Girl Detective

A periodic treat at The Morning News is when John Warner assumed the mantle of Biblioracle, and invites readers to list the last five books they enjoyed. Based on those, he suggests the next book to read. After the summer round, he suggested his friend and fellow TMN writer Kevin Guilfoile’s second novel, The Thousand. I’d seen a negative review from Publishers Weekly, and didn’t consider it after that. But the Biblioracle struck again, because I enjoyed it tremendously.

The story switches between several characters, but the central one is Canada Gold, a petite woman with a famous dead father and a talent for counting cards in Vegas that’s gotten her into more than a little trouble. Canada is the kind of smart, scrappy, supernatural heroine its easy to cheer for, not unlike Lisbeth Salander though slightly less crazy. As a child, she got a neurostimulator implanted to control her seizures. The “spider” as she calls it, did what it was supposed to but brought a host of weird side effects. These come into play when she becomes the center of various plots of a shadowy group called The Thousand, fanatic and secret followers of the ancient mathematician Pythagoras.

This is a speculative thriller in the style of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. It has a number of similarities to a previous Biblioracle rec, Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, which I loved earlier this year. This was a fast, entertaining read in the midst of a bunch of heavy books. I enjoyed it a lot and look forward to checking out Guilfoile’s first novel, Cast of Shadows, as well as the latest recommendation for me from the Biblioracle: The Family Fang.

Many, many people asked “what are you going to do with yourself when Guppy starts full-day kindergarten?”

As if filling the time would be a problem.

FYI, all those people who told me to enjoy their baby- and childhoods because it goes so fast? My experience is spending actual time with babies and children can be tedious. The kid-free peace and quiet? THAT flies by.

I’m doing freelance writing now for three different places, so filling the time isn’t even confined to housewifery. And Oprah and bon-bons were never on the table.

I started this week with the desire to get back on my bike and get strong. After a couple recent physical setbacks, including a strained back the past few weeks (I grow old, I grow old…), I’ve fallen off my never very consistent exercise horse. When I get winded carrying the laundry upstairs, I figure it’s time to get moving, literally.

Monday I biked to meet a friend for lunch at a restaurant I’d long been wanting to try. In spite of bike map and smart phone, got lost, was late, but made it eventually. Total ride, 20+ miles.

Tuesday I met friends for coffee and breakfast at one of my favorite spots. Total ride, 10 miles, plus 2 more later in the day when I biked to and from yoga.

Wednesday, I thought I would rest till I saw the weather. Being Minnesotan now means seizing the weather when it’s good. I didn’t have anything in the fridge for lunch. Decided to bike to the falls and an eatery I’d never tried. In spite of smart phone and map, got a little lost. Total ride, 20+ miles.

Thursday, I realized we were almost out of espresso beans. In spite of debilitating wind, decided to bike to a fancy bike and coffee shop. Once there I ogled fancy bike gear (could EASILY have spent $500 just on clothes, gloves and a bag) and enjoyed an expert cappuccino and chocolate chip cookie. Started home. About halfway there wondered what the noise was. Had a flat. Walked to a nearby transit station, missed the train, wondered if I should ask anyone of the biking folk around if they could help me change it (I did have a spare tube). Saw a friend! He would be late to work if he helped me change it, but a bike shop was only a few blocks away. Went there, got the tube replaced, got a lesson so maybe I can change my next flat myself, then finally got home. Total ride, 20+ miles.

While I’m exercising, I’m also riding to high-calorie destinations, so this is not a weight loss regimen. However, now that I’ve begun, I figure I should keep going. I always thought what I would do when Guppy started school was write more. Turns out, for now, at least till the weather changes (heh, probably next week) it’s biking.

And so, I’m off on my bike to meet a friend at a bakery I’ve long wanted to visit, then maybe hang out downtown to check out the food truck vista.

Ta.

Trying to catch up here at the blog. In home news today, I changed sheets to flannel and mended a pair of footie pajamas. Winter is coming.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. When I began this book, I was impressed, as in, head tipped to the side I said, huh, this is different and good. Chapters are of three kinds. Two are narrated by Alex, a Ukrainian tour guide, who in one type of chapter corresponds with the character Jonathan Safran Foer, and in the other recounts his side of JSF’s recent trip to the Ukraine to unearth details of his grandfather’s early life. The third type of chapter is told ostensibly in third person omniscient, but really by JSF (whether the fictional, the author, or both) of his family history based on what he found on (or what he’s making up after) his trip. As the book wore on, though, so did the JSF family history chapters. While I continued to delight in Alex’s fractured English and point of view, I came to loathe the history chapters. They brought nothing new to tales of persecution during WWII, but they did concern themselves in disturbing detail with the bizarre sexual habits of grandparents and great-greats. I’m all for grandparents having sex or people having weird sex. But I don’t have to know the details. So, by the end I still really liked about 2/3 of the book, but hated the other 1/3.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by JSF. For a book group because of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Narrated mostly by precocious 9-year-old Oskar Schell, who is weird but lovable and understandably deeply damaged by his fathers death on 9/11. Other chapters are letters written by his grandfather, who left his grandmother when she was pregnant with Oskar’s father, and the grandmother. The book is full of quirky bits, like photos from Oskar’s personal collection, pages that are blank because they were typed on a typewriter without a ribbon, four full pages of people’s doodles, numerous photos of doorknobs, and more. I’m reminded of a line from Spinal Tap: the line between clever and stupid is very thin. As with Everything is Illuminated, there is far too much detail about the weird sex of grandparents. The parts about Oskar and his mom were touching and interesting. The inclusion of Dresden is an intriguing contrast to 9/11. But the gimmicks and the grandparents didn’t work for me. Like EiI, a mixed bag of engaging, talented and really annoying writing.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. Moving, with great characters, especially Rusty, who will stay with me a long time. A good example of taking something specific like polygamy and making it universal.

Savages by Don Winslow. A selection of this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books that I finally got ’round to. A fast, entertaining read about a trio of marijuana growers who get mixed up with Mexican cartels. It’s told in short, devourable segments that sometimes switch to screenplay form. This reminded me in good ways of Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Breaking Bad on AMC: extremely violent but incredibly entertaining with involving characters.

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. A fable about an orphaned boy’s search for his sister, presumed dead. There is also, as promised in the title, a magician and an elephant. Lovely, evocative illustrations and a good tale.

The Fate of the Artist GN by Eddie Campbell. I’ve loved some of Campbell’s other works, and he’s undeniably a great artist visually and holistically, but this didn’t work for me. Way too meta, which I can sometimes love but apparently wasn’t in the mood for this time. I’ll go back to it, though.

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam. Margaret, eight years old, has to navigate a lot of adult weirdness, like her vague mother, Jesus-obsessed father, bawdy nanny, a mysterious house in the woods and two recently returned friends of her mother’s. Like her more recent novels Old Filth and The Man with the Wooden Hat, it’s peopled with complex and fascinating characters. I loved it.

Here’s what we’ve been watching.

Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) d. Frank Oz. With the kids. Solid and sweet with great cameos. A worthy follow up to the original, which Muppets in Space was not. I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming muppet film.

Nausicaa (1984) d. Hayao Miyazaki. With the kids. The first full-length film he directed, and one of his best. Based on his own series of graphic novels, this is one of the rare instances when the film betters the book, which was too long and repetitive. The story benefits from the compression to film, while color, motion, and voices bring the story to new levels. A princess in an ecologically destroyed future has to battle bad guys, giant robots, killer spores and rampaging insects. She’s cute, smart, tough, and compassionate. Now THIS is a princess.

Bridesmaids (2011) Again. On a date night with my husband. Because I love it. LOVE IT. Bawdy and at times brilliant.

Easy A (2010) The charming Emma Stone is a high school nobody who gains notoriety by pretending to sleep with gays and geeks. She gets noticed, they stop getting beaten up. It’s supposed to be win/win, but of course, then there would be no conflict. An homage to the John Hughes movies of the 80’s, brought up to date with social media and hardware. Funny, with a few nice surprises.

Black Swan (2010) d. Darren Aronofsky. What I hated about this film was it’s hatefulness. That’s not circular, even if it sounds like it. Yes, the film is interesting to look at, Portman can act, and the story is involving. But it’s bleak, hopeless, and says only cruel things about people and the world. As with his previous directorial effort, The Wrestler, I felt icky during and after watching this. I’m done with this director.

Edited to Add: Another thing that didn’t help me like the movie was how strongly it reminded me of an episode of Fantasy Island from my childhood. Annette Funicello played a nice-girl ventriloquist, whose sassy dummy seemed to be taking over her life. The dummy came to life in the form of sexy Maren Jensen (Athena on the original Battlestar Galactica) and they had a struggle to the death at the end to see which part of Annette’s personality would survive. I may be the only person who remembers this episode, but nonetheless, it was more than a little distracting to see many of the details in Black Swan.

Out of Sight (1998) d. Steven Soderbergh. Restored my faith in film making. I don’t care if you don’t like Jennifer Lopez. She’s great in this: strong, smart, sexy and just fun to watch. The non-chronological story, the chemistry with her and Clooney, the amazing work by supporting actors like Albert Brooks, Don Cheadle, and the hilarious Steve Zahn, the assured direction combine to make a great movie. Enjoyable and well-crafted, I concur with Dan Kois at Slate that this is a movie for the ages.

I am woefully out of the writing and blogging habit. The boys have been in school for almost a month now, and only now do I begin to see glimmers of what a balanced routine at home might look like. I keep getting waylaid by the housewifery. I’ve learned to live with ever-increasing levels of dirt and clutter in order to maximize time for reading and writing, but the bill has come due now that I’m home while the kids are at school.

And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall
[I] can not pick it up.
There is no way at all! (Cat in the Hat)

I don’t do well with a lack of structure, and I tend to treat deadlines as starting points. Time to change. Create structure, albeit one that bends. Respect deadlines. Read, write, rest, exercise, clean, organize, cook, eat. It’s not complicated unless I insist on making it so.

From “Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race” by Jen Graves, from The Stranger:

Every conversation about race is tortured–palpably awkward, loaded with triggers, marked by the blind spots of perception and presumption–but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or should stop doing it, says Scott Winn. That means you have to keep on.

“Once I realized I was racist, it was, well, what am I going to do about it?” says Winn, a mild-mannered white guy in his 30s. “That shifts the defensiveness.”

From “North by Nostalgia: Remember It Was Never Easy To Be Alfred Hitchcock,” by Linda Holmes at MPR

It was never easy to be Alfred Hitchcock, or everybody would have done it. It was never easy to be Cary Grant, or Eva Marie Saint. The crop-duster sequence wasn’t always an iconic piece of filmmaking; it began as someone’s idea. Filming the long, largely silent sequence that leads up to it wasn’t simply a product of the time; it was a product of creative effort that can’t be reduced to a dusty recollection of when people magically knew how to do things better than they do now.

Is there a modern movie that can hold a candle to North by Northwest? Linda mentions The King’s Speech being memorable for 2010, and while I enjoyed that film, I think it was an entertainment, not a great film. What are some great and lasting films from the last decade or so? For some reason, late at night, The Matrix is the only one that leaps to mind.

Two recent articles that have me thinking:

From “The Sugary Secret of Self Control” by Steven Pinker, a NYT book review of Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. via Arts and Letters Daily

In experiments first reported in 1998, Baumeister and his collaborators discovered that the will, like a muscle, can be fatigued. Immediately after students engage in a task that requires them to control their impulses – resisting cookies while hungry… – they show lapses in a subsequent task that also requires an exercise of willpower, like solving difficult puzzles… Baumeister tagged the effect “ego depletion,” using Freud’s sense of “ego” as the mental entity that controls the passions.

Baumeister then pushed the muscle metaphor even further by showing that a depleted ego can be invigorated by a sugary pick-me-up (though not an indistinguishable beverage containing diet sweetener). And he showed that self-control, though almost certainly heritable in part, can be toned up by exercising it.

And from “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue” by John Tierney, also in the NYT and also via ALD:

Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.

Edited to add this article, “The Willpower Circuit“, from Wired:

Mischel has also helped redefine willpower. While we typically think of willpower as a matter of gritting our teeth and outlasting the temptation — staring down the marshmallow, so to speak — Mischel realized that this assumption was backwards. Instead, the ability of delay gratification depended on the “strategic allocation of attention,” a fancy way of saying that some kids know how to distract themselves. Instead of obsessing over the marshmallow — the “hot stimulus” — these patient children covered their eyes or looked away. Their desire wasn’t defeated — it was merely forgotten. “Kids who can delay gratification have a much more realistic understanding of willpower,” Mischel told me. “They know that willpower is very limited. If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it. The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.” There is, of course, something unsettling about this new model of willpower, since it assumes the utter weakness of the will. Resistance is only possible when we’re not actively trying to resist. (emphasis mine)

Reviewing Bridesmaids and The Hours together? What could be similar about the raunchy Kristin Wiig comedy and the sedate Oscar winner based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book? Other than that they are both terrific in an apples-to-oranges way, they DO have a few things in common.

The Hours is a SERIOUS FILM with major stars including Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman (who won an Oscar for her role as Virginia Woolf) and Ed Harris. Like the novel it’s based on, it intertwines the stories of three women: Virginia Woolf who is writing Mrs. Dalloway; Julianne Moore as a 50’s housewife; and Meryl Streep as a lesbian whose best gay friend is dying of AIDS. This film was beautiful to watch, and while I felt it slow at the beginning, it gained momentum and I was weeping by the end. The Phillip Glass score was a little too loud, obvious, and full of itself, while the film also had some interesting and not-so-good departures from the book. Virginia was crazier in the film than in the book–more of a spectacle than the living, breathing, fascinating complex person she was in Cunningham’s novel. Moore was also more interesting in the book. She was the awkward outsider while her husband was a returning war hero, and it was more overtly about post WWII than about 50’s Americana, which the film took pains to portray, has less of a connection to the novel Mrs. Dalloway and is an easier target. Streep was terrific, and fun because she’s mentioned in the novel, a bit of synchronicity that Cunningham understandably enjoyed.

Bridesmaids opens on Kristen Wiig’s character Annie having vigorous, prolonged and cringe-worthy but hilarious sex with Jon Hamm, perfectly cast in contrast with his suave, womanizing Don Draper character from Mad Men. Annie is single and in a downward spiral after her cake shop shuttered during the recession. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), she finds she has a rival for Annie’s affections in Helen. As the two joust, Annie meets a nice guy, can’t deal with him, and thinks she’s hit bottom but somehow keeps digging. There is tons of over-the-top and uncomfortable humor, but it also possesses a solid thread of believability, especially in some of the female relationships and interchanges. Wiig is tremendously engaging, while Melissa McCarthy as the wacko sister of the groom steals most of the scenes she’s in. I saw this first with a girlfriend, and then with my husband. If you can handle the raunch, I highly recommend this. It’s funny, smart, with some truth and realism to it, plus some satisfying romance. I look forward to buying it on DVD.

Superficially, the films couldn’t be more different. Yet both included repeated images of breaking eggs and women kissing women. Both had scenes of a woman sneaking into bed with her lover pretending to have been there longer than she had. Both meditated on women’s friendships, and both had a challenging mother/daughter relationship. Both also had a panoply of female actors playing interesting and often out there characters. Both were shining examples of how good films can be when they pass the Bechdel test, which most movies don’t. (Though there’s a small but vocal minority who disagree about that, in an intriguing interchange in the comments.)

(One question about Bridesmaids, though. The character of Lillian’s cousin, Rita, who is blond, dissatified in her marriage and yet hungry for adventure (and thus the most cliche of the bridesmaids, apart from Helen), reminded me strongly of the bride’s sister in one of the first R-rated movies I saw, Bachelor Party. Does this ring a bell for anyone else?)

For one of my book groups, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Biafran war in late-60’s Nigeria. It was a time and event I knew nothing about other than that Biafra is not currently a country in Africa, so I could guess the broad strokes of the ending. The story is told through three main narrators, Ugwu, a village-born houseboy; Olanna, an upper-class Igbo woman; and Richard, a British ex-patriate who adopts Nigeria, then Biafra, as his home. Of the three, Ugwu was the most interesting and sympathetic to me, though the others were satisfyingly complex.

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu’s aunty said this in a low voice as they walked on the path. “But he is a good man,” she added. “And as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day.” She stopped to spit; the saliva left her mouth with a sucking sound and landed on the grass.

Ugwu did not believe that anybody, not even this master he was going to live with, ate meat every day. He did not disagree with his aunty, though, because he was too choked with expectations, too busy imagining his new life away from the village.

Together, their stories and the ones of those around them form a striking narrative of a terrible time in history, perhaps the origin of the phrase “starving children in Africa.” It’s a long book that moves slowly at first, then has many events in the last hundred pages. But the shift in pacing makes some sense; it gives a vivid portrayal of life before, during and immediately after the war. I found this book moving and informative, though didn’t really fall in love with it.

Wondering: why is there a whole sun on the cover when “half of a yellow sun” is in the title?

I started fifth grade on the second day of school. I was sick on the first day, with one of the terrible sore throats I’d have for eight more years till I got my tonsils out. While sore throats were normal, I’m suspicious of the timing; I was starting a new school. Again.

My sisters started first and third grades on time, but Mom took me to work with her at church. I forgot my book, so I spent the day paging through Christian family magazines. I’m not sure if I felt better the next day, or was more willing to face a new class than the church basement, but I went to school.

Kindergarten through fourth grades were in the elementary school, but fifth graders were bussed to a squat brick building on the outskirts of town. The Union school had two classrooms on two floors, with music and tornado drills held in the basement. At recess, my teacher told me to go with Renee, a tiny girl who introduced me to the other kids. Everyone wanted to know why I hadn’t been in school yesterday.

“Sore throat,” I said, using few words because it still hurt. I might also have been shy. It was my fourth school by fifth grade, while most of the other kids had been together since kindergarten.

At the end of the day, the bell rang and four classes of students clambered onto one bus. The driver was an old man named Dickie. I sat by myself in the seat behind him, reading the book I’d forgotten to bring the day before. It was a Trixie Belden mystery that belonged to the best friend I’d just moved away from. Our parents said we’d see each other, but she’d given me the book as insurance.

Off the bus and into the car, I pled my sore throat and let my sisters tell Mom about their days. On the forty-five minute drive to the apartment we stayed in till our new house was ready, I read Trixie Belden and wished we hadn’t moved.

###

(P.S. 5yo Guppy started full-day kindergarten yesterday. I said I’d get back to writing fiction when that happened. As with fifth grade, I’m starting on the second day.

After the move, my friend’s and my parents were true to their words. We continued to see each other. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding, and her mother just friended me on Facebook.

This sounds sadder than I thought it would when I started. I think it also sounds like my parents might be divorced; they’re not. Finally, while places and people might resemble those in real life, this is not necessarily truly true. It’s “pretty much all true,” as Olivia the pig might say.)

I’m a carb monster, so breakfast for dinner is one of my favorite things, ever. Alas, my husband cries foul on the dodgy nutrition, so I took advantage of his absence last night and tried a new recipe for waffles. It’s part of a series of “genius” recipes they’re spotlighting at Food 52, and which I’m watching with interest given it included my go-to pasta sauce, Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter (I don’t even like onion!) Aretha Frankenstein’s Waffles of Insane Greatness are easy to make, smell amazing while cooking, and are utterly devourable. We didn’t have a crumb left.

For better nutrition, I did serve the waffles with sliced strawberries and cucumbers, kale roasted with olive oil and salt (yeah, the kids wanted nothing to do with this), and a Black and Blue (berry) smoothie with silken tofu.


Aretha Frankenstein’s Waffles of Insane Greatness by Genius Recipes at Food 52

This recipe (originally from Aretha Frankenstein’s restaurant in Chattanooga, TN) is the ideal I-just-woke-up-from-a-waffle-dream waffle, a morning-of alternative to the overnight yeasted kind. The cornstarch in the batter helps tamp down gluten formation, making these waffles silky and moist inside with a crust as thin and crisp as an eggshell.

Serves 4

* 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/4 cup cornstarch
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup whole milk or buttermilk (or a combination)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
* 1 egg
* 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
* Butter and pure maple syrup, for serving

1. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; mix well. Add the milk, vegetable oil, egg, sugar and vanilla and mix well. Let the batter sit for 30 minutes.

2. Heat a waffle iron. Follow the directions on your waffle iron to cook the waffles. Serve immediately with butter and pure maple syrup or hold in a 200 degree oven, directly on the rack (don’t stack them or they’ll get soggy). These also reheat very well in the toaster.

Summer doesn’t officially end till mid-September, but my older, Drake, starts 2nd grade tomorrow, and Guppy starts kindergarten on Wednesday, so today was really it for the season.

It’s been a long crazy summer with several car and home repairs, a family trip, some health issues that have been addressed, swim lessons, soccer, day camp and I’m sure there was more in there. Nothing serious.

Here’s what I thought I’d do this summer: get to the bottom of the mending pile. Clean the whole house at least once. Stop the thistles in the backyard. Read about half again as many books as I did. Catch up with friends. Ride my bike a lot.

Didn’t happen. I darned a few socks. Cleaned a little here and there. Read some books, saw some movies, hung out with friends and rode the bike, though not nearly as much as I’d hoped. I did my best, and will try to let go of all the rest that didn’t happen.

I’m not sure how to make next summer less crazy than this one. Do less stuff isn’t necessarily the answer. Unless I kept my boys occupied, they fought. And one or both ended up crying. Not fun for anyone. There’s got to be something between exhaustion and pugilism, right?

Here are two more mediocre movies I’ve received in a crazy burst from the library. For the record, I did not expect either of them to be as mediocre as they were, but I’m reminded again that I should carefully vet the things I give my time to.

The Fighter is the one with Mark Wahlberg as the guy from Lowell MA whose older brother is a former boxer and his trainer. Melissa Leo plays his mother who is also his agent. There’s an embarrassing family (complete with an entourage of ugly stepsisters), a lithe lovely bartender girlfriend, and underdog tale, and will he/won’t he leave his family behind. I felt throughout that I’d seen this film before, and I have. It’s like Invincible (Mark Wahlberg as working class underdog sports guy with pretty bartender girlfriend, here played by Elizabeth Banks) with a smidge of Micky Rourke’s The Wrestler thrown in, as well as some of Ben Affleck’s The Town and Good Will Hunting about leaving behind the folks in working class Mass. who’ll drag you down. Not a whole lot happens over its almost two hours. Do you think Mark Wahlberg’s character wins in the end? Does he reconcile with his brother? The performances by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo are strong, but can’t carry this by-the-numbers sports movie and its telegraphed ending. Police officer and sometime trainer Mickey O’Keefe is played by himself. Loved him in the film.

I wanted to rent Fair Game because I read decent reviews of it and it’s directed by Doug Liman, whose Bourne Idenitity I liked a lot. Moreover, the Plame/Wilson scandal was something that I totally missed after I had my son Drake in 2003 and then lingering health problems through that winter. I probably eschewed the news because I was feeling down and overwhelmed already, but it was an embarrassing hole in my current event knowledge that I wanted to address. And probably, this movie was not the way to do it. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are good, but not great, in the lead roles. Plot points feel like a checklist: here’s the scene we learn Wilson shoots his mouth off; here’s the scene where her loyalties are tested. The movie didn’t surprise me, or even interest me overmuch. Hints about Plame’s complexity were just that, and would have done well to be developed rather than showing a pretty blond actress running around the screen mostly looking pretty and worried.

Bad Ass Digest shows “A Changing World” with before and after pictures of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever. via Morning News

Milk man is no longer a viable career option. Sadly, neither is cowboy.

Over at Tor.com Elizabeth Kushner writes about Shadow of a Doubt, perhaps my favorite Hitchcock movie, in “Noir Comes to Main Street”

But this is noir, no doubt about it. All the thematic elements are here: doubleness, dark secrets, stolen fortunes, femmes fatales (or their simulacrums), and even the requisite shadows through curtains. That the curtains are ruffled and filmy, the shadows barely noticeable unless you’re looking for them, is part of the point: just as the title hints, there are shadows aplenty in the world of Shadow of a Doubt. It’s just that no one wants to see them.

I’m not sure I agree that it’s noir, since it’s a little early for that genre, plus the gender roles are reversed. (not unlike how they are in David Mamet’s House of Cards) but it is a sweet little black and white thriller, with a smart, capable, strong teen heroine. If you haven’t seen it, seek it out.

Can you tell I’m not managing my library dvd queue well? That’s how the I’ve-never-seen-this-cult-classic Donnie Darko and Inside Job, the recent documentary on the banking collapse came in at the same time. (Along with two others, and then two others. Why do they all come in at once? I don’t think I reserved them all at once, but maybe I did. Sigh.)

Donnie Darko is the teen-angst movie of the early 00’s, reminding me strongly of Heathers. I could see falling madly in love with this film if I were younger and more disaffected. As it was, I liked Jake Gyllenhaal’s weird guy with hallucinations of a creepy guy dressed as a bunny named Frank.

I was not disaffected, that is, until after I watched Inside Job. My husband G. Grod declined to watch it, saying he knew it would anger and depress him. “But it’s supposed to be so good!” I protested, pointing out the gazillion encomiums on the cover, all from reputable sources, not dodgy ones. Matt Damon narrates this explanation of the collapse of the housing bubble and banking industry in 2008. As far as I can tell, everyone is evil, and what are viewers supposed to think if Elliott Spitzer and Dominique Strauss-Kahn are on the side of ethics? I guess this is why Dante imagined levels of hell. Faugh. Made me sick to my stomach.

While I watched it, G. went out with a friend to see Green Lantern at the cheap theater with the really good popcorn topped with real butter. He didn’t think the movie was much good, but enjoyed the popcorn, hanging out with his friend and some of the movie. Draw your own conclusion.

Back in the 80’s, I was a fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (you know, the one with four books in it?) and eagerly snapped up Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, his follow-up novel, which I enjoyed and has sat on many shelves in many domiciles over the past twenty three years. I was put reminded of Dirk when I recently re-read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and my husband said, “Isn’t the plot of that awfully similar to that [of the Dirk Gently sequel], The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul?” And thus two more books leaped onto my to read list. I thought to myself, no big deal, they’ll be fast, run reads, I’ll enjoy them and move on.

But I didn’t enjoy them a great deal. I enjoyed them some. I laughed sometimes. But not nearly as much as I remember doing the first time I read these. And both finished up in a whirl of action just past the climax really, with no denouement and incomplete story lines.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has chapters that alternate between a man who is murdered, another who gets blamed for it, an Electric Monk whose job is to believe things, the sister of the murdered man, and a strange, possessive entity. This is in addition to a sofa stuck in a stairway. Dirk enters the picture to figure out what’s going on, and he does, kind of, eventually. See? It sounds funny. And it was, rather. But it took me several days to work through it, and it was fine, good perhaps, but I can’t grant it much more than that.

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul is about Norse gods roaming the earth among us. This story alternates among Kate, who gets injured when the Norway desk at the airport blows up because the large, not-too-bright man (guess who!) loses his temper; Dirk, who’s locked in a struggle with his housekeeper over who will open the refrigerator first; and Mr. Odwin, an old man who’s enjoying a pretty cushy lifestyle at a luxe retirement home. Again, it’s funny. Again, Dirk kinda sorta figures out what’s going on, but not before some poor schlub loses his head (literally) and the ending ties up too quickly and not entirely satisfactorily. I am glad I read it, though, as Mr. Gaiman owes more than a little of the premise of American Gods to this.

(Noted by a writer on Tor, here by Nicholas Whyte, and here at The Labyrinth Library.

In all, the Dirk Gently books and I have grown apart. Is it me? Did the suck fairy get into them? Don’t know. But I can’t heartily recommend them.

As you may know, I like a little smackerel of something around 3ish. Today I dunked graham crackers into Earl Grey tea, hot, with milk and sugar. It was good.

Interestingly, graham crackers with coffee? Not good. Newman O’s (i.e., “more healthful” Oreos) with coffee? Tremendous. Newman O’s with tea? No. The beverage/cookie balance is more tricky than one might think.

In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, the one that gives the film The Help an A-, there’s an opinion piece by Martha Southgate, “The Truth about the Civil Rights Era,” that summed up how I felt about the book in just a few words: “fast-paced but highly problematic” then went on to explain exactly why the book and its popularity and the imminent success of the movie bothers me so much:

The architects, visionaries, prime movers, and most of the on-the-ground laborers of the civil rights movement were African-American. Many white Americans stood beside them, and some even died beside them, but it was not their fight – and more important, it was not their idea.

Implicit in The Help and a number of other popular works that deal with the civil rights era is the notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even necessary to tell this particular tale of black liberation. What’s more, to imply that what the maids Aibileen and Minny are working against is simply a refusal on everyone’s part to believe that ”we’re all the same underneath” is to simplify the horrors of Jim Crow to a truly damaging degree.

I can’t help but notice that the people who claim that books like The Help and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks are about humanity and not about racism are not people of color. I feel if you’re not disturbed by these books, then you’re not paying attention. I also feel that the sappy happy ending of The Help allows readers to leave the story feeling that racism has been defeated and that by liking the black characters the readers are themselves above racism. As Southgate said: highly problematic.

Ta-Nehisi Coates had similar things to say in “You Left Out the Part About…” after taking his child to see X-Men: First Class. While the original X-Men comic series hinged pivotally on the racial tensions of the Civil Rights Era, the new film focuses on Nazis, not racists:

But as “First Class” roars to its final climactic scene, it appeals to an insidious suspension of disbelief; the heroic mutants of America, bravely opposing bigotry and fear, are revealed as not so much a spectrum of humankind, but as Eagle Scouts from Mayfield. Thus, “First Class” proves itself not merely an incredible film, but an incredible work of American historical fiction. Here is a period piece for our postracial times – in the era of Ella Baker and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most powerful adversaries of spectacular apartheid are a team of enlightened white dudes.

I remember how surprised I was when I learned how the myth of Rosa Parks had been perpetuated in such a way that it diminished the Civil Rights fighters (again, nearly all of whom were African American, and were directly affected by the Jim Crow laws) in favor of reductively elevating one person’s story. We all know that Rosa was a tired seamstress at the end of the day asked to move out of the white section. Yes, she was a seamstress, and maybe she was tired, but she was in actuality asked to move from the “colored” seats for a white man. She let herself get arrested for not doing so because she and other members of the Civil Rights movement had been waiting for an opportunity to spark a major event, which was not her arrest, but rather the more-than-a-year long bus boycott by the African Americans, who surely experienced great hardship in doing so.

I’m not going to see The Help. I’m going to continue to say I don’t care for the book and why. And I’ll continue to wonder why people think we’re living in a post-racial society when smugness, ignorance and cruelty continue, whether we acknowledge them or not.