on the highway and he had to pull over and walk to a gas station to call for a tow and a ride. Along the way, he spied a piece of money on the ground. It was a one hundred dollar bill, although it looked to him like it wasn’t quite cut to the right size, like maybe it was counterfeit. He took it to the bank and they verified its authenticity - and then they replaced it with a more normal looking note. His was a complete bill going in - how much do you figure is missing out of this one? That’s a solid chunk that seems to have been removed by means of a flame of some sort. Makes you feel good to know that the banks are taking care of the money, don’t it?

Deep Thoughts #40 - Special Topical Useless Buildings Edition, Part 2

We could demolish it after the stroke takes the Beck-ites to the tropic isle of Stupid-lon, but it would SO be worth the construction costs.

Deep Thoughts #39 - Special Topical Useless Buildings Edition, Part 1

If we built a mosque ON ground zero, would all the racist Americans have a massive, collective stroke and die, making we the people smarter?

Winter's Bone

This is the movie I get to be indignant about when Oscar season rolls around. It’s going to round up some awards from the critics circles when those start coming out, and it may well bring in a couple of token Oscar nominations; but it’s not going to win anything, and some watered-down, easily swallowed pill passing for art - or maybe not even that - will win the big awards. (I thought it had even helped me come to a better understanding of what the concept of “art film” really means to me; but it turned out, when I sat down to write about it, that it still wasn’t all that clear, and that the solid line of reasoning that was in my head on the drive home didn’t actually look all that good when I got it down on paper. But even having said all of that, I know for sure that this is a “real” art film, even if I can’t tell you exactly what I think that means.)

It’s the story of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence, in a towering, star-making performance), a Missouri teenager who has to find her fugitive father or face losing the house where she lives and takes care of her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother. Pops put up the house and their land as his bond in order to make bail after his most recent arrest for cooking meth in the Missouri Ozarks. When the law turns up on Ree's doorstep one day, she finds out about the bond, and that her father has disappeared, only days before he is due to appear in court. She doesn’t panic…doesn’t flip out and start screaming at the cop; instead, she just looks him squarely in the eye and says, “I’ll find him.”

Ree is neither prideful nor arrogant in making such a statement. She is simply responding to the latest crisis in the most pragmatic way, identifiying the solution to a problem and saying that she will take care of it - not because she wants to or because she thinks she can or because she knows how she’s going to do it, but because it is the only for her to do. Roger Ebert notes quite astutely in his review that it’s something of a wonder that a girl as seemingly well-adjusted, resourceful, intelligent, and drug-free could have survived seventeen years in this place and not been brought down by any of the myriad things that have ravaged the community where Ree lives.

Not a soul in this movie is what you would call cosmopolitan, and nearly all of them are moving from one bad decision to the next mostly because they don’t know any other way. Drugs are rampant, and there isn’t really any law. Sure, there’s a county sheriff, but reputation and honor carry more weight than a badge in this neck of the woods. For these people, life isn’t about being first in line to get the new iPhone - it’s about basic survival. It’s about learning to shoot a rifle at the age of six so that when you have to hunt squirrel in order to have something to eat for dinner, you can. After they skin the squirrels, they disembowel them and Ree’s little brother Sonny asks if they are going to eat the innards. Her answer is simple, honest, and - most of all - telling: “Not yet.”

Most of the other characters are frightening people, their reputations framed in the stories told about them by others. Every little thing left unsaid about each character allows the suspense to build organically as Ree’s search for her father drags her slowly into a web of secrets that everyone knows but no one will talk about. Characters described as dangerous are often not shown on screen until many scenes later, their power demonstrated through proxies - in many ways, not unlike the manner in which the Mafia operates. Here, though, there’s no kicking up to the captain, who kicks up to the boss; and there are no fur coats or diamond rings or extravagant dinner parties. Here, you keep a secret or you disappear.

Jennifer Lawrence is the one who will draw the most attention for this movie - both because she does a great job and because not nearly enough people are interested in writing for there to be much of a to-do over the adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel here; and that’s too bad, because the adaptation is remarkable. The actors carry off the sometimes spare dialogue extremely well, which is to their credit as much as to that of the screenwriter; but there is so much about so many of the characters that is left unsaid that I kept thinking, throughout the film, that I absolutely had to read the novel the very minute the credits rolled and the house lights came up.

That hasn’t happened yet, though; and I still don’t know for sure how I would explain or define what a “real” art film is, nor whether or not it is worthwhile even to attempt to define the parameters of a “real” art film. That’s an essay for another time, if I can ever manage to write it. For now, I suppose it’s enough to say that Winter’s Bone is an incredible achievement - a nearly perfect film, and better than most of the other films I’ve watched this year combined. (In fact, after checking a list of films released in New York this year, it seems that I have seen a total of nine of them; and even the ones I had previously thought that I really liked paled in comparison to this one.)

Red Eye Café

So the Red Eye Café is back in business, this time in Broad Ripple inside a former Pizza King about half a mile east of the village on Broad Ripple Avenue. It was previously located downtown, at the corner of Meridian and Louisiana, next to Union Station. I can’t say for sure why it closed up shop downtown and moved north, but I have some guesses. (Oddly, perhaps, I don’t think the recession had anything to do with it.) It opened quite a few years ago as a 24-hour diner-style place that served everything on the menu all day - both breakfast and dinner items. I heard that David Letterman even plugged it once on the Late Show.

For awhile, it was pretty solid - the food was excellent, and the service was somewhere between decent and unremarkable; but somewhere along the line, the service went to hell. The food remained excellent - particularly the omelettes and the burgers, which were made with chopped onion and garlic rolled into every hand-formed patty - but the service got way slow, and it also got to the point that they would forget something or get something wrong literally every time we ate there. Eventually they changed their hours and started closing Sunday through Thursday nights, though they remained 24-hours over the weekend. They closed down for good well over a year ago.

And now they’re back. The posted hours indicate that they are trying the 24-hour model again, except for Sundays, when they close early (like most non-chain places in this goofy Bible Belt backwater) at 2pm. They’re far enough outside the village that the weekend drunks would not automatically stumble into the place after the bars close, the way they stumble into La Bamba (or probably some other places too, but back when I used to stumble out of Landsharks or the Casba at three in the morning, La Bamba was the only choice) - so I don’t imagine that this 24-hour thing is going to last very long, especially since, on entering the place, you see at once what the big difference is between this one and the downtown version.

They have eliminated table service, which automatically elevates payroll to the top of the list of potential reasons that they vacated the downtown space. The dining area is also smaller (but more compact), which would indicate that rent was an issue downtown, too. You order at the counter from a one-sided paper menu that has some of the same offerings as the previous restaurant, though the focus here is on those omelettes and burgers - everything else has either been reduced or eliminated.

They brought the food out pretty quickly, but it’s hard to say if this was because they’ve gotten better at it or because we were the only ones there who were eating. We got there at 1:30, just half an hour before closing time, and the only other person in the restaurant had finished his meal and was taking advantage of what I assume is their free wi-fi. The downtown location had free wi-fi, too - you could even see the Airport base station hanging on the wall next to the soda machine.

Alas…it just ain’t the same. The veggie omelette (onion, green pepper, tomato, mushroom, topped with nearly melted cheese) was a little bit bland, and gooey in the middle. This may have been the tomato and onion giving off their water, but it tasted suspiciously like egg that wasn’t all the way cooked. Amy seemed pleased with her Denver omelette, though both of us got home fries (the only accompaniment to the omelettes) that looked like they had been cooked in a pan or on a griddle that had not been cleared of the carbon scoring from previous cookings. The potatoes themselves were not burned, but there were burned bits on the plate. At the previous location, you got hash browns and toast with your omelette - and the omelette was far more substantial than what is on offer now.

They seem to be most focused on the omelettes now; and while not necessarily a bad thing, it also means that they are lining themselves up to compete directly with Petite Chou and Three Sisters for the omelette crowd. And friends and neighbors, that’s just crazy talk. Petite Chou is a little expensive for my taste, and Three Sisters can be slow - accurate, and super friendly, but sometimes slow - but it’s well worth it at either place, because the omelettes are amazing. I prefer Three Sisters because it’s a bit less expensive and the rickety old house it’s situated in ratchets the atmosphere up to eleven. Either way, Red Eye Café, in its current incarnation, doesn’t even come close to competing with either of those other two places.

1904 Broad Ripple Avenue
602-5500
redeyecafe.com

The Kids Are All Right

I’m vaguely tempted to say that this film might be just a little too affected, that it has a sort of surgical neatness to it that makes nearly every scene look like an advertisement for Pottery Barn or Food Network. The only dirt in the film seems to hover around Mark Ruffalo, a sperm donor-cum-father figure who could well be reprising his role in You Can Count On Me, if you take that character and cross him with Pig Pen from Peanuts and then add a strong hippie commune-slash-farmers market sensibility.

As a younger man, Paul was a sperm donor, for “sixty bucks a pop,” as he puts it. When asked why he donated, his reasons are, in order: because it was more fun than donating blood, and to help people who could not have kids of their own. He says the first because it’s true, and the second because he feels a certain pressure to give his actions - which resulted in two kids (one of whom poses the question) who want to contact him when they reach their late teens - a sense of nobility and purpose. He’s not quite honest enough to say that it was because he was broke, though we get the sense that this would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And quite frankly, it doesn’t really matter what his motivation was, because the story isn’t really about him. It involves him, but it is not about him. Joni and Laser are the two children that his sperm produced. Their moms are Jules and Nic, and the kids are technically half-brother and half-sister, since both Jules and Nic had one child apiece. But the couple raised both kids, and there was no contact with the sperm donor. Until now.

Laser wants to meet his dad because the only male influence on his life is his loser friend Clay and Clay’s loser father. For fun, Clay likes to skateboard off of rooftops and urinate on dogs. Laser understands, in a vague way, that his friend is a loser; but he doesn’t have any non-loser males with which to compare Clay, so he just sort of limps along on his own skateboard until Joni acquires her majority - and with it, the legal right to seek contact with cup-filler who sired her. And if she is only acting as Laser’s proxy when she initiates contact with Paul…well, that doesn’t really matter either. The story isn’t about their motivation for contacting their father.

In fact, the story isn’t really about anything at all. The characters are mostly fully formed as they are introduced, and none of them stray too far from their center as the film progresses. Paul is remarkably laid back for a restaurant owner and organic produce farmer, so it seems natural when he barely stumbles upon finding out that he is a father. He glides effortlessly into the space between responsible father and fun uncle, aided in no small part by Ruffalo’s boyish, “aw, shucks” demeanor. Joni and Laser respond to him more because he is fresh and new to them than because he is the other half of the biological cocktail that resulted in their being. After all, they already have a dad.

Sort of. One of their moms, Nic (Annette Bening), has a lot of stereotypical, though outdated, dad traits - she is the family breadwinner, she is stern and disapproving of a lot of things, she drinks too much. She married the cool, hippie, chronically unemployed longhair - Jules (Julianne Moore) - because Jules flirted with Nic when they first met, which was in some sort of supervisor-subordinate or teacher-student role some years ago. (I admit to journalistic ineptitude here both for having failed to take notes during the film and for having waited over a week to finish writing about it - a week ago, I probably would have remembered the circumstances of their meeting.) Actually, now I think about it, it may have been a doctor-patient situation.

So…opposites attract, strong women raise children, dad is absent but then shows up, and eventually there is drama. Director Lisa Cholodenko isn’t breaking any new ground here, but the point is not to break new ground. The point is to give interesting (if not, perhaps, original) characters a story, insert a conflict, and see how they deal with it - to watch the characters be the characters, to watch them change, to see life through someone else’s eyes. What makes this kind of film work is how the actors act, without the aid of computer-generated special effects, of suspense generated by negative space or a jarring score, or even of the kind of snappy writing that helped turn the trick for films like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine (or Away We Go, if you want to throw a bone to the distributor of The Kids Are All Right).

Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo are more than equal to the task. They have, between the three of them, simply a goofy aggregate of talent (not to mention seven Oscar nominations). I said at the top that I was tempted to say that this film has an overabundance of neatness to it, and I still think that’s true, even a week later; but that neatness allows the audience to see the subtlety of the acting at work, and that’s where this film really hits the mark.

Sign a Petition - NPR on the Front Row

Apparently the people who decide who gets seated where in the White House press room will soon be making a decision as to who gets the seat vacated by Helen Thomas. The contenders are NPR, Fox News, and Bloomberg News. MoveOn has a petition for folks to sign if they support giving the seat to NPR. For anyone who might be interested, click here to sign the petition.

Deep Thoughts #38

This could be socialism - or just people helping people. Like in, you know, society. The right persecutes that which they do not understand.

Deep Thoughts #37

Would Obama have to refudiate his oath of office to funnel money to the Palin campaign? If she’s nominated, then he wins re-election easily.

Deep Thoughts #36 - Special Topical Cuyahoga River Edition

In memory of James Gammon, I am briefly re-naming the blog to honor the business Charlie Donovan poached when he hired Lou Brown as manager.

I Am Love

I don’t think anyone in my family is Italian. My dad’s side of the family is from North Jersey, where there are certainly plenty of Italians, but Peddie is a Scottish name. Dad must have had quite a lot of exposure to Italian culture growing up, though, because the influence of that culture is readily apparent in his speech and in the foods he likes to eat. That Y chromosome hasn’t mutated much in me, because I’m pretty much an idiot for pasta and mob stories. I Am Love is neither pasta nor a love story, but it is a movie that was shot on location in various parts of Italy; and it stars Tilda Swinton, for whom I am also an idiot.

This would probably still have been a fine movie if they had taken away everything but the sweeping cinematography of the shooting locations - Dolceacqua, Milan, and San Remo - but there was also the excellent starring role for Swinton, who played Emma Recchi, the almost stir crazy Russian wife of an Italian textiles heir. The story is pretty standard - bored older woman falls for passionate, creative younger man while cold, distant husband is out of town; but it’s freshened up a bit by the young lover’s occupation (Antonio is a chef, and apparently a pretty good one) and how he seduces her with his food as well as his body, and by a nostalgia for her home country that begins to emerge in Emma. It’s also somewhat refreshing that neither Emma nor Antonio are drop dead gorgeous, and that the sex isn’t the only attraction.

There are love scenes, of course, but there are also cooking scenes and outdoors scenes - lots of outdoors scenes, in those beautiful Italian locations - and a real sense from Swinton’s Emma of just how much of herself she has suppressed over the course of her marriage to a man with whom she clearly is no longer in love. A subplot concerning Emma’s daughter Elisabetta, who reveals her homosexuality to her mother but says that she will not tell her father because he would not understand, reinforces the idea that women sacrifice their happiness when they feel compelled to suppress their true selves in order to maintain the stability of the stultified, patriarchal family structure. (It’s also a backhanded slap at “traditional,” conservative thinking - not that many of those people are going to see this movie, since it ain’t in American.)

The only problem with the film - and it’s a not insubstantial one - is the injection of the primary conflict that drives the story to its climax. I had read in several places that this film is a melodrama, and that was concerning because melodrama usually doesn’t work very well for me; but I didn’t detect much in the way of melodrama through the first two acts. It turns out that the reason for this is because they were saving it all for the third act. The primary conflict in question, of course, is the revelation of Emma’s infidelity; and a couple of established plot points combine to make the actual reveal pretty effective. It’s from that point to the end that the film starts to go off the rails. Swinton mostly holds it together, though, and there’s a very effective scene, with her daughter, that mitigates much of the almost slapstick feel of the end of the film.

And then it ends perfectly - at least for me. It doesn’t happen very often that I get to a point in a film where I’m thinking, “End now, end now, end now,” and then it does, in fact, end. This one did, though, and cut right to the credits. The lights came up, and most of the other people in the auditorium started muttering with surprise. I heard one person say, “I guess that’s it, huh?” There’s a tiny little quasi-scene, at the beginning of the credits, which really didn’t work, and sort of undermined that excellent ending; but it wasn’t really enough to take away from how good the film was overall. It is, however, along with the high melodrama in the third act and the clumsy climax, enough to keep the film seated in the very good, but not great, section - but just barely.

Solitary Man

This is the story of Ben Kalmen (Michael Douglas), a former car dealer - indeed, New York City’s “honest car dealer,” whatever the hell that means - whose life seems to be descending through Dante’s circles of hell on a lubed luge. He’s lost his dealership and his wife (played by Susan Sarandon), most of the respect he has built up over the years in the business and social communities in New York, and will in short order be losing his girlfriend and his apartment. Is it posible that he could even wind up serving milkshakes at the neighborhood deli in the town where he went to college?

Yes! It is possible! How? How, you say, could such a thing be possible for someone who had so much, who was so loved and respected and successful? He was on TV for crying out loud! People knew him because he was the car dealer whose commercials they saw on TV. (That’s how a lot of people relate to local attorney Ken Nunn, but whatever.) The answer to the question comes at the end of the film, and there’s a hint at the beginning; but mostly what we have is a series of scenes in which Ben Kalmen makes bad decision after bad decision, along the way using his salesman’s pitch almost as though he wants to justify being an unemployed salesman.

Technically, this is not bad. Douglas plays it well, almost making you believe that a dude who’s pushing seventy can still seduce the barely-legal set. With a couple of exceptions, the rest of the cast exists only with respect to Ben’s character. Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker, and Danny DeVito are mostly wasted as Ben’s ex-wife, current girlfriend, and friend from college whom he hasn’t seen in thirty years. His wife and friend are more sympathetic to him than the girlfriend, which serves to support one of the film’s overall themes, that the comfort and love you build up over time in a relationship with a person (whether lover or only friend, and regardless of gender) is far more important, far more durable, than retaining in perpetuity the ability always to hit it with the hottest girl in any room.

This is the lesson that Ben needs to learn, the knowledge that can help him start to build a baseline of stability in his life. Most of the film is concerned with prodding him gently in this direction, with help along the way from a surprisingly patient array of people who always manage to be there to pick him up when he stumbles. Two of the less wasted characters are his daughter (Jenna Fischer) and a college kid he manages awkwardly to befriend (Jesse Eisenberg). They share more scenes with Ben than the other characters, and see a broader range of the Ben Kalmen experience - which means that they are both charmed and taken advantage of by him. That they remain supportive through to the end says something both about which is the real Ben Kalmen and about how well Michael Douglas has been able to sell what should be a thoroughly unlikable character.

The glaring problem is that there is no real causal relationship between the downward spiral and what got him going on it in the first place - at least, not until the end. Once that explanation comes, it is surprisingly satisfying (particularly given the somewhat cloying way in which it is rendered), but I’m not sure that it’s enough finally to anchor a film that has drifted somewhat aimlessly for so long. This type of cynical, world-weary character seems to cry out for a voice-over monologue, a device that would give the audience some sense of the true nature of this character, and what he thinks about his life, how he understands the things he’s doing. Ben Kalmen spends plenty of time in this film waxing philosophical (and giving advice that he almost never realizes is going to wind up becoming bad advice), but you almost always get the feeling that he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Having said all that, the ending does work reasonably well, even if it is a little too cute and cloying; the final shot is a little bit clumsy and not entirely convincing; and the result is a film that doesn’t quite achieve what it has set out to achieve. Directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien have a good go at it, though; and they certainly give Michael Douglas plenty of room to operate, but a couple of major flaws in the script is too much for even his considerable talents to overcome.

Walking the New Leg of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail

The newest completed leg of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail runs from the intersection of Park Avenue, Mass Ave, and Walnut Street on the east (in the Chatham Arch section, near Yats) to the intersection of Indiana Avenue, St. Clair Street, and Paca Street on the west (just west of Ransom Place, near IUPUI). It was officially opened on June 18th with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and a section of it - the Glick Peace Walk along Walnut Street between Meridian and Capitol - was officially opened earlier this week.

Amy, Jackson, and I walked the length of the new section this past Monday evening (June 28th), after I got home from work, and found it to be an excellent little walk. The east end of it, in the Chatham Arch section of downtown, has sort of an old world feel to it - like you might find Lady and the Tramp sharing a plate of pasta in an alley somewhere along the line. From the intersection of Park/Mass/Walnut, you follow Walnut Street west for a couple of blocks, to New Jersey Street. Then the trail drops down a block to North Street, which goes for three blocks to Pennsylvania Street at the southeast corner of the American Legion Mall.

This part isn’t “finished” like the rest of the cultural trail, but the entire section of sidewalk bounding the mall is considered part of the cultural trail - and then the finished section picks up again at Walnut Street west of Meridian. The next two blocks consist of the Glick Peace Walk, which honors various historical Americans with descriptions of their lives and sculptures depicting their faces. Then Walnut Street continues west until it conveys you across a wooden bridge over the Canal Walk and then along a curved path past the Canal Court apartments and around a little bend that puts you out on St. Clair Street.

Facing west on Walnut Street at Capitol Avenue

As I may have mentioned before, I'm not a professional photographer, and I was struggling with the sun while taking most of the pictures during this walk. The shot below was interesting because of the way that the yield sign caught and reflected the light from the camera's flash. The sign itself is not actually illuminated.

Bridge over the canal, seen from Walnut Street

View of the Canal Walk from the Cultural Trail

View of the Canal Walk from the Cultural Trail

Then you cross West Street and follow St. Clair a bit further, along the western edge of the Ransom Place neighborhood, until you come to Indiana Avenue, where the trail does a bit of a switchback southeast along Indiana Avenue and comes to what, for now, is the end of the line. According to the trail map, that western end will eventually follow Blackford Street south through part of the IUPUI campus and White River State Park, almost to Washington Street. The eastern end will eventually work its way up Mass Ave toward 10th Street, where it will hook up with Monon Trail.

Facing southeast along Indiana Avenue

Mother and Child

Almost nothing of what annoyed me about this movie actually makes it a bad movie; indeed, it may even be that the things I find irksome about the film are things that others will find endearing about it, just as someone else might well find admirable the stylistic…uh, quirks, I guess…that I thought were, I don’t know, distracting at best and downright annoying at worst. And in a way it’s sort of a shame, because the story begins rather well. The script is dry and somewhat leaden, and yet the characters begin to bloom almost at once, which says more about the acting talents of Naomi Watts and Annette Bening than it does about the abilities of Rodrigo García as screenwriter and director.

Karen (Bening) is a middle-aged woman who got pregnant when she was fourteen and gave the baby up for adoption. Elizabeth (Watts) is the daughter. The two have never met and have not the slightest inkling of the other, apart from knowing that there is, in fact, an other. Karen is so unwilling to let other people get close to her that she almost comes across as comical. Elizabeth is a lawyer with her eyes on the prize and the ruthless nature of someone who is willing to say or do anything to get what she wants.

Paul (Samuel L. Jackson) is Elizabeth’s boss, the owner of what is, to all appearances, a rather tony law firm in Los Angeles. He should probably know better than to sleep with one of his attorneys, but to say that he goes to bed with her almost effortlessly less than a week after hiring her isn’t even saying it the right way. It would be more accurate to say that once she decides she wants to fuck him, he gives in without a fight.

Paco (Jimmy Smits) is a co-worker of Karen’s who is obviously - though quite inexplicably - smitten with Karen from the moment they are first shown together onscreen. Their interactions are uncomfortable at first, but eventually she allows herself to hold his hand, and then tell him about the daughter she gave up and how her entire identity now is wrapped up in regretting her decision to give her daughter up for adoption; and then in the next scene Karen and Paco are getting married.

Seriously.

The young black couple going through the process to adopt a baby because they can’t have kids of their own seems like a gratuitous subplot at first - and yet oddly provides one of the few attempts for the film to wrestle with the meaty philosophical issues that should (but don’t) provide the backbone of the story. During their interview with the woman who will give up her baby, the prospective adopting mother admits, under direct examination, that she does not believe in God. The same topic is later raised (and allowed, as here, to just sort of fade away) during a picnic with Paco, Karen, and Paco’s daughter from a previous marriage. I guess we could assume that García meant to do more in these scenes than identify a few token non-believers, but I can’t really imagine that anyone would buy that argument.

Both Bening and Watts play their characters cold and detached, in age-appropriate ways. Karen’s harsh manner toward the daughter of the woman who is both her housekeeper and her ailing mother’s caregiver demonstrates both the awkwardness of someone who has never raised children and a latent resentment of the fact that this woman has a child in the first place. There is little subtlety in this misplaced expression of the guilt Karen still feels at having abandoned her daugher thirty-seven years ago; and if it’s not obvious enough for you, the connective tissue of the scenes when Karen, in voice-over, writes letters to a daughter she has never known should help to wiggle any misaligned blocks into a Tetris.

There are Catholic overtones to the film, though they mostly serve to focus your attention on García’s rather heavy-handed point about God’s plan. I imagine there is more than one Catholic adoption agency in Los Angeles, but for the sake of convenience - a crutch of religion, but whatever - all of the characters whose lives are wrapped up in adoption go to the same one. That makes it easier for all of the pieces to fall together at the end. The film ends happily, of course, though there is a token tragic moment. After all, there would not be Christianity without a carpenter nailed to a wooden cross (ain’t that ironic?) - also without Roman emperor Constantine but again, whatever.

I don’t really want to give away the tragic part, but I can’t say much more about the story without doing so. The story is constructed as a fable, along the lines of the theme that everything fits into God’s plan. Everything works out in the end, except for the parts that don’t work out because they would put an extra wrinkle into the resolution - and might have forced García to come up with a plot point that could not be easily glossed over and swept away by saying it’s all in God’s plan.

The inherent danger in using the God’s plan theme to tell a story is that you can wind up using it as a get out of jail free card in order not to have to deal with issues that would come up in the non-fanciful world. The biggest instance of that problem in this film comes early, when Elizabeth beds Paul. I suppose it’s possible that no one else in the firm ever notices anything even slightly inappropriate going on between them; but I can’t say that for sure, because we never see any of their life at work apart from brief conversations in her office. Most of the action in the film takes place in houses or apartments, closed spaces where García can exert tremendous control over what takes place. Outside influence, of course, would damage the very thin veneer of authenticity that encloses his utopian City of Angels.

Indeed, one of the annoying things about the film overall is how brief most of the scenes are - you get the part you’re supposed to see, and then we go on to the next scene. It’s almost as though the characters exist in just enough of a vacuum for García to convince himself that his story is plausible. Suspension of disbelief, however, is for things like ten-foot-tall blue people, cars that transform into robots, and Jim Carrey characters who don’t hurt themselves; for a human drama to work, the characters and situations must be authentic. That is not the case here - at least, not after the first act. In order for this story to work, you have to believe that God works in mysterious ways. Otherwise, it’s just an implausible mess.

It’s also insulting for García to “out” two of his characters as non-believers and then not give their belief any kind of attention or relevance in the story - as though he mentioned them just as tokens. Then again, he’s peppered the film with an almost equal mix of whites, blacks, and Latinos, so it’s entirely possible that he’s playing the quota game with faith, too. It would fit in with the overall theme of this Hallmark Hall of Fame hunk of drivel.

Having said all that, however, I should also say that the film is not without its nice moments. Much of the characterization in the first act works very well, particularly in Elizabeth. Watts is so good in this first third that I found myself thinking Oscar nomination, at least for a bit. Once the film goes off the rails, though, it’s hard to believe that the Academy would sully its good name by considering this film for anything. Even the friggin’ score is derivative. If composer Ed Shearmur wasn’t listening to the score from Revolutionary Road over and over again while coming up with this, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

Deep Thoughts #35

You disapprove of how Obama handles the oil spill AND you bitch that government interferes. What lives in your head where a brain should be?

Parthenon Gyros

We almost had lunch at Puccini’s today - almost. We actually parked in front of the Puccini’s at 86th and Ditch and got out of the car…and then Amy looked across the way and saw something called Parthenon Gyros and wanted to go take a look. The menu posted on the door looked like pretty much every other menu posted on the doors of who knows how many Greek/Mediterranean restaurants in the city. It seemed to be fairly reasonably priced, which is generally my only complaint about Greek restaurants here in the city, so we went in and sat down.

The whole restaurant is one long dining room with blue walls and exposed ductwork painted black, with a kitchen area in the back and restrooms that you have to pass through the kitchen area to access. There were two other parties in the restaurant when we arrived, and they were already eating. We were seated quickly and had our orders taken quickly - but the food was a long time coming. While we waited on a gyros plate for Amy, a Parthenon souvlaki for me, and chicken fingers for Jackson, four - count ‘em, four - different takeout orders were placed and filled, the customers for those orders in the doors and back out again while we waited on our food.

That might not have been an issue if the food was awesome - or even if it was just very good; but it was neither. The lunch portion of the Parthenon souvlaki is one skewer of grilled lamb and vegetables, over a bed of rice. There was plenty of neon yellow rice, though it was undercooked and had no apparent flavor once you factored out the parsley with which it was dusted; and the lone skewer of lamb was unimpressive. It was reasonably flavorful, but the chunks of lamb were cut unevenly and were therefore cooked unevenly - but even the thickest chunks passed for well done, and the smaller ones were dry.

Amy’s gyros, on the other hand, would have fed her twice; and there was even some left after I sampled some of what she did not finish. They tasted like gyros, but weren’t anything to write home about. Both dishes were served with pita bread that had clearly been microwaved seconds before being served and with their allegedly “famous” cucumber sauce - which might have been more than just chopped cucumbers and sour cream, but probably wasn’t. One dish was $7.50 and the other was $7.75 - I don’t recall which - but the difference in portion size between her massive plate of gyros and my souvlaki was astonishing.

When we got the check, I asked if this restaurant was in any way related to a restaurant called Parthenon that used to do business in Broad Ripple - and I was told that they were both run by the same family. The one in Broad Ripple, which formerly occupied the upstairs part of the space where the Casba lives, closed long ago. We ate there once, and I remember thinking the portions were small, but that the food was quite good. I don’t recall the service. Price and portion size were the problems with the Broad Ripple location, and they’ve solved the price issue at the new joint; but they’ve got a whole new problem now, with the service.

I almost always find something about a restaurant that would make me want to go back a second time - regardless of how bad the first experience was - because I generally don’t think it’s fair to judge a place based on a single experience, whether good or bad; but there was nothing on the menu that I thought I’d like to come back for, and we hardly ever get out to the Greenbriar area. I get the feeling that this place won’t be open long enough for me to give them another go, even if I wanted to do so.

1486 West 86th Street
228-1111

Why Conservatives Suck #2

So let me see if I understand this…a group of conservative fools in Illinois wants to sue Indiana over our Do Not Call list. The group wants to use robocalls in the upcoming November election and objects to the strength of the Indiana law. They claim that a more lenient federal law trumps the Indiana law.

I thought the conservatives were the ones who were constantly rattling their sabers for states’ rights during the whole health care debate, the ones bleating like lost sheep about the 10th Amendment and sounding like little more than impotent wind socks. Now they want a strong state law to be struck down by a weak federal one.

Bonus: They want the federal law to apply to an issue that should be handled at the state level, whereas they wanted state law to prevail in health care - which is obviously a national issue that should be subject to federal law.

If there’s any kind of group, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, for conservative people who want to get their lives back on track, I’d be glad to donate to it - or to its founding, if it does not already exist - so that we can get these dolts the help that they need.

Deep Thoughts #34

So people complained and got the car ban on the Circle cancelled. I’m SHOCKED that citizens here could be so lazy, stupid, and shortsighted.

Another Series of Jackson Birthday Pictures

Today is Jackson's third birthday, so here's another batch of pictures from each of his birthdays. I also have one from today where he tried to bite his birthday cake before we had a chance to cut it. I haven't beamed that one from the camera to the computer yet, but it might wind up here eventually.

Red Lion Grog House

We roped my mom into watching Jackson again, and snuck out for dinner - and to get the grumpy little monkey a birthday present. (When he was very, very small, I used to say that he looked like a grumpy little monkey when he would get a grumpy expression on his face; then it turned into a running joke for any time he was cranky; and now that he has started to incorporate identity into his consciousness, he becomes indignant whenever I call him a grumpy little monkey, saying “I”m not a grumpy little monkey! I’m Jackson!” It’s way cuter when he says it.)

A review of this place in NUVO a few weeks back made mention of a stuffed portobello with herbs and mozzarella cheese and roasted red pepper sauce and well…yeah, you had me at hello. They’re going for an English pub look, but I don’t imagine there are many pubs in England that look like the old Gusto! pizza place in Fountain Square, except with a high wooden seat-back/wall thingy added to turn about half the tables into “booths.” I could be wrong about that, though. I’ve never been to England, so I don’t know what their pubs look like. Red Lion Grog House is on Virginia Avenue, where Gusto! used to be in the Murphy Arts Building. (I don’t know for sure that Gusto! closed rather than moved elsewhere, but that looks to be the case.)

The decor is pretty sparse - though the requisite Newcastle Brown Ale mirror sign is there - and I still get the feeling that it’s the kind of place where Michael Corleone could come for a sit-down with Sollozzo and the dirty cop. They don’t nail English pub here nearly as well as the folks at Chatham Tap on Mass Ave, but it was neat and clean; and you can do worse than evoke The Godfather, as far as I’m concerned. It was also early in the dinner hour in the middle of the week, so there weren’t many people there. In such a situation, the service should be excellent - and it was. Our server (unimaginatively described as “Day Bar” on the check - and all apologies if that’s her actual name) was friendly, efficient, non-intrusive, and there when we needed her.

The menu’s not quite English pub either - it’s more like American gastropub, with a nod across the pond that covers a smattering of dishes including bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, and fish and chips. American fare includes a robust lineup of burgers, plenty of chicken, wings on the appetizer menu, and the ubiquitous reuben. I opted for the stuffed portobello ($11.99) that was talked up in the NUVO review - two mushroom caps stuffed with garlic, herbs, and mozzarella cheese, baked until bubbly, and served atop a roasted red pepper sauce and alongside garlic mashed potatoes and fresh steamed broccoli. The portobellos were thin, and the flavors of the red pepper sauce, garlic, and herbs were so strong that the flavor of the mushroom was lost in the shuffle - but those other flavors were excellent, and the texture was good, too. Perfectly melted cheese, just starting to brown and bubble on top, is the sign of a deft hand in the kitchen.

Amy had the shepherd’s pie ($11.49), which is basically vegetable and ground beef stew baked under a layer of mashed potatoes. My buddy Scott’s mom makes the best shepherd’s pie ever, and I have yet to encounter an example of this dish anywhere else that is even close to what she used to serve up. Amy seemed to like it, though she was only able to finish about half of it. I had one bite, and it tasted vaguely like sloppy joes. Nothing served at a restaurant should ever taste like sloppy joes. Ever.

I don’t know if this place has got the legs for a long run in Fountain Square. Apart from a handful of mainstays like Santorini Greek Kitchen and Peppy Grill, Fountain Square is very much a revolving door when it comes to places to eat. Add in the facts that British food (not to say just English) is well represented downtown and that the bar-and-grill concept has been done to death, and I would think that the odds are not in favor of the Red Lion Grog House. It’s not that they’re doing anything wrong - it’s just that all the things they’re doing right are already being done elsewhere, and are being done there better. It’s hard enough to convince the culinarily non-adventurous citizens of Indianapolis - and that’s the vast majority of them, I’m sorry to say - to bypass the national chain restaurants; making them brave the sometimes sketchy environs of Fountain Square might just be a bridge too far. And that’s too bad, because the food is excellent.

1043 Virginia Avenue
822-4764
www.redliongroghouse.com

Deep Thoughts #33 - Special Topical College Basketball Edition

Hear that sound, Jim? That’s Kelvin Sampson laughing at you - at least until you get your slap on the wrist and get right back on the phone.

Burma VJ Screening to Benefit Exodus Refugee Immigration

The documentary Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, never played in Indianapolis (though we will have it available for purchase on DVD, sometime next month), and I’m not sure that it has ever been screened here, either. That will change, however, on June 18th, 2010, when the film will screen at the Central Library downtown as part of a fundraiser for Exodus Refugee Immigration, an outfit that helps refugees transition to a new life here in Indiana. For the bargain basement price of $20, you get to see the film and attend a question and answer session afterwards.

The phrase “Live simply so that others may simply live” has really begun to resonate with me in recent years, especially when I read an article in Newsweek or TIME or hear a BBC report on NPR about any of the billions - literally, billions - of people in the world who have no choice but to do their best to get by on so little that most people in America have no real way to comprehend how rich we are in relation to the rest of the world. I’m not against having “stuff,” but I also think it’s a good idea to stop every now and then and really think about how much of that stuff we actually need in order to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

Click here for tickets to the screening event. Exodus also has one of those fancy Facebook pages, and there is an astonishing aggregation of information available at the Online Burma Library.

Deep Thoughts #32

Since the Tea Party looney tunes have zero understanding of U.S. government, how can their calling something “un-American” have any meaning?

Writing Exercise - New York, I Love You

[05.07.10] I watched the first thirty minutes of New York, I Love You tonight after I got home from work and balanced my checkbook and emptied the dehumidifier and it really got me into the mood for writing after the segment where Ethan Hawke plays a writer and talks to this woman he thinks is married until he starts to describe making sweet sweet love to her in a way that will prove he knows how to find her G spot and then she tells him she’s a hooker and gives him her card with her phone number and website on it and says she’s really looking forward to hearing from him and he ends the segment by saying fuck me and I still totally respond to New York going on six years since the only time I was there for real and it was only four days but I don’t know if there are four days in a row that ever inspired me as much as those four days we were in New York for my uncle’s wedding in 2004 and stayed at the 414 in Hell’s Kitchen and walked all the hell over the island and then I stopped watching the movie but left my headphones on and switched to music and listened to Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence album because I had talked to Dione about it at work tonight and then I started writing first this little piece about getting into the mood for writing from watching the movie and then the novel I have been working on and I teased my way through a slow Mafia section that may or may not end with one of the rival family’s capos whacking one of the guys on his crew for being too much of a loose cannon but I have to work in the taboo against taking out a made guy and somehow avoid making it necessary for the any of the characters to have cell phones and that part is way harder than you might think but I have to fight off the fatigue from this week of taking care of Jackson who got a viral stomach flu from someone at the day care where he goes to school and eventually I fight off the fatigue and wind up getting down over one thousand words in the novel and that is more than I have put down in one sitting in quite awhile and most of them I think are good words although it will take going back over them tomorrow night before I start writing again to know for sure whether they are good or if they were just written down in haste for the purpose of having gotten down some words at all [05.12.10] and all of that was five days ago now and I just got around to watching the last half of New York, I Love You tonight and unfortunately I did not respond to the second half quite the way I responded to the first half although I can say that overall I liked the film but that I did not always pay the appropriate amount of attention to it so I added it to the My List section of my account on the library’s website so that I can go back to it sometime and see if paying attention to the whole thing from beginning to end will make the movie open up a little bit more for me and I also added The Headless Woman to the My List section because I also failed to pay the appropriate amount of attention to that film when I had it from Netflix a number of weeks ago and I had a moment of pause there for just a second because I used the word also twice in a short span just now and it reminded of something I read in Poets & Writers many years ago in which Chuck Palahniuk defended the practice of repeating words like that if the repetition fits with the flow of what you are writing and though I am not sure if the repeated use of also in this case precisely fits the flow I am leaving it that way because when I re-read the thing from beginning to now it sounded good in my head and anyway I was having trouble trying to come up with something to put in place of one of the instances of also that did seem to fit the flow and now as I get down toward the end of this particular exercise I am not entirely sure which purpose has been served in the writing of it because I began by writing about how watching the first thirty minutes of the movie got me in the mood for writing but then I got off on a long tangent about writing about writing which turned it into sort of a meta-exercise and there are lots of little random things going on in it too which give it something of a stream-of-consciousness feel that could maybe translate into mumblecore if it were to be made into a movie but it would be an awfully short movie and probably no one would watch it and there goes another tangent and in the end it might just end up being that far too much of this exercise whether it is a meta-exercise or just an ordinary exercise was devoted to seeing once again if I could string together a really long bit of prose limited to a certain number of words and have it make a reasonable amount of sense and also be grammatically correct without there being any punctuation in it at all apart from the period at the end and I believe that I have mostly succeeded at least with that part of it and the exact number of words including the two bracketed bits indicating the dates counting as one word each is one thousand.

Deep Thoughts #31 - Special Topical Supreme Court Edition

Hey Retardlicans! It’s right there in Kagan’s title. Socialism! Think of all the other simple minds to frighten with non-contextual slander!

Walking the Pennsy Trail

No pictures this time, but today we walked the entire length of the Pennsy Trail, which could one day be to the east side what the Monon Trail is to the north side - although it’s probably more likely that the Pennsy Trail will be more along the lines of the Pleasant Run Trail, with both being thought of as red-headed stepchildren of the Monon. We haven’t done the Pleasant Run Trail in a long time, but the Pennsy Trail is constructed in exactly the same way as the Monon - former rail lines that have been paved over, with the sides landscaped and a red stripe down the middle.

The current leg of the Pennsy Trail runs for a little more than a mile, from Arlington Avenue on the west to Shortridge Road on the east. It took us a little over an hour to do the round trip, with a few stops here and there to ply Jackson with snacks. When it’s completed, it will extend well into Hancock County, passing through much of my old stomping grounds on the far east side. Those stomping grounds are now, sadly, a bit distressed - but a well-populated pedestrian and bicycle trail could be a good first step in turning that around. More information on the Pennsy Trail at Indy Greenways and Indiana Trails.

Deep Thoughts #30

Please make sure any spilled oil in the Gulf is properly documented if it’s shipped to Arizona. Those racists might send it back, otherwise.

More Rush News

I posted a blog about a month ago about a new Rush documentary that was going to have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York; and yesterday I read on the magic Internets that the film had the won the audience award at said festival. (The film wasn’t in competition for any other awards.) I also discovered that it has been picked up by a distributor, D&E Entertainment, and that they’re going to take the film out into theatres here in the near future. I didn't notice this when I looked at the link yesterday, but I see now that Indianapolis is listed as one of the cities where the film will play. That probably means that we'll play it, but I don't know that for sure.

The Rush website has a link to the movie poster here. Click here for some aggregated news about the film on IMDb. I hesitate even to post a link for this next thing, which is a Rolling Stone interview with Geddy - because Rolling Stone should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell because of their blatant anti-Rush bias; and I sort of hate that Geddy would sit down with Rolling Stone, but what are you going to do? An interview is an interview, and I’m always interested in what the boys have to say, even if they’re saying it to a piece of shit magazine.

Deep Thoughts #29

In the current issue of TIME magazine, Ted Nugent says Sarah Palin has an “Herculean work ethic” - an interesting way to describe a quitter.

City Island

Has anybody ever taken the time to mention to Andy Garcia that he’s not Italian? Doesn’t really matter, I guess, but this cat has done an awful lot of movies in which he plays Italian dudes, gangsters, or guys who take down gangsters. Here he plays an Italian dude who is a corrections officer in the Bronx. He really wants to be an actor, though; and he’s taking lessons on the side for that, but he tells his wife he’s off playing poker. His wife, of course, thinks he’s with another woman. Vince Rizzo (Garcia), his wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies), and their two kids all smoke - and every one of them hides it from the rest of the family. Mom and Dad each think the other quit.

There are more movies about dysfunctional families out there than you can shake a stick - or a cliché - at; but I think I’m going to argue that this isn’t one of them, although I also think that it thinks it wants to be. Movies about dysfunctional families take themselves awfully seriously though, and this one is a bit too light-hearted (and, oddly, kinetic) to give the impression that it takes itself too seriously. It’s a little melodramatic in the first reel, but then smoothes out; and the ending is surprisingly organic and effective for one that is foreshadowed to be a slapdash pulling together of loose ends.

All of the Rizzos begin the film with at least one secret (other than the smoking), except for Joyce, who acquires her secret later. In addition to the acting class, Vince has a close relationship with a fellow student (Emily Mortimer, whose character has secrets of her own), which is totally platonic and completely forthright but which would appear highly suspicious - if anyone else knew about it; and he also has a son from a previous marriage - who has earned a provisional parole, from the prison where Vince works, provided he has somewhere to go. Vince Jr. has a non-sexual fetish for plump women who like to be fed, and his sister Vivian (possibly the two most imaginatively named children not fathered by George Foreman) works as a stripper so she can earn the money she needs to get back into the college she lost her scholarship to and was kicked out of because she got caught smoking pot in her dorm room.

When I say the film is kinetic, what I have in mind is the editing that establishes these secrets and reveals how well-hidden (or not) they are from the rest of the family by their keepers. We get it already - all of this stuff is happening all at once, and no one seems to be the wiser about anyone else’s goings on; and besides behing heavy-handed, the hectic setup does the film a disservice - by constantly poking the viewer with a jump cut to another ridiculous scene, director Raymond De Felitta leads us toward the inevitable (though admittedly funny) ending that brings all the characters together for a series of secret-revelations. You may well miss the fact that Vince Rizzo is learning quite a bit about himself and evolving as a husband and father.

Garcia gets high marks for pulling this off in spite of the film’s apparent predilection to list toward each scene’s slapstick-iest part - and for bringing real gravity to the film’s climax, when he reveals his true identity to his son. He gets a little too bombastic and melodramatic in some of the early scenes (especially at the dinner table); but these are also the scenes that show the film taking itself the most seriously, and the acting fits the tone here, even if that tone hasn’t quite found its proper footing yet. Once the tone shifts (correctly) to the farcical, everything - including Garcia’s acting - loosens up, and the film begins to bloom.

I could have done without the nod to God at the end, but what are you going to do? Pointing the ending of an art film toward a mainstream crowd is counterproductive, but not a fatal misstep here; at least it’s not a very long scene. It's the smarmy resolution to Mortimer's character that ultimately seats this film in the very good - but not great - section.

Deep Thoughts #28

Seth MacFarlane’s shows are for people who think South Park too erudite, but he seems to understand evil, racist law when he hears about it.