Untimely reviews

Chris Rea’s “Fool (If You Think it’s Over)” is one of those songs that I can’t skip through. If it starts playing on the radio just as I’m parking, then I’m going to sit in the car until it’s over. 

This song was popular in 1978. I was 12, and I remember hearing it all the time and not particularly liking it. I liked up-tempo pop and disco at the time. “Fool” is not quite a ballad but it’s not really a pop song either. And something about it felt off. At 12, I was quite aware of creepy men, and I thought that the song’s voice was that of a creepy older man chasing after a young girl. But I was wrong. The lyrics that I thought were creepy turned out to be actually really sweet when you know the backstory. And thanks to the internet, I know the backstory. 

I hadn’t heard “Fool (If You Think it’s Over”) in literally decades, but it played on the radio one day, and I listened to it all the way through for the sake of nostalgia. And then something about the song grabbed me, so I listened to it again, and then again. Then I looked up Chris Rea, who was a pretty successful singer and musician in his native England. When he wrote “Fool (If You Think it’s Over),” he hoped to convince Al Green to record it, but the record company liked his demo recording and insisted that he record the song himself. It ended up being his only hit in the US.    

The real story, though, is the song’s inspiration. Chris Rea wrote “Fool” about his younger sister, Paula, who was heartbroken after her breakup with her first boyfriend. “The pains of 17/unreal they’re only dreams” is just the sort of infuriating thing a know-it-all big brother would say to a younger sister. But it’s clear somehow that he doesn’t mean “unreal” in the sense of imaginary or unimportant. The singer knows that the girl’s pain is real in the moment, but he also knows that it won’t last and that it won’t have any real impact on her life.  He wants her to know that she’ll move on and that things will get better. 

Context changes everything. “I’ll buy your first good wine..ooh we’ll have a real good time” was the line that made me think that the song was about a predator trying to groom a young girl. Instead, it’s a brother promising his younger sister that there’s so much more ahead of her - both good times and bad - than a teenage romance. And now, every time I hear that song, I imagine a brother consoling his younger sister over a bottle of wine. And I imagine the young girl cheering up and realizing that her brother is right and that the boy wasn’t worthy of her in the first place. And I imagine that the brother and sister actually do have a real good time. I hope that Chris and Paula Rea had a real good time. 

*****

During the early pandemic months in 2020, I started to watch “The Americans,” and I didn’t make it past episode 1. After a brutal rape 20 minutes in, I turned it off, absolutely furious. I’m tired of sexual violence as a plot point. Oddly enough, those of us who have actually endured it (and trust me that there are more of us than you think) don’t find brutal rape scenes very entertaining. 

Anyway, I started watching the show again recently. I skipped that scene, knowing that it was coming, but of course there was other sexual violence to come. And the almost lost me again, and not only for that reason. I just had a hard time believing in some of the period details and in the premise itself. But it started to grow on me. A few episodes in, I began to see how well it captures the period; not so much in visual details (but many of the visuals, especially the fashion, are spot-on)  but in the settled comfortable certainty of the upper middle class characters and their unshakeable belief in the mid-century idea of America. Then I watched three consecutive episodes when I was sick (again!) and the constant sex and violence and family drama felt repetitive. 

But the acting is absolutely brilliant. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich and the brilliant Alison Wright and Annet Mahendru. And while I still think that the sexual content is largely gratuitous and exploitative, the story and the pacing and the world that it creates are absorbing and compelling. Bottom line: This is a show best consumed a little at a time, with long breaks in between. 

Side note about Matthew Rhys - I’d heard somewhere that he was Welsh, but I’d never seen him play anything but Americans - mostly cold-blooded killers or dour misanthropes (I loved his performance as Lloyd in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). I guessed that maybe he was born in Wales but raised in the US. Then I saw an interview with him, and that man is as Welsh as Dylan Thomas and also an absolute delight. I imagine a director saying something like “I need an actor to play a remorseless, pitiless murderer and/or an absolute miserable son of a bitch” and the casting director responding “I know! Let’s get that charming Welsh chap who sounds like he spends his days singing with his friends in a cozy seaside pub!” Uncanny. Matthew Rhys is really good at his job. 

*****

Our neighborhood civic association sponsors a summer movie series. “Song Sung Blue,” a movie that I assiduously avoided when it was first released, was the summer’s first selection, and I went for two reasons: My friends asked me to go, and no one else was home so what else did I have to do? 

Why did I try to avoid this movie, you might ask? Because I grew up hearing Neil Diamond all day every day and even though I still like him (how can you not), I didn’t need to see a movie about crazy Neil Diamond fans. I lived with one. That was my whole childhood. At one point in the movie, the Neil Diamond tribute singer portrayed by Hugh Jackman argues with his manager, trying to make a case for “Soolaimon” as the band’s opening number. “Nobody knows Soolaimon!” the man yells. “I fucking know ‘Soolaimon,’” I thought to myself.  I haven’t heard “Soolaimon” in decades but I bet I remember every note. 

The movie is based on a true story, and was different and much better than I expected. Kate Hudson deserved that Oscar nomination. I might even listen to some Neil Diamond today. 

*****

I just finished reading Leaving Aberdeen, a memoir by Estell Sims Halliburton. Mrs. Halliburton is a Black woman who was born on a sharecropping plantation in Mississippi in the 1940s. Her memoir tells the story of her early childhood picking cotton and living in a plantation shack through her family’s first real home in the town of Aberdeen to her first year in college at Tuskegee to her first summer in New York City as a 19-year-old on her own for the first time. That summer then turned into years, as the young Estell takes a break from school, works as a model and bookkeeper and store clerk, and marries a young soldier who ships out to Vietnam shortly after their wedding day. 

Halliburton’s writing style is uneven, but in a good way. She veers back and forth between formal and colloquial language, and the tone is inconsistent. Sometimes, she just recounts events as she recalls them. Sometimes, she places those events in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and other major historical events of the mid-20th century. The emotional tone varies, too - from her righteous anger as a Black woman who came of age in the Jim Crow South and learned that often, the North wasn’t any less racist; to love for her husband, children, parents, siblings, and friends. The book reads as if it was written in spurts, a few pages here and there as time permitted. The resulting variations in tone and voice make it very readable and human and moving. 

The young Halliburton family seemed to have had a rich and interesting life as working people and parents in 1970s New York, and I was surprised by their decision to return to the South. Mrs. Halliburton wrote a second memoir about the family’s life in Atlanta after the move, so I’ll read it and find out if it was the right decision. I do hope so. I’m invested now. 

*****

I started this as just a little journal of short reviews - a song, a movie, a TV show, a book - and then I realized that it reads like I spend all my time reminiscing about the 20th century. And I do. 

No, I really don’t. I don’t miss most things about the 20th century. But I do miss believing that I lived in the greatest and most benevolent country in the world. I miss the world in which everyone knew more Neil Diamond songs than “Sweet Caroline.” I miss pop music on AM radio. 

Devil Wears Prada 2 - SPOILERS LEFT, RIGHT, AND CENTER!

Last week, I saw the new Devil Wears Prada movie, and I’m still thinking about it. It’s not quite as good as the first one, of course, because that is a very high bar indeed. But it’s a worthy successor, and I was glad to be among the first to see it so that I could form my own opinion before all the other idiots had a chance to write about it on the internet. Sorry not sorry. I gotta write about something, you know? 

****

There are a few new characters but the story still focuses on the four main characters (Miranda, Andy, Emily, and Nigel). They are the same people we remember, but all of them have grown and changed, for better and for worse, in the 20 years since the first movie. Miranda is still imperious and demanding, but she’s no longer the devil. She’s mellowed enough that she even allows her first assistant to remind her that she can no longer say and do things that were acceptable in the 80s and 90s and early aughts. 20 years ago, Emily and Andy would have had their heads handed to them had they dared to comment on Miranda’s behavior. 

The sequel echoes themes from the original - betrayal and loyalty, the value of beauty and art and glamor, the moral issues around extreme wealth, the balance between work and life or if such a balance is even possible. And it touches on what it’s like to be a person and a professional in the year 2026. There are heartless billionaires, cliched but nonetheless utterly believable. There is downsizing and rightsizing and cost-cutting and evil tech bros not so subtly threatening to replace everyone and everything with AI. 

*****

The filmmakers did a good job of visual contrast between Runway 2006 and Runway 2026. Miranda’s office is still luxurious, but there are signs that Runway HQ is fraying a bit around the edges. Miranda assigns Andy to a cluttered, bare-bones office, which we know is meant to be a punishment - but the old Runway suite would never have had a cluttered space in the first place. There are fewer people and less activity and less glamor - the new Runway looks like any other modern open-concept office. It looks like a LInkedIn video depiction of a corporate “creative space.” It’s clean and bright and pretty, but it’s not awe-inspiring. There’s no mystique. 

*****

One of the questions that The Devil Wears Prada 2 asks is how much of all of this - fashion, “lifestyle,” beauty - are we supposed to care about. Do we mourn the loss of the aspirational fairy-tale world of 7th Avenue and Milan and Paris and the Hamptons, or is it good riddance to all of it? I think it’s a little of both. In the original movie, when Nigel lectures Andy about Runway’s place in art and culture, we know that he’s sincere and that Runway really is a “beacon of hope” for him. I felt that way about fashion magazines myself when I was young. I loved Vogue and Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar and the whole world of high society and fashion and glamour that they presented in their beautiful, glossy pages. 

Nigel is partly right about fashion. The visionary designers of the 20th century really were artists, even when they weren’t very good people (Coco Chanel, I’m talking about you, girl). Designers really did, and still do, fulfill the need for beauty and elegance in our lives. Couture is out of reach for almost everyone, of course, but its ideas filter down to the rest of us - as Miranda says, all the way down to that infamous lumpy blue sweater in that tragic Casual Corner clearance bin. A young person in a big city earning an entry-level salary can buy a designer-inspired dress or purse and feel connected to a world of beauty and possibility. What could possibly be bad about that? 

Both movies answer that question, in different ways. In the first DWP, the bad part is (of course) unrealistic beauty and body standards. Perfectly normal Andy is the “smart fat girl.” Miranda rejects a photo spread of female paratroopers because they’re all “so deeply unattractive,” because in 2006, it was every woman’s job to be thin and attractive, no matter what else she might have accomplished in her life.* Poor Emily eats practically nothing to maintain her extremely slim figure, but even though she’s already reed-thin, she still hopes for that one stomach virus that will make her just a tiny bit thinner. No wonder she’s so grouchy all the time. 

The fashion industry didn’t invent unattainable beauty standards, but they might as well have. Before the advent of social media, fashion magazines led the way in perpetuating and normalizing airbrushed bodies and faces. Fashion magazines foisted toxic diet culture on us. Vogue has a lot to answer for. 

In the second movie, Runway’s dark side is farther upstream. After a 20-year absence, Andy returns to provide some serious journalistic credibility as the magazine tries to distance itself from a child labor scandal involving one of its most prominent advertisers. Meanwhile, the billionaires smell blood in the water, and they’re circling around like vultures waiting to snatch up the pieces if Runway doesn’t survive the scandal. The nepo baby finance bro billionaire is trying to “optimize” his late father’s media empire, and that includes stripping Runway down to the bare bones - Miranda, flying to Milan in COACH! - while the tech bro billionaire is trying to buy the magazine and by extension a place in the cultural hierarchy for himself and his girlfriend. Both of the billionaires are ready to dispense with as many of the humans behind the crown jewel that they’re fighting over, never mind that it’s human creativity and human blood sweat and tears that built Runway and made it a crown jewel worth fighting over to begin with. 

A spoiler - things end the way most of us who love the original would have hoped. One more even better spoiler: Both of the billionaires lose. 

*And thank God it’s not like that anymore, amirite? LOL. 

Without a paddle

It’s Monday January 75th here in the DC suburbs of Maryland. It’s very cold and will remain so for several days - at least a week. I worked at home today because we got a foot or more of snow and ice, and the DMV shuts down in these conditions. OPM ordered maximum telework today and I’d have had to stay home anyway because my rinky dink little street will be among the last to see a plow. 

I didn’t leave the house at all on Sunday, not even for a moment. It snowed almost all day, with some sleet for good measure; and it was freezing, freezing cold. Everyone who is protesting in the streets of Minneapolis is my hero right now, especially Alex Pretti, who tried to help a woman who’d been knocked to the ground by ICE thugs and who ended up dead on the street, shot 10 times. And despite overwhelming video evidence to the contrary, the criminals at the head of DHS and ICE and the Border Patrol claimed and are still claiming two days later that Pretti was brandishing a gun. 

“They lie to us. We know that they’re lying, and they know that we know that they’re lying, and we know that they know that we know that they’re lying. And they keep lying to us and we keep pretending to believe them.” This is paraphrased and an approximate translation from the Russian quote attributed to both Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn and Elena Gorokhova. Soviet cynicism seems particularly relevant now. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. I was very happy to learn earlier today that Greg Bovino had been unceremoniously yanked out of Minneapolis and shipped off to California to sit behind a desk from which he will not even be able to shit-post for eight hours a day because they cut off his social media access. Considering that most of this administration are nothing more than content creators who think their sole job is to own the libs on the internet, this is a very big demotion indeed, and I’m here for it. I’ll be happier still to see Bovino, Noem, Lewandowski and the rest of them fired in disgrace and left to fend for themselves as Trump washes his hands of them. People who sell their souls to the devil usually learn the hard way, and too late, that they are getting absolutely nothing in return. 

*****

Speaking of shit-posting, I sent something about Minneapolis to the wrong group chat yesterday, and I don’t even care. Anyone who is going to be mad at me for talking about government agents murdering people in the streets can stay mad. Stay mad! 

*****

It’s Wednesday now, and I left the house for real, as in driving down the road, for the first time since Sunday. The driving down the road part took a little time because I made the mistake of turning my wheel too soon at the end of the driveway, where I promptly got stuck in a micro-tundra of snow and ice. My husband had even reminded me to pull all the way out of the driveway before trying to turn my wheel and drive away, but I forgot. So I was stuck. And I was absolutely determined to get unstuck, without any help. So I got out a shovel and I started digging out the snow and chipping away at the ice and I could see the tundra shrinking a bit. I tried again and I was still stuck, but I’d moved a little bit farther back. So I pulled back up and started shoveling and chipping again, and got back in the car again, and bumped my way over the snow and ice and was on my merry way. 

I had texted my boss to let him know that I’d be late. He told me to just go back in the house and telework, and I was tempted, but the car was stuck halfway out into the street so I had to move it anyway. And I also wanted to win. A little ice isn’t going to scare me back into the house.  

*****

It’s so hard to concentrate lately. I’m constantly anxious and distracted at work, and it takes me forever to finish reading a book. I’ll probably fold a load of laundry, clean a few countertops, check my email, and straighten the shoes in the mudroom before I even finish this paragraph. 

Oh, and the government might shut down again. I will not be affected unless it’s a protracted shutdown, but lots of other people will. Three of our four snow shovels broke, and there are no more snow shovels to be had. The Washington Capitals can’t win a game to save their lives. And it is STILL JANUARY. My gosh. 

***** 

There’s supposed to be a general strike tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about this. I believe in strikes, but I also believe that most people in the United States need to keep their jobs and it’s not at all unreasonable to choose your family’s livelihood over activism. But I won’t buy anything tomorrow, and if enough other people don’t buy anything, then maybe the powers that be will get the message. Business leaders are already starting to speak up a little bit - far too late and far too little but better than nothing. Minneapolis got rid of Bovino. Yes, they ended up with Homan in his place, but they still made a difference. They still forced a response. If CEOs and rich people in general start to feel a little bit of economic pain, things could start to change. 

Or maybe not, because it looks like Jeff Bezos is passing along the economic pain resulting from the almost certain failure of the $40 million Melania movie to a few thousand Amazon workers. The billionaire “job creators” giveth and they taketh away - very little of the former, and a lot of the latter.

*****

It never fails. Bruce Springsteen says (or sings) something about injustice and fascism in America, and a bunch of idiots who have obviously never actually listened to a Springsteen song in their lives start crying about rock stars “getting political.” “Streets of Minneapolis” brought them out of the woodwork. The song actually isn’t very good in strict songwriting terms - the lyrics are pretty clunky, and I wish that he had been a little less literal, not least of all because Trump and Noem and Miller do not deserve to have their names mentioned in a Springsteen song, even a song that calls them out as the criminals they are. But it’s still pretty impressive that he wrote, recorded, and released it within two days of Alex Pretti’s murder. I’m glad he’s on the right side of history. 

*****

Catherine O’Hara? Are you fucking kidding me? 

I haven’t been this sad about a celebrity death since Carrie Fisher died. We watched “A Mighty Wind” tonight. This was the first movie in my Catherine O’Hara movie marathon. Or maybe I should just move to Schitt’s Creek. 

Wait. I think I already live there.

*****

It’s Saturday morning now, beautiful and bright and sunshiny and very cold. I’m getting used to it, and it’s a good thing, because the cold is going to continue for at least another week. It’s still quite early and I don’t yet have a plan for the day. I’d like to try to stay away from current events for the next day or so but if the rest of you have to watch this shit show, then so do I. I still think it’s going to get better; rather, I hope that things are going to get better. But not before it gets worse. I’ve heard that the latest Epstein documents are pretty horrifying, which means that we’re due for another violent distraction - maybe an attack on a foreign country or maybe a bloody crackdown on domestic dissent - or maybe both. Anything could happen.  

But anything good could happen, too. It would only take a bare handful of Republicans to force Congress to do its job and stop these criminals. I remain hopeful. The Capitals even won two in a row!! Anything is possible. And January is finally over. 

Three Days that Did Not Shake the World

I do love a three-day weekend, even if it’s for a minor holiday - especially if it’s for a minor holiday, because I don’t have to shop or cook or decorate for Indigenous People’s Day. It’s just a nice little break. It’s a lovely Saturday morning, sunny and cool but not cold and very autumn-like. I’m still not reconciled to the end of summer, but I’ve been sitting outside for an hour, and nothing has bitten me, so I have to acknowledge that fall isn’t all bad. And I do like to wear sweaters. 

*****

I keep thinking about October 2024, the gosh-darn good old days, when I had 99 problems but Donald Trump being President wasn’t one. I never thought that he COULDN’T win but I did think that he WOULDN’T win. I was hopeful, even optimistic. I miss the October 2024 version of me. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, rainy and gloomy and very October-ish. It’s a soup-making day, so I’m going to make some soup. Yesterday turned out to be a rather nice day. I did my usual Saturday household tasks and errands, and we spent most of the afternoon hanging around outside in the absolutely perfect early fall weather. Then we went to the movies. 

*****

I’ve never read any of Thomas Pynchon’s novels, but I think I’ll read Vineland, which was apparently the inspiration for the movie we saw last night, “One Battle After Another.” That movie was insane (and insanely long), but very good. I’m sure that Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn will be nominated for all the big awards, but Regina Hall is the one who stood out for me. She’s only on screen for a short time, but her performance as the kind and courageous revolutionary Deandra was beautiful and memorable. DiCaprio was very good, too, as was Teyana Taylor as the revolutionary femme fatale Perfidia Beverly Hills. Sean Penn was Sean Penn. He’s fun to watch, if nothing else, and the rest of this cast was more than equal to his scenery chewing. 

*****

It’s Monday now, and I’m not working because it’s a holiday. Today is Indigenous People's Day, FKA Columbus Day. When my children were growing up, IPD was never a school holiday. Instead, it was open house day because so many Montgomery County parents work for the government in one way or another, so it was a good time for parents to visit their kids’ classrooms. My husband and I also always went out for a late morning breakfast on IPD. We'd eat eggs and toast and laugh about how mad our kids would be if they knew we were at the Tastee Diner without them. 

The Tastee Diner is gone now, may it rest in peace. Our kids are grown, but the IPD breakfast tradition continues at our beloved Silver Diner. Eggs and toast taste so much better with diner coffee in a thick white mug. 

*****

I went shopping yesterday. It was raining, and so the mall was as good a place to go as any other. I don't shop in actual stores very often, and maybe I should, because I left that mall empty handed, which is perfect because I don't need a darn thing. Nordstrom has some very nice clothes right now, and I tried things on but nothing inspired me, and so I went home with all my money. 

And I did make soup, and then found out that no one else was going to be home for dinner. This was also perfect because now I have a huge pot of soup and I don't have to cook anything tonight. Soup is always better the next day, anyway.

*****

My husband had to go to work after our late breakfast on Monday, and it was a gloomy wet day, perfect for hanging around the house and watching a movie, so that’s what I did. I had never seen “Reds” before, and so I watched it in honor of Diane Keaton. My feelings about this movie are complicated. First, it was quite brave of Warren Beatty to make a 3.5 hour epic about the Bolshevik Revolution, when “Doctor Zhivago” was not all that old in 1981, and comparisons were inevitable. BLUF: “Reds” is very good, but “Doctor Zhivago” is better. 

Things that I really liked about “Reds” - I loved all of the witnesses’ first-hand stories, but I cannot understand why Beatty didn’t identify them onscreen. Maybe they didn’t want to be identified. Once a radical, always a radical. I also loved the great acting (especially Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman), beautiful cinematography, and amazing dialogue. But of course, misogyny is always going to be one of the biggest stars of any movie made in 1981. Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton, comes across as whiny and entitled and a little boring. John Reed (Warren Beatty directed himself), on the other hand, comes across as selfless and heroic and charming. But Louise comes through at the end, so maybe the perceived misogyny is just my imagination. 

See? I’m gaslighting myself now. 

Warren Beatty as John Reed is one of those performances that makes me think that the actor wishes that they were the character. I thought the same thing as I watched Brad Pitt play Billy Beane in “Moneyball" (one of my favorite movies), and Morgan Freeman playing the President or the Speaker of the House in who knows how many different movies. Julia Roberts won an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” because she wanted to be a tough working-class broad sticking it to the man. I can watch “Hidden Figures” any time because Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae played it as though they wanted to be Black female mathematicians at NASA in the Jim Crow south. I bet Warren Beatty still thinks it would have been cool to be an intrepid American reporter witnessing the Bolshevik Revolution first-hand. 

*****

I was sad on Monday night. I should have done more this weekend, I thought. I should have had people over, or gone hiking or done something memorable.  But I’m in survival mode right now, like the rest of non-MAGA America. At least I made soup, right? At least I went to the movies. The Capitals beat the Islanders and the Rangers. I read Nancy Mitford and added two more books (Vineland and 10 Days that Shook the World, which will be a re-read) to my TBR list. I took the money that I would have spent at the mall and donated it to our local food bank. It was a nice though not spectacular weekend; a quiet little interlude. Sometimes, that’s enough. 

The Deer Hunter

On Memorial Day weekend, I watched “The Deer Hunter” for the first time. It took all weekend to finish the three-plus hours. When I first started watching it, I got through the first 45 minutes, and I was too depressed to continue - and at that point, no one had even gone to Vietnam. The thing is that I remember working class industrial life in the middle of the 20th century, and I don’t want to relive it, and I don’t romanticize it. And neither does the movie, really - but when your blue collar first-generation Americans are played by young Christopher Walken and young Robert DeNiro and young Meryl Streep there can’t not be a little bit of a romantic glow about the whole thing. 

Having started it, though, I wanted to finish, so I decided to watch it a little at a time throughout the weekend. This is a good way to watch a movie that you feel that you should watch but that is not particularly entertaining. “The Deer Hunter” is not really entertaining - but it’s pretty good and even beautiful in spots.  

For example, on the day after Steven and Angela’s wedding (the opening scene), the five friends go deer hunting together (the title is not an obscure 1970s metaphor). They drive through the western Pennsylvania mountains in a grimy old white Cadillac still festooned with “just married” pink streamers, winding through an otherwise pristine mountain road framed by rusted guardrails, and they stop to eat lunch beside a clear mountain lake. The landscape is completely unspoiled except for the paved road; and the contrast between the gorgeous mountain backdrop and the friends’ goofy horseplay and their makeshift picnic lunch of white bread and cold cuts is beautiful and real. 

I liked the characters’ names, too: Mikey and Steve and Nick and Linda and especially Angela and Stosh. If you grew up working class and Catholic in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh in the 1970s, your parents knew people named Angela and Stosh. Maybe your parents were Angela and Stosh. And although DeNiro and Streep and Walken are unrealistically glamorous for industrial western Pennsylvania, John Cazale as Stosh and Rutanya Alda (no relation) as Angela and George Dzundza as John and John Savage as Steven resemble the young adults I remember from that time - beautiful and imperfect and full of life. The actors were all wonderful. 

*****

One of my criticisms of “The Deer Hunter” is one that several contemporaneous critics apparently shared. These guys were just too old for Vietnam. Men aged 18 to 26 were subject to the draft during the Vietnam War, and “The Deer Hunter” doesn’t even try to depict its characters as younger than late 20s or early 30s. They are all grown men working in a steel mill. Christopher Walken, who was 35 when the movie was released, could possibly have passed for 26 in the right light, but none of the others looked a day younger than 32 or so. So they wouldn’t have been drafted. 

And it seems unlikely that grown, employed men would have volunteered - Steven especially, who marries the pregnant Angela and then ships out practically the next day. True, she’s pregnant by another man, but if you want to punish your fiancee for being unfaithful, it would seem that cancelling the wedding would be the prudent course of action. Marrying her and then going off to war seems like kind of a self-own. 

The timeline is also off. It’s supposed to begin in 1968. Would the men have remained in Vietnam for five years? Because “Midnight Train to Georgia” is clearly playing in the nightclub scene, and that song came out in 1973. Other than career military, I didn’t think that we kept men in Vietnam for more than a year at a time. On the other hand, Robert DeNiro’s Mikey would certainly not have made Staff Sergeant in just a year - and how did he get to be a Green Beret? And when he finally came home, why was he swanning around Clairton, Pennsylvania in his full uniform? Did he not own any other clothes? 

These are all little things, of course, but little things can make the difference between suspending disbelief and immersing yourself in the story, and sitting on your couch with your phone looking up details like when was “Midnight Train” released, and how long does it take to get from E-1 to E-5, and is there a Russian Orthodox church in Clairton, PA? (There is not - that scene was filmed in Ohio). There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot that doesn’t add up. 

And there are bigger things, too. I expected a racist portrayal of the Vietnamese (the movie was made in 1978) but lots of military scholars have chimed in on the Russian roulette theme, with universal agreement that this never happened. The Viet Cong did plenty of other dreadful things to American prisoners so it’s not like there wasn’t ample material for a movie about the horrors of the war in Vietnam. And how on earth could Mikey return to Vietnam to rescue Nick, and then get out without a hair out of place AFTER the fall of Saigon? As Miss Eggy says, “The HELL?”

*****

All the racism and sexism and what-the-hell historical inaccuracy aside, I ended up enjoying “The Deer Hunter” as a beautifully acted relic of the middle of the American 20th century. I might even watch it again. But not right away. 

MDW 2025

It’s Saturday morning, Memorial Day weekend, and I haven’t even packed my pool bag yet. This is not like me, not like me at all. I’m not feeling summery. The vibe is off. 

And it’s not just the weather - but my gosh! I sat outside this morning, drinking my coffee and reading my book and enjoying the birdsong even though it was 55 degrees and I needed a hoodie and fuzzy socks and a blanket. I could have just stayed inside but it’s Memorial Day weekend and it was the first morning in weeks when I didn’t have to rush and I was determined to enjoy a leisurely half hour outside, even if it killed me. 

But I’m back inside now. It’s 10:08 and I need to come up with a plan. I think I’ll pack my pool bag. There’s almost no chance that I’ll actually get in the water today but I’m not ruling it out, either. I’m a member of the neighborhood’s small but hardy group of adult pool rats, and if the rest of the crew gets in that water, then I might have to do it too. 

*****

A few of us made our way to the pool yesterday afternoon, but only two adults actually got in the water - one of my fellow pool rats, and another person whom I don’t yet know. A new swim team dad, apparently - I overheard him talking to his little girl about how she’ll have to get in on Wednesday, the first day of practice, so she might as well get in today. And she did, and so he did too. The other person, a fellow summer lap swimmer, sat on the edge of that pool dangling his feet for so long that I thought he’d given up the idea of actually jumping into a pool full of ice water, but he did finally get in, and he didn’t even try to convince the rest of us that it’s fine once you get in because it so obviously was not. 

It’s warmer this morning, this being Sunday. I still wore a sweater and socks when I sat outside, but I didn’t need the blanket. I still don’t think I’ll get in the water today, but if the warming trend continues, I might swim tomorrow. 

*****

At some point during Memorial Day weekend, I try to watch a Memorial Day-appropriate movie. I’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan” about a dozen times. I also like “The Best Years of Our Lives.” “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket” are also good MDW movies.  But I wanted to watch something I hadn’t seen before, and until this weekend, I’d never seen “The Deer Hunter.” It’s quite good, though I couldn’t sit through the full 3-plus hours all at once. I ended up watching it in stages, 30 or so minutes at a time. I have a lot of questions about “The Deer Hunter,” and a lot of things to say about it. I’m going to write a post just about that movie. You’ll see it next week or a year from now. 

I also watched “Small Things Like These,” a movie adaptation of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novel. The movie is very very good (and how could it not be with a cast that includes Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson and Eileen Walsh and Clare Dunne), and the abrupt ending is exactly right. Knowing what we know about Eileen and her fear of outsider status for herself and her family, we can’t expect a happily ever after ending for Sarah, and it seems quite likely that Eileen will try to throw her out as soon as she discovers what Bill has done. But Bill takes that risk anyway - a small thing, trying to save just one girl when there are so many others in Sarah’s position - but most of us can only do small things. 

*****

It’s Monday now. I love the Monday of a three-day weekend. An extra day off is such a gift, even if it’s too cold to swim. I’m thinking about trying today, though - two more of my swimming friends did it yesterday, and I don’t want to wait until the water warms up because it’s not going to warm up anytime soon. But if I can’t steel myself to the water today, it will still have been a weekend of book shopping (Barnes and Noble with a Mothers’ Day gift card), movies, reading and writing outdoors, sushi, wine drinking with friends, and almost no Trump. And now it’s summer - and as always, I have no problems that summer cannot solve. 

Consequences

Have you ever heard of the Order of the Thistle? I saw a headline this morning noting that HRH King Charles has bestowed the Order of the Thistle on his youngest sibling Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (yes, he inherited the title). I knew about the Order of the Garter and the Order of St. Michael and the tradition of chivalric societies whose only purpose seems to be to honor people who please the King or Queen in some way, but the Thistle was a new one for me. The Order of the Thistle honors Scottish people and honorary Scottish people like the Duke who have performed some extraordinary service to the monarchy. I don’t know very much about Prince Edward, but I’m sure that he has performed many extraordinary services to the Crown, not least of which is that he is not Prince Andrew. 

*****

I just finished watching “Scoop,” the Netflix movie about the BBC’s infamous BBC Prince Andrew interview, an event that I think hastened the inevitable end of the Royal Family. At the time that this interview took place (2019), the Queen was still relatively hale and hearty, and the senior Duke of Edinburgh was still alive though he had pretty much retired from public life. Although the Queen and Prince Philip were living on borrowed time, it seemed that the next generation, led by Prince Charles, would be ready to step in; and the younger senior Royals seemed happy and united and ready to serve the institution well into the future. 

I’m not an expert on the Royal Family. I’m not even that close an observer. And if the UK becomes a republic, there will be lots of things to blame - COVID, the unpopularity of Charles and Camilla, the turmoil surrounding Harry and Meghan; and of course, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, without whom the monarchy seems kind of pointless. But that interview would be a contributing factor because it threw into stark relief the outrageous impunity with which people of that class commit crimes and misdemeanors, and their absolute blank cluelessness about their behavior and its impact on others. I think that it marked the turning point for many Brits who were already ambivalent about the Royal Family and its place in British life. 

“Scoop” conveys the blank cluelessness part very well. Prince Andrew and his slavishly loyal Palace factotum come away from the disastrous interview all smiles, smug and secure and satisfied that the thing went very well, very well indeed. The viewer sees Andrew on the night of the broadcast, retiring to his private quarters to watch the interview, certain that it will be a triumph for him, that it will clear his name and restore his reputation with the British public and press, and that he’ll be able to return his focus to the important things, like a blowout 60th birthday party courtesy of the British taxpayer. Only when his phone begins to blow up with news feed updates and social media notifications and messages does he realize that he didn’t acquit himself quite as well as he thought, and that no one else seems to have noticed that he has a “tendency to be a bit too honorable.” 

A key aspect of this story, emphasized in the movie, is that the interview was the result of the work of three women - a BBC booker, producer, and anchorwoman. Two of the three women (a producer played by the amazing Romola Garai and the BBC anchorwoman played by the brilliant Gillian Anderson) are understood to be establishment figures, well educated and well connected, upper middle class at least. The third woman, Sam McAlister (played by the amazing and brilliant Billie Piper) was the driving force behind the interview, and if the movie hews closely to real life, she was the only working-class person among the three. Billie Piper’s Sam is brash and confident and fearless in the workplace but Piper allows us to see her insecurity, too. We see Sam at home with her school-age son and her mother, their down-to-earth unglamorous household a marked contrast to the Palace and probably also quite different from the households of Garai’s Esme Wren and Anderson’s Stella Maitlis, whose personal lives the movie does not really examine closely. 

It took three women to really clearly see how dreadful Andrew’s conduct was and to understand how important it was to hold him to account. By positioning Sam McAlister as the story’s heroine, the movie also suggests that only a working-class woman would be truly outraged at the impunity with which royals and aristocrats and just plain rich people hurt others and get away with it. Sam McAlister, portrayed by Billie Piper as plain-spoken, flamboyantly blond and label-obsessed (her Chanel pin is like a secondary character) has had enough of Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cambridge and royals and their hangers-on and enablers, and she’s done waiting for someone to do something about it. By doggedly pursuing the Andrew interview, she not only lands the biggest story of the year for the BBC, she also brings about a small measure of justice for Epstein’s victims. 

Of course Andrew didn’t face criminal prosecution for knowingly participating in sex trafficking because let’s not get carried away here. I wonder how many British people, even if they’re not staunch royalists, would really even want to see a member of the Royal Family in the dock. That’s a question of change vs. revolution, which is quite a bit more than I want to go into right now. But he did face consequences. He lost many of his privileges and his Civil List income. And one of his victims sued him in civil court in the United States, and received a settlement in an undisclosed but presumably substantial amount. Maybe all of this is still not enough but for a person steeped in privilege and wealth and power for his whole life, the loss of those things must have been very hard, very hard indeed. Maybe it’s enough that Andrew had to experience the “find out” part of the proceedings in a very public fashion. 

Journalism

It’s Friday, a WFH day, and I’m not particularly productive right now. I have several big projects to tackle and I have to panic for a bit, and beat down my adult ADD, before I can really make progress. I wish I wasn’t like this but I am. It’s a holiday weekend, so I plan to get some things done to clear some space in my head. If you’re going to declutter, then you might as well start with the messiest place. My house is pretty neat; and now that Christmas is over, it’s pretty free of clutter, too. My brain, however, is like an episode of “Hoarders.” I might not be able to dig out on my own. 

*****

One of the things I hope to do this weekend - maybe not finish but at least work on - is my 2023 book list. I’ve already written about a book that I read in 2024, so I’m out of order as usual, but I am making progress on finishing the 2023 list and maybe I’ll publish it in January not February. 

It’s Saturday morning. We’re leaving for a swim meet in a little while (Marymount @ Gallaudet) but right now I’m just enjoying the three-day-weekend Saturday morning vibe. I love my job but there’s nothing better than a holiday weekend. It’s even better than vacation because a paid holiday is just a pure, unearned gift. Marymount hosted Catholic last night, our first evening meet as a Marymount swim family, and the boys’ team’s first loss of the season. But it was close and competitive and a lovely way to spend a Friday night, sitting in the Rose Bente Lee Center pool as the late winter afternoon faded into twilight. 

And see, there’s the problem right there. If I’m ever going to finish that book list, I need to write about books, not swimming. 

*****

“... what they had wanted all these years was not for concrete things to happen but for abstract possibilities to remain available.” This is Lea Ypi, writing about her parents’ ambivalence about Albania’s first post-Communist election. I’m reading Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, her very extraordinary memoir of her life as a child and teenager in late Communist and post-Communist Albania, a country about which I know practically nothing. Ypi’s family kept secrets about their “biography,” including the fact that her great-grandfather was one of the country’s last pre-Communist Prime Ministers. When Communist rule ended, Ypi had to relearn her own family’s history, and re-examine everything she knew and believed and thought that her family believed. How does a young person, already whipsawed by adolescent confusion, regain her bearings when she finds that the country, the belief system, and the family that she thought she knew turn out not to be a sturdy structure with a rock-solid foundation but a rickety makeshift shack held together with spit and glue and lies? Who are you if your family isn’t who you thought they were? What are you if your country no longer exists?

******

And what are you if you can’t seem to get up off the couch? It’s Monday now, MLK Day so I’m off although I did plan to do some work today to make up for a planned short Friday. But it’s 10:30 and although I have showered and done some housework, I’m nowhere near my desk. I can’t seem to pull myself off the couch right now, physically or mentally. It’s very cold, and snowing lightly. I don’t have to leave the house today and I probably won’t. MSNBC is on as background noise in my family room, the warmest room in the house. 

Oh my gosh what is wrong with me and what am I doing? It’s 10:45 now and I’m wearing pajama pants and a hoodie, curled up on my couch, my hair still wet from the shower and absolutely no plans or ideas or energy or inspiration for this gift of a day off that I don’t want to waste but am in fact actually wasting. I need to pull myself together. Or maybe I just have to accept that today is one of those proverbial days, filled with lots of abstract possibilities. I just don’t seem to have the energy to make any of those possibilities concrete. 

*****

I’m back at work now. It’s Tuesday, a day on which I almost always work from home, and everyone else is working from home today too thanks to the unexpected snow accumulation. Why unexpected, I don’t know, because the forecast was clear, and it is January, but it’s been so long since we have had actual winter weather that I didn’t think that a real snowstorm was possible. I thought the forecast was just weather-industrial complex hype. I thought it was just another media narrative. 

We only got maybe five inches or so, but this is the DC suburbs of Maryland, not Buffalo. We’re famous for freaking out at the smallest accumulation of snow. I haven’t left my house since Sunday but I’m sure that if I ventured out to a grocery store today, I’d find shelves stripped bare. Thankfully I didn’t run out of milk or toilet paper because I’m always ready for the worst case scenario. Rain, snow, whatever - I seldom run out of anything. 

And speaking of the worst case scenario, yesterday was also Iowa caucus day and of course Trump won by a landslide. Not that Haley or DeSantis are anything other than repugnant to me, but the idea of another Trump presidency,  which is a very real possibility, fills me with something close to despair. I just can’t bear the thought of looking at his face and hearing his voice every day for four more years. I dread the rest of this election season. I used to love election years, too. Sad!

*****

But I’ll tell you what. An entire childhood and youth obsessed with political repression and dictatorships had its upside. I’m prepared. No matter how much I hate what might be happening a few miles from my front door in Washington, I am prepared to live my life and do my work and go on with my daily existence without regard to politics. Unless it gets really bad and they start rounding up dissidents and I end up in a detention camp. 

And this is why I shouldn’t be reading political memoirs, or doomscrolling my newsfeeds, or listening to MSNBC all the gosh darn livelong day. I should probably just go outside except that it’s literally 12 degrees out there, which is absolute nonsense. This weather is trash. This weather is for penguins and polar bears and ice fishermen. 

*****

Have you seen “The Holdovers?” A friend and I had planned to see it in a theater, back in November or early December; and what with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes life for middle aged ladies, we ended up postponing our plans multiple times and ultimately missing the short theatrical run. And then we had to cancel three consecutive planned dates to watch it at my house. One damn thing after another, I tell you. Last Saturday, I realized that my husband had to work in the evening, and my friend’s husband was going to be glued to an NFL playoff game, so we made a last-minute plan to watch the movie together with another friend, and we were all free, and no one got sick and no one had a last-minute work obligation or family emergency, and we actually got to sit down with wine and popcorn and watch the movie. 

I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of movies and books about exclusive boarding schools and colleges - preferably in New England in the middle of the 20th century, but any story about a boarding school or prestigious college will do. The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Prep, The Secret History, Brideshead Revisited, “Rushmore,” even “The Dead Poets Society” - I love them all.  I also adore Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (absolutely hilarious in “Only Murders in the Building”) - and so I knew going in that I’d love “The Holdovers.” And I did. It is hilariously funny, but also heartbreakingly sad, with its little band of outcast characters stumbling through a cold and gray holiday season full of empty days, loneliness, and grief. And the cold and gray and emptiness are sweet and human and really beautiful. It’s a beautiful, perfect little movie. I hope it wins everything. I can’t wait to watch it again. 

*****

It’s Friday again, and in my original plan, I’d have been driving to Fredericksburg for a late afternoon meet between Marymount and University of Mary Washington; but there’s another winter storm, and the college swimming powers that be cancelled the meet. It’s just as well. The idea of my son and all of his teammates riding on snowy roads in a charter bus was making me very anxious, and although I had been looking forward to the meet, I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s meet at St. Mary’s of Maryland will proceed as planned. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been writing this for a whole week and I’m still looking for the unifying theme that will give me an excuse to paste the whole mess into my blog editor and press publish. Didn’t I say something about brain decluttering? Not only have I not decluttered my own brain, but now I’ve dropped a whole bunch of junk off in yours. Sorry. 

****

At the end of Free, Lea Ypi shares some of her teenage journal entries from the year 1997, a violent and chaotic year in Albania. It was my favorite part of the book, just a person thinking and feeling and writing it all down knowing that it’s possible that someone might read her journal one day but that it’s just as possible that no one ever will. And that is my unifying theme, for this post and for every word that I write on this blog. Sometimes people read this stuff, which is lovely; and sometimes they don’t, which is fine. I write because it’s the only way that I can begin to make sense of things. I write because I have to. 

Regulation

It seems that I am not the only person who struggles with anxiety. My newsfeeds are filled with advice from experts real and self-proclaimed on how to regulate my stress response, activate my parasympathetic nervous system, stimulate my vagus nerve (what?), drop my shoulders while engaging my core and practicing breathwork, and just calm the heck down. I don’t do any of this. I look out the window instead. 

If we ever left this house, the view outside my office window is one thing that I would really miss. And it’s not a particularly spectacular view. It’s just pretty - a large number and variety of trees on both sides of the fence between my neighbor’s house and mine, the hanging birdfeeders and the visiting birds, and the sky, which is wintery pale bright blue today, with a few fluffy pink-edged clouds. There are many window views that are more beautiful but few that are more soothing. 

*****

I wrote that yesterday, which was a rather bad day. Today is much better. It's Friday afternoon and I'm in the stands at the Rose Bente Lee Center pool at Marymount University, watching the first meet of the second half of the 23-24 season. Marymount is hosting Randolph Macon and my son's medley relay just scored its first victory of 2024. As the B relay they should have finished second but someone forgot to tell them that. 

The women's 1000 yard freestyle is just finishing up, and the men will follow. Distance events are not my jam but I certainly admire the athletes in a better them than me kind of way. 

*****

We’re midway through the meet now, and the swimmers are warming up for the second half. It's a close, competitive meet, fun to watch. I think we're winning but I'm not sure. But we're not running away with it. Marymount completely dominated its early season opponents, so much so that it was almost like watching an intramural meet. Winning is great and all but I'd rather see a real race. I like a good old fashioned duel in the pool. 

*****

Saturday morning, cold and very pale gray. It’s January 6, and we’re waiting for the threatened or promised winter weather that was supposed to begin this morning. So far, it’s nothing but January cold and a silvery gray sky that looks very soon-to-snowish. The rest of the house is asleep, and I’m back in front of my window, watching the birds enjoy breakfast at the just-refilled feeder. The seed mix that comes out of that big Costco bag must be delicious because it’s a scene out there, bird-wise. It’s a bird party. I could sit in front of this window all day. 

Yesterday’s meet finished in a split decision - a win for the men and a loss for the women. My son won one of his individual events, too. Today, I’ll work for a bit to catch up. I had had some vague idea that I’d try to work for a bit during the distance events at the meet yesterday but that was just silly. But I don’t mind working today. Yesterday was almost a day off. It felt very Saturday-ish. And the weather today is dreadful, so I’m not going anywhere unless I have to. 

*****

Saturday was a gloomy gloomy day. Not unpleasantly gloomy, just weather gloomy, with an ice storm vibe. It wasn’t quite cold enough for ice, but almost. I got my hair cut in the morning and then came home and worked and did housework and read my book (The Broom of the System) and watched a movie (“Leave the World Behind”) and hung around the house, now pretty much completely clear of all signs of Christmas except for a few boxes of chocolate that still remain in the kitchen. It’s sunny and bright today and the place feels wide open. The day feels wide open. It’s Sunday and I don’t have any particular plans other than to get out of the house. An indoor day is nice once in a while but one is enough. 

*****

Have you seen “Leave the World Behind”? It’s a disaster movie, kind of, but we never really find out what causes the disaster - a foreign attack, a cyber event, an environmental catastrophe - but the world goes haywire just as an affluent Manhattan family begins its impromptu vacation in a beautiful rental house in the Hamptons. The owners of the house, a Black man (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, show up in the middle of the night after escaping from chaos in the city, and the tenants (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) must decide whether or not to trust them, having never actually met them face to face. Things get increasingly chaotic and terrifying - strange animal encounters, and self-driving cars going haywire, and a mysterious illness that strikes one of the vacationers’ children - and the two families are forced to overcome their mutual suspicion and mistrust, given that they appear to be the only people remaining, except for an angry, armed survivalist played very well by Kevin Bacon. 

Most of the action takes place in and around the beach house, and with the very small cast (the two families and Kevin Bacon) it has a closed-off, quasi-theatrical feel. But it’s still realistic, and scary. I liked the movie very much, even though dystopian disaster movies are the last thing I should be watching right now given my pretty fragile grip on reason. Julia Roberts is especially good as the everywoman wife and mother who is angry at the world and racked with guilt over her own ill temper and bad disposition. She shares the movie’s best scene (in my view) with the very talented My’hala Herrold as Mahershala Ali’s done-with-these-damn-white-people daughter. Surrounded by a pack of wild deer and other animals who appear to be poised to attack (and I keep telling you that the deer are going to turn predator), the two women stick together, face down the animals, and ultimately scare them away. They hold hands, clinging to one another as they realize - to both their relief and dismay -  that they need one another, and that even though people are the worst, it’s far worse to be without them. 

*****

I like to re-read books sometimes, especially at times like now when my mental health is not great. I hadn’t thought about The Broom of the System - or David Foster Wallace in general - in years, but Zadie Smith reminded me to revisit Wallace, and The Broom of the System was my favorite book for a short time during my twenties. I wanted to see if it held up. 

Wallace wrote The Broom of the System, his first novel, when he was in his 20s and it created quite a stir - critics recognized Wallace as a genius right away. I think it was popular too - my friends and I all read it, at least. What still works - the book is still very funny, hilariously so; and very imaginative. Wallace juxtaposed the real (Cleveland, Ohio; Amherst College, Gerber baby food, Bob Newhart) and the imagined (the Great Ohio Desert, Stonecipheco Baby Foods, the Reverend Hart Lee Sykes) seamlessly, and creates a world that is both absurd and believable, and that the reader recognizes and understands almost immediately. The dialogue is hilarious, and the characters are flawed and neurotic (or downright crazy) and interesting. 

The book still holds up, for the most part, though of course I saw it very differently as an almost-old woman as I am now vs. a very young woman (maybe 22) when I first read it. I really loved Lenore Beadsman, the main character, when I was in my 20s. She was different from every other female character in books and movies and TV. She was quirky and fiercely independent. She was not glamorous or fashionable but she was obviously beautiful, being the object of desire for at least four of the novel’s male characters. She was, of course, an early Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which explains why I loved her so much. Even before we had a name for her, young women in their 20s were (and remain) very susceptible to the allure of the MPDG. She’s not like all the other girls. 

*****

I started writing this a week ago, in the midst of an anxiety spiral that has mostly passed. Writing about it and then thinking about other things - like swim meets and books and movies - helps me to get a grip and to calm down a little. It helps me to regulate my nervous system, as the influencers like to say. Of course, who am I to need regulating? I’m not walking on a beach or digging in a peaceful green garden but I’m also not fighting for my life in the middle of a war or disaster. I’m not facing down a pack of attack deer (I promise you, they will be a thing very soon). I’m not lost in the middle of the Great Ohio Desert, handcuffed to a madman (Wallace reference, IYKYK). Everything is fine. Everything is grand. Reading and writing are all I really have any business doing anyway. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

“One never knows at Christmas time, does one?” That is Miranda’s mother in the Christmas episode of the first season of “Miranda,” commenting on the dateless and timeless quality of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s December 28 in my life, a fact that I can only cite because I looked at the date on the bottom of my computer screen. Absent that reminder, I would have had no idea of the date. And I think it’s Thursday. 

And I’m pretty sure that I forgot to write anything yesterday, too. So that’s two days out of 365 in the year 2023 when I failed to write any words. And it’s fine. There are enough of my words out here; a few days missed production won’t make a difference. 

It’s been a weird, though not unpleasant Christmas break. We didn’t really go places as we normally do because my husband is sick with the flu, and it rained for two days straight. We’ve been watching movies and sports. We’ve been eating cookies. We ventured out to the bookstore and the grocery store. It’s been low-key but kind of nice. 

*****

Have you seen “Saltburn”? Starting at the end of the year, I try to catch up with movies that will likely garner major award nominations, and Christmas vacation is the perfect time to do this. “Saltburn,” which is expected to be an awards contender, is streaming now so I watched it. 

Much has been made of “Saltburn.” It’s violent, sexually transgressive, mean-spirited, sharply critical of British upper class social snobbery, and full of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothing in beautiful settings; so naturally, critics have praised it rather lavishly. 

Spoiler alert: “Saltburn” starts with a scholarship student at Oxford, a student named Oliver Quick whom we are at first supposed to believe is a poor and clueless outsider, completely out of his depth among his aristocratic classmates, unable to cope socially in a world of money and privilege. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Oliver, scorned and ostracized by Oxford’s elite, who grew up with an arcane and complex code of etiquette with which he is totally unfamiliar. Poor lonesome Oliver longs to belong, and he falls in love with the upper class in general and with one person in particular, the beautiful and charismatic Felix, who is the center of everything, the most inside of the insiders. 

Does this sound familiar? It will if you saw “The Talented Mr. Ripley” or if you read Brideshead Revisited, both of which tell the stories of middle-class outsiders invited into the inner circles of the rich; and both of which are far more interesting and nuanced than the stylish and misanthropic and hateful “Saltburn.” Of course, nothing is what it seems in “Saltburn,” and the series of tragedies that follow Oliver’s invitation to join Felix and his family at Saltburn, their country estate, are not chance occurrences. You’ll have to watch it if you want to find out what actually happens and how. Or you could just read the Wikipedia plot summary, which might be a better idea than sitting through this movie. I did that after I watched the movie. This is how I learned that the movie was filmed in a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the more conventional 16:9. I’m sure that there was an artistic reason behind that technical decision, but I didn’t notice it when I was watching the movie, but I don’t tend to notice details like that. I’m not a critic. 

Barry Keoghan is mentioned in all of the critics’ “best of” lists and is sure to receive many nominations for his performance as Oliver. But he left me cold, as did the entire movie. Even Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike, whom I normally adore, are wasted here. “Saltburn” is a two thumbs down for me, but what do I know, other than the difference between right and wrong?

*****

Thursday was the first nice day all week, so we drove to Harper’s Ferry for the afternoon. West Virginia sounds so dreadfully far away but on a good traffic day, Harper’s Ferry is a one-hour drive, even when I’m driving. Harper’s Ferry is a little gem of a town, rich with history, architecturally very interesting (especially the WPA-era train tunnel), and surrounded by stunning natural beauty. It sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, and at the intersection of the Appalachian and C&O Trails, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as a natural backdrop. You can hike or stroll or bike or canoe or poke around in little shops and get your National Parks passport stamped, all in just an afternoon. We had a lovely time there, basking in the unseasonable warmth and clear bright late December sunshine and clean mountain air; and we were home before dark. 

*****

I had to work on Friday, oddly enough. At least one person needs to be in the office during business hours (why, I don’t know) and Friday was my turn, so I left my house at 7 and breezed on to the base at 7:25. There’s always an upside of working on December 29. The streets were near-empty. And the office was near-empty, too. I worked in fits and starts, finally hitting a groove at about noon, with a burst of energy and concentration and inspiration that allowed me to finish a project that’s been hanging over my head for a bit. At 2:30, the only other person on the floor stopped by my desk to wish me a happy new year. “Don’t stay too late,” he said. It had already been unnaturally quiet on the floor, but now that I knew for sure that I was the only person left on the floor (and likely the only person left in the building) the quiet was a bit eerie. I finished my work listening to holiday-week NPR on my headphones and then packed up at 4 and walked across the empty brick courtyard for the last time in 2023. By 5 o’clock, I was home in cozy sweats, back in holiday mode. 

*****

After one pretty bad movie, I watched a pretty good movie. Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” which was slightly controversial because of the prosthetic nose that Cooper wore to play Leonard Bernstein. I suppose I can see both sides of this little uproar, but the movie is really quite good. Cooper manages the macro and the micro very well; the micro being the story of Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montelegre (Carey Mulligan in an absolutely lovely performance) and the macro being the whole American century that made a life like Leonard Bernstein’s possible. The movie is beautiful to look at and listen to, with outstanding performances from the entire cast, especially Mulligan. 

*****

So it’s late December (well it’s January now) and what would late December in the post-COVID era be if at least one member of the household wasn’t stricken by a hideous upper respiratory infection? Three of the four of us were sick to varying degrees, with one person going down just as another began to recover. A bunch of COVID tests, dozens of oranges, a bottle of zinc tablets, two urgent care visits, Tamiflu, amoxicillin, and a partridge in a pear tree. Everyone’s fine now. For now. 

****

Clutter is delightful for exactly two weeks of the year, and not one second more. From about December 19 to about January 3 or so, our house is full of presents wrapped and unwrapped, treats homemade and store-bought, Christmas decorations and knick-knacks and trinkets, wrapping and baking supplies, and a big fat Griswold family Christmas tree that takes up half the living room. And it’s lovely but when it’s over, it’s over. It’s January 3 now, and it’s over. Two days ago, my house felt sparkly and magical and cozy all at once, and today it feels like a very special episode of “Hoarders.” It’s time to break it down. 

I’m always a tiny bit sad when I start taking down the Christmas decorations, but once all the Christmas stuff is packed away and all of our pictures and paintings and books and objects are back in their proper places, freshly dusted, the house seems calm and peaceful and welcoming again. The tree will stay until January 7. Its exit will clear a ton of physical and metaphorical space for a new season and a new year. The past few years have taught me not to tempt fate with hilariously snide “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” messages to the departing old year. I don’t want to encourage “Hold my beer” energy from 2024, know what I mean? I'll just leave you by saying Happy New Year. 

Sinead and Edna

It’s a rainy Friday, a WFH day for me, and I’m still in my pajama pants, though I am wearing a respectable business casual sweater and could pass muster as a working professional from the neck up, if an unplanned teleconference forces me to show myself. I was going to change out of the pajama pants but it’s almost three o’clock now and I have no plans to leave the house unless it’s on fire so I think I’m dressed (or half-dressed) for the day. 

The thing is that I’m tired because I was out until after midnight last night, a rare occurrence for me on a Thursday night. The AFI Silver is hosting an Irish film festival and last night’s feature was “Nothing Compares,” the Sinead O’Connor documentary. I suppose I could have rented it but an Irish film festival seemed a better venue than my couch. An opportunity to see it with my people, so to speak.

The evening did not disappoint, although full disclosure, I did fall asleep for a bit in the rather long interval between our dinner at the Limerick Pub in Wheaton and the 9:45 movie time. We arrived at the AFI at 9 o’clock, to an almost empty lobby. The box office person told us that the early screening was running late and that our show wouldn’t start until 10, leaving us with an hour to sit and wait. An hour at 9 PM, which is when I always hit the wall, especially after a hamburger and 1.5 Smithwicks. And we were sitting there in the nearly deserted lobby, on a pair of comfortably cushioned movie theater chairs, and there was nothing stopping me from closing my eyes for a few minutes, and so I did. My husband sat next to me, scrolling through his news feed. He might have napped for a few minutes, too. I don’t know because I was fast asleep, sitting right in the middle of a movie theater lobby in downtown Silver Spring. 

And then another movie let out and all of a sudden the lobby was a whirlwind of Irish film festival energy, and the ushers and concession stand employees were strolling amid the crowds handing out pints of Guinness in plastic cups. 

My husband, who is not a documentary film fan nor a particular admirer of Sinead, was very impressed with the free Guinness, although “free” is a pretty loose term considering that the movie tickets cost $22 each. I thought for a moment, as I held my free plastic pint cup of Guinness, which I don’t especially like, that maybe as lower middle-income parents of college students, we might have been wiser to just stream the movie at home. But sometimes you need to get out. 

I’m a very very very introverted person but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love people. I love being out among people. I have to plan ahead and muster my energy and maybe take a nap in public just before the people descend upon me but with enough preparation, I can really enjoy a crowd. I was wide awake as soon as the people filled the lobby, the people leaving the early showing and the people arriving all at once for the later showing, all of them excited to be out on a Thursday, dressed in jeans and sweaters and skirts and t-shirts, some in Irish sweaters. It was cold, so there were lots of interesting jackets. Women outnumbered men by 2 to 1 or so (not every man is as good a sport as my husband) and so there were also lots of interesting handbags. People were laughing and talking and hoisting their “free” pints of Guinness. There was lots of energy. It was something of a scene. 

The movie was excellent. I read Rememberings last year, and most of the events depicted in the movie were covered in the book (including the now-infamous SNL performance, though why infamous I don’t know because what did they think that Sinead O’Connor was going to do, just stand and look pretty and sing her little song and go home?), although not the reverse. The movie didn’t get into Sinead’s difficult professional relationship with Prince, except for an ending credit explaining that Prince’s estate refused to allow the filmmakers to use the song for which the movie was named. But that’s not my favorite Sinead song anyway, and there were lots of clips of performances during her early stardom, when her extraordinary voice was at its best. She really is one of the greatest female singers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Definitely worth leaving the house on a cold Thursday night in March. 

*****

And Sinead is not the only rebellious Irishwoman on my radar this week. I’m reading Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy and although I can see its literary merit and can understand why it has become a modern Irish classic, I also cannot wait to be done with it and will not miss Caithleen and Baba, not one bit. Or rather, I won’t miss the mid-20th century Irish misogyny that shaped these two hot messes in female human form. 

Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Brigid (Baba) Brennan, although they both live well outside the very restrictive circa 1955 Irish Catholic social norms, do not enjoy their rebellion. Kate, in fact, is not rebellious at all; she’s just a book-smart and street-stupid girl with no emotional self-control who falls for the wrong man and proceeds to make her life miserable over him, and his as well (spoiler alert - he deserves it). Kate’s lifelong friend Baba is the spoiled daughter of a prosperous Irish country veterinarian. Baba is hilariously funny, as mean as a snake, and completely without morals of any kind. She is almost nihilistic in her lack of normal human sympathy and her boredom with everything and everyone. Baba is also married to a terrible man with whom she lives a miserable loveless existence. 

The trilogy was apparently extremely controversial in Ireland when it was published, and it’s still shocking in places. But the most shocking thing about it is that it’s not just a whole novel, it’s three whole novels, about two characters who are so unlikable that they can’t even stand themselves. I kept reading until the end because I generally do that, and because the trilogy has enough page-turning need-to-know-what-happens-next appeal that I wanted to keep going. But I will not miss these books or these characters at all, and I can’t wait to not read another Edna O’Brien book, pretty much ever again. 

I didn’t plan for this to publish on International Women’s Day but here it is, a serendipitous coincidence in which I finish a post on the perfect day to publish it. St. Patrick’s Day might be just as appropriate but if you have seen “Nothing Compares,” or if you’ve read The Country Girls and its sequels, you won’t feel much like celebrating Irish culture, especially if you don’t have a Y chromosome. 

Feudal

Did you know that it’s possible to write a whole darn thing and then forget completely about it? Yesterday, for example, I started compiling my 2022 book list, and I started writing about Cloud Cuckoo Land, thinking to myself that it was one of the few books that I had read and not written about. And then as I started to write about it, I remembered that I actually HAD written about it. 

Did you also know that Google Docs will allow you to give two different documents the very same name? That doesn’t seem wise. 

Anyway, here is what I wrote about Cloud Cuckoo Land, the book; by way of “Heartburn,” the movie, just about a year ago. There’s a connection, however tenuous, I promise. 

*****

Last week on the very cold MLK Day holiday, I watched “Heartburn” on Hulu. I wrote about the Nora Ephron book upon which this movie is based right here. I don’t think that the movie was particularly popular or well-received when it was released in 1986, but it’s a good movie, as 80s movies go. Or maybe it’s not so much a good movie as a movie worth watching because of the great acting and the amazing scenery and sets and costumes: upper middle class homes and gardens, and spot-on bourgeois bohemian fashion, and mid-80s Washington and NY street and restaurant scenes. So I enjoyed watching “Heartburn,” but of course, it doesn’t hold up in a lot of ways. Few 80s movies do. 

*****

In the first act wedding scene, which takes place in Rachel’s father’s dream of an Upper West Side pre-war apartment, I noticed a Black guest. The actress who played her looked like Anna Maria Horsford (and I later looked her up on IMDB, and she was Anna Maria Horsford, thus explaining the resemblance). I thought that maybe Mike Nichols, who directed "Heartburn," thought that representation was important, and that’s why he made sure that his wealthy and artsy but powerful characters had Black friends who would naturally be invited to their weddings. 

LOL, no. Eventually we learn that Horsford’s character is not a wedding guest at all. She is Rachel’s father’s housekeeper, Della. There’s a scene in which we see poor Della minding her own business, doing her job, when Meryl Streep's Rachel (who has just left her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson) blows into the apartment like a hurricane, hugely pregnant, all wild hair and maternity sack dress and oversized big-shouldered jacket, with a toddler in one hand, and a Kenyan sisal tote bag* slung over the opposite shoulder. She takes up a lot of space. In five seconds, the large room is filled with nothing but Rachel. 

She flings her jacket and her bags and her personal belongings all over the apartment that Della is trying to clean, and immediately asks Della to babysit so that she can run right back out the door to do New York writer things. There is no mention of any additional compensation for the extra work, which is exactly what you would expect from Rachel and her ilk, now and then. What makes the scene typical of the 80s is that there is no real acknowledgement that for the housekeeper, caring for a toddler IS extra work in the first place. Spoiler alert: Della agrees to take care of the baby, of course, because what choice does she have? 

*****

In some ways, the whole movie is like that, all about the pretty much feudal relationships between upper class Washingtonians and New Yorkers and the people who clean their houses and care for their children and deliver their groceries. We don’t know if Rachel’s own nanny, Juanita (played by the same actress who played the housekeepers in “Clueless” and “Regarding Henry”) receives vacation pay or Social Security or any of the formal acknowledgements of the dignity and worth of her work that Rachel and Mark take for granted, but it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t. It was widely accepted then (as it is now) that only certain occupations are worthy of respect and therefore worthy of fair compensation, job security, dignified working conditions and treatment, and benefits. 

Still, working class people were better off then, in a lot of ways. Even if Juanita doesn’t receive benefits, she at least knows who her employers are. They interact with her daily. They pay her directly, cash in hand, not through a third party and certainly not through a mobile app. The grocery delivery man receives a tip from Catherine O’Hara, but he also gets a paycheck from the grocery store. He’s not subject to the vagaries of a five-star rating system designed by software developers whom he will never meet and who will never have a clue about any aspect of his job. 

*****

Wait, did you not come here for Soviet social realist film criticism? Yes, sorry, that took a bit of a turn. The thing that I can’t get out of my head is that I was an adult–a barely formed adult, but still an adult–when that movie came out, and the world that it depicts is almost completely gone. And in some ways, good riddance, obviously. But the gap between the working class and the well off, though it was wide enough at the time, still seemed bridgeable. Now that gap is more of a chasm, vast and ever widening; and the system of work and compensation has been so disrupted by the high tech industry (and not for the better) that it feels like the rich and powerful will continue to get richer and more powerful and the rest of us will be ever more subject to their whims until in 30 years or so we become a 5G feudal state. 

*****

I thought that maybe I had made up the phrase “5G feudal state” but I Googled it and found that of course somebody else got to it first. Did I say thirty years? Make it ten.

*****

Sometimes after I watch a movie, I’ll read the book upon which it is based but I have already read Heartburn and as we have already established, the book doesn’t hold up any better than the movie. It’s not Nora’s best. I like her essays better than her fiction. 

Instead, I read Cloud Cuckoo Land. I started this book with absolutely zero knowledge of the plot or the characters or the themes or anything at all. A friend whose taste I share recommended it and so I just opened it and started reading. My friend was not wrong - it’s a great book. The plot bounces around in time and space, moving the reader back and forth between 20th and 21st century America and the (of course) post-apocalyptic future and 15th century Constantinople (soon to become Istanbul). 

I won’t reveal any plot details except that there’s a part that involves an infectious disease and a quarantine. I don’t know if Anthony Doerr started writing Cloud Cuckoo Land before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but I guess that he did because the research and plotting for a book this complex must have taken more than two years. Well, it would have taken me more than two years, anyway. 

*****

The Cloud Cuckoo Land plot line that involves the virulent disease takes place in the post-apocalyptic future and given the last two years of plague, you’d think that this would be the most compelling part of the book. But it’s the 15th century scenes that seem most modern and relevant to me right now, filled as they are with desperately poor vassals and slaves and indentured servants who are utterly powerless and subject entirely to the whims and demands of their wealthy and powerful overlords. I don’t think that it’s likely that a small remnant of humanity will end up on a spaceship on a decades-long journey to a possibly hospitable planet (OK, one spoiler) but I do think that it’s likely (very) that we will return to a late middle ages social and economic and political system. It’s already happening. The 5G feudal state is under construction. 

*****

Again, I wrote most of this about a year ago, when people still thought Elon Musk was a genius. Things change in a year. 

We just had a three-day weekend, so we drove back to Philadelphia where we had just been two weeks ago so that my high school senior could visit Villanova. My sister lives ten minutes away from Villanova and she is also an alumna. My son is interested in several schools but his aunt is pushing him toward Villanova. 

My children are quite different from one another in many ways, including politics. My older son is a Bernie Sanders and AOC fan, and very attracted to radical progressive ideals. My younger son hates Trump but has no other thoughts about or interest in politics. 

Older son is a student at the University of Maryland. He's opposed to private colleges and universities, on principle, but he's still on winter break so he tagged along for the trip. We stopped at the bookstore and I asked him jokingly if he wanted a Villanova sweatshirt. 

He scoffed. "No," he said. "And I also don’t want golf clubs or a sailboat or a Vineyard Vines belt with little whales on it.” 

I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “If you’re out here wearing a Villanova hoodie, you can’t stick it to the man because you are the man.” We said the “because you are the man” part in unison. This is one of my favorite jokes, and my children know it well. 

*****

And so I’m still hopeful for the future. Young people aren’t going to knuckle under to high -tech feudalism, not without a fight. Yes, they're all scrolling TikTok all the livelong day, but they’re not stupid. They are immune to the charisma of genius tech bro disruptors. They are wise to the gig work sector’s false promises of “flexibility.” They are neither afraid of nor awed by the Internet. They are less materialistic than their parents and grandparents, less worried about the right house and the right car. They aren’t afraid to fight the power, whatever and wherever and whoever it is. They aren’t afraid to stick it to the man. 

*****

* I used to have one of those tote bags. I bought it in 1985 when I was a student at Temple University, after months of seeing them on the shoulders of the most stylish students on campus. Some things never change. 

Julie and Julia

I was very sad to learn of Julie Powell’s untimely death last week. I’m not sure why, really, other than just normal human sorry-to-hear-that impersonal sympathy. I never read her work. In fact, food literature is one category that I generally avoid. Of course I’m sorry to hear of anyone dying an unexpected death at age 49, but I felt this celebrity death a bit more than I expected to. 

Last weekend, during a spare 30 minutes, I started watching “Julie and Julia” on Hulu. I saw the movie when it first came out in 2009 and I remembered really loving the Julia scenes and not really loving the Julie scenes. Quick no-spoiler synopsis in case you haven’t seen the movie: It is based on both Powell’s eponymous memoir and Julia Child’s My Life in Paris, and it alternates between immediate post-9/11 New York City, where Julie Powell lived and worked as a mid-level bureaucrat; and Paris in the 1950s, where Julia Child lived an utterly enchanted life with her diplomat husband, Paul Child. Meryl Streep’s Julia, as I remembered her, was energetic and funny and full of infectious joy. Amy Adams’ Julie, on the other hand, was a whiny, anxious bundle of ridiculous neuroses. 

Well, now it’s perfectly obvious why I hated that character. Because it was like watching all the worst parts of myself, if only I looked like Amy Adams. 

Joking! Lol! Hilarious!

But in all seriousness, I watched part of the movie again, and as Johnny Cash once sang, I come away with a different point of view. I still liked the Julia parts of the movie better. Who wouldn't? Paris, international diplomacy at the height of the Cold War, glamour, mid century style, and what appeared to have been a perfect marriage vs. crowded subways, cubicles, yuppie bitch antagonists in place of friends, overwork, and domestic discord - really, no sane person would prefer Julie's life to Julia's. 

But the women themselves? Well movie Julie wasn't so bad. Yes she was whiny and spoiled and prone to temper tantrums but she was also compulsive and panicky and plagued with anxiety. 

Yes, I know. I keep coming back to this. She really is very much like me. I'd have freaked out over those stupid lobsters. I'd have dreaded boning the duck. Who wants to bone a duck for crying out loud? And I would for sure have pushed myself close to the brink of sanity to meet a fake, self-imposed, and entirely ridiculous deadline.

And besides, movie Julia (and I guess, real-life Julia) lived in Paris in a beautiful free apartment and she only worked because she wanted to. It was easy for movie Julia to be delightful. There would have been no excuse for her to be otherwise. 

*****

I never did read Julie and Julia, but now I think maybe I will. I’ll probably skip Cleaving (as the snotty-faced NYT called it, “Powell's sophomore and only other effort” - burn!) since I have already read one mercilessly honest exceedingly sexually frank overshare of a memoir this year. That one was enough for 2022 and it might have been enough of that genre for pretty much ever. But Julie and Julia is just my kind of thing - a memoir about a specific part of a person’s life and a story about a hard and exhausting though absurdly specific and quirky project. It’s a book about a person doing something that only she could have done. I’m going to finish re-watching the movie at some point, and then I’ll read the book and report back. 

Vacation reading

It's been a while since I wrote about books, so I'm going to tell you all about last month’s vacation week reading. It's a mixed bag, as always. 

*****

We rented a beach house for a week in August, and I like to try to read a book off the shelf in whatever beach rental I end up in, and I did that this year, too. Most of the books on the bookcase in the sunny corner of the bedroom of our 2022 beach rental were pretty much trash but I found a copy of Colm Toibin's Brooklyn amid the dreck, so that was my beach novel for the week. Brooklyn is one of only a very few books whose movie version I prefer. That is not to say that it's a bad book because it's not. The writing is really beautiful. But novels are about characters for me, and I liked Movie Eilis (Eilis, pronounced “eye-lish,” is the main character) and I didn't much like Book Eilis. Movie Eilis is reserved and the viewer understands that this is because she is homesick, introverted, and just a generally quiet person. Book Eilis is also reserved, but that’s mostly because she’s a bit of a snob. Lace Curtain Irish, my dad would have called her. 

This is not a compliment. 

After her return visit to Ireland, Movie Eilis clearly comes back to her American husband Tony because she loves him, not just because terrible Miss O'Brien blackmails her with a threat to expose her secret marriage. Book Eilis seems only to return because she has to. But let’s be fair to Book Eilis. Movie Tony is obviously very lovable, and Book Tony is a bit of a cipher. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just not a particularly compelling character. He could be any reasonably nice guy. Still, the bitch married him. 

*****

Did you come here looking for sharp and cogent literary criticism? How many times do I have to tell you not to do that? 

*****

After Brooklyn, I read another beach book, this one a purchase from my favorite store, a used book shop called Barrier Island Books. I should write about the store because I’m clearly not capable of writing about the books. Note to self. I’ll get to that later. Anyway, the book that I purchased was Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge, by Sheila Weller. I am a Carrie Fisher super-fan, and so this book told me practically nothing that I didn’t already know, but I didn’t read it for information. I read it because I wanted to revisit a world that Carrie Fisher was still part of. Carrie and her mother Debbie Reynolds were both American archetypes (the rebellious and spoiled but neglected Baby Boomer Hollywood child and the Midwestern no-nonsense up-by-her-bootstraps tap-dancing, singing, smiling never-not-working movie star mother) AND absolutely individual and different from anyone else of their time or any other time. They were living proof that people are like snowflakes and fingerprints: no two alike. There will never be another Carrie Fisher or Debbie Reynolds, God rest their souls. 

*****

If you’re still reading, you just learned a little bit about Carrie Fisher and pretty much nothing about the book (it was good, BTW). I’m 0 for 2 on the book reviews, aren’t I? Well, you were warned once, and if you’re still hanging, then that’s on you, isn’t it? Caveat emptor, know what I mean? 

*****

I’m a very big fan of Christopher Guest movies, especially "Best in Show." And as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am also a very big fan of Nora Ephron. And if you draw a Venn diagram with Christopher Guest movies in one circle and Nora Ephron’s entire oeuvre in the other, the intersection will absolutely contain Parker Posey. When her book You’re on an Airplane popped up in my Kindle recommendations, I did not hesitate. Plus, I love quirky memoirs. This one is premised on the idea that you and Parker Posey are sitting next to one another on a long flight, and she tells you stories about her life. The premise is good though the execution is not consistent. She drops the airplane theme for a bit in the middle, and then in a late chapter, she ends a paragraph with a sentence that goes something like “Oh thank you, I’d love some peanuts.” I had no idea what that was supposed to mean and then I remembered that Parker and I are supposed to be on an airplane together, and the flight attendant is offering us a snack. 

Not long ago, I read Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties (which requires a whole separate post and I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to that) and he didn’t mention Parker Posey even one time. This is a serious omission because if you want to understand nineties pop culture, you can do no better than to consider the very existence of Parker Posey’s movie career. No other decade before or since could possibly have produced Parker Posey, movie star. Parker Posey has lived an interesting life, and she is, not surprisingly, a very good writer. I recommend this book. 

*****

OK, I’ll give myself ½ credit for that last one. And yes, I would love some peanuts too, thank you. 

*****

I used to read a book in a single day all the time. Now, between legitimate busy-ness, eyestrain, and ever-worsening adult ADD (I assure you that this is a thing), it often takes me a week or more to finish a book. But I can cram a ton of reading into a vacation week. I almost forgot about this last one (really the first one), because I started it a few days before I went on vacation and finished it that weekend. 

Emma Goldberg’s Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic is a book that I would never have read on my own, but the medical students were reading it as part of orientation week activities, and so I read it too. Goldberg writes about six young New York doctors who begin their residencies several months early during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I won’t tell you any more than that (oh, you didn’t actually expect me to review this book, did you?) except that reading this book dragged me right back into the middle of 2020, which is a time that I do not care to revisit right now or likely ever, and yet I still really liked it. 

******

Brooklyn is the only one of these four books that has earned serious literary recognition (though I’m betting that Life on the Line will eventually win some prizes). I think it was even a Man Booker Prize finalist. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been because it is a very fine book. But I rank it fourth of these four, and it’s not even close. If you haven’t seen the movie, then you might like it better than I did. Just don’t read it expecting Saiorse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, and Julie Walters (who is absolutely hilarious as Eilis’s landlady Mrs. Kehoe). 

You know what? Just watch the movie. I almost never like movie versions of books and I really NEVER like a movie better than the book on which it is based, but never say never, I suppose, because here is one case in which the movie really is superior to the book. 

*****

And another thing. I AM going to write about The Nineties. I’ve already started, in fact. And it’s no better than this hot mess. Fair warning, as always. Watch this space.