Girl Detective

From the NYT, “When Economy Sours, Tootsie Rolls Soothe Souls”

The recession seems to have a sweet tooth. As unemployment has risen and 401(k)’s have shrunk, Americans, particularly adults, have been consuming growing volumes of candy

I can relate: on today’s Target trip, I bought pretzels, potato chips, Dots, spice drops, red Swedish fish, Hershey’s Special Dark bars and Orbit gum in Bubblemint and Sweet Mint flavors. No party or anything. Just ’cause. (Link from The Morning News.)

Tomorrow, Wednesday 3/25/9 Great Performances on PBS features Ian McKellen as King Lear, for those like me who missed him in that role at the Guthrie Theater in 2007.

Sunday, 3/29/9 Masterpiece on PBS begins the new Andrew Davies adaptation of Dicken’s Little Dorrit.

Apparently 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy can eat at Punch pizza once a week for years and not tire of it. Not me, so I’ve been trying to expand our family-dining horizons and tried the recently opened Black Sheep, whose coal-fired pizza is different enough from Punch’s wood-fired pies to feel like a change.

Black Sheep has two sizes, a handful of menu pizzas, then a long list for making your own. Though not as fast as Punch (what could be?) the pizza was delicious, more evenly cooked, and much less oily. We were in a hurry, so didn’t try any of the alluring appetizers, or the home-made ice cream sandwiches. But we devoured both small pizzas, and will happily try Black Sheep again, though only in good weather. Street parking was sparse so we had far to walk on a day with a vicious wind chill. Rain, especially like today’s, would also be unpleasant for the long walk.

The last in the noir series I’ve attended these past weeks, The Phantom Lady was enjoyable for its mood, though not its plot, which made little sense. A depressed man who’s been stood up, Scott meets a sad lady in a bar, asks her to a show, drops her off, returns home to find his wife dead. He’s the main suspect, and when police start questioning his story, no one knows a thing. Enter his cute assistant, played by Ella Raines, nicknamed “Kansas”. Determined to prove him innocent, she goes all girl detective to prove the witnesses are lying. In the midst of this, one of Scott’s friends shows up, and is quickly revealed as the bad guy to the audience, though its not obvious to the others. Franchot Tone plays the comically over-the-top murderer to very entertaining effect. Very good, probably not great, but worth watching for the performances by Raines and Tone, and for a scary-trippy jazz-den scene.

When I asked a bookstore-manager friend why his peers might not have found my on-hold mix up funny, he sighed. Meyers is the current bete-noir of the used bookstores, he said. Teen girls and their moms are forever calling and asking for copies, when the few that come in fly back out again immediately.

So when Jessa Crispin got snarky about Twilight yesterday at Blog of a Bookslut, I was amused, and followed her link to a longer article by Jenny Turner in the London Review of Books. Turner read the books, saw the movie, and wrote about them well. I can now better justify my Twilight disgust without reading the books or seeing the movie. Thank you, Jenny Turner.

For more interesting, complex takes on the vampire myth, start at the beginning if you haven’t read Dracula by Bram Stoker. Then try Agyar by Steve Brust, Anno Dracula by Kim Newman and Sweetblood by Pete Hautman.

Toni Morrison’s A Mercy just didn’t work for me. At only 167 pages, I thought I’d finish it quickly; it took me days. There were myriad ostensibly sympathetic characters, yet none of them felt deep, connected and complex enough to engage me. Morrison switches between third and first person narration among the characters; this only made me feel further alienated from this book.

Don’t be afraid. My telling can’t hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark–weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more–but I will never again rise up and bare teeth.

and

Lina is unimpressed by the festive mood, the jittery satisfaction of everyone involved, and had refused to enter or go near it. That third and presumably final house that Sir insisted on building distorted sunlight and required the death of fifty trees.

Morrison is a great writer; her Beloved is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. This book, which addresses some of the same issues, felt like a faint echo of that work. It’s uncomfortable not to like a work that others have praised and one by a great artist. But my reaction to it is mine, and the opinion of this blogger. YMMV.

Most reviews have been positive (EW and NYT,) and the book made many best-of-2008 lists. The Atlantic notes the anachronisms of the dialogue, among other things, a critique echoed in this mixed review from The Telegraph.

Kenley Collins of Project Runway Season 5 arrested for assault. Cat, laptop, apples and water? It sounds like a Bravo TV challenge: attack your sleeping fiance with only the items at hand.

Bob Dylan annoys neighbors. Media retaliates with slew of headlines. My favorite: Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man! Fix your toilet!

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a teen comedy/romance based on the YA novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, is utterly charming, if not that original. I was reminded of Better Off Dead and Adventures in Babysitting, both of which I loved when I was in high school. I imagine this is the example of those movies for this generation.

Michael Cera is adorable as Nick, pining for his skanky ex-girlfriend Tris.

I never wash my pants. I like to keep the night on them.

Kat Dennings is not quite believable as the doesn’t-know-she’s gorgeous Norah. Ari Graynor is hilariously innappropriate as the drunk friend.

Is that a turkey sandwich?

Cera’s gay bandmates are a nice, modern touch. And there are great cameos by John Cho, Andy Samberg, Seth Myers, and Devendra Banhart. This isn’t rocket science but I found it funny, sweet and involving.

5yo Drake continues to oppose the bike we got him A YEAR AGO and is content to excel at the trike. One of his preschool cohorts made fun of him yesterday, and he didn’t notice:

Boy: Drake, YOU ride a TRICYCLE?!

Drake: Yeah!

3yo Guppy is practicing his soccer ball handling, unaware that the trike should be his.

It was a lovely walk, about 7 blocks (.7 miles, I think) kicking and pedaling.

I just found a new home for our double stroller. If things keep up, the boys won’t miss it.

With warm(er) weather this week, I’m risking spring shoes and a bag. Pushing the season? Maybe. At least I’m not wearing shorts.

But my winter-weathered feet didn’t look so cute in the cute shoes, so I did the fastest pedi ever; I slathered thick moisturizer on my feet. Then I did the same for my hands. Voila. Instant improvement.

As the weeks of 2009 went by, I didn’t see new reviews in Entertainment Weekly by Jennifer Reese, my favorite book reviewer. I emailed her to find out if she was still at EW and learned she was laid off at the end of last year. That explains why I’ve been so disappointed in the book reviews this year.

The good news is you can find Reese a couple places on the web. She’s a contributor at the National Book Critics Circle site and blog, and at NPR’s “Books We Like.” She also has a cooking/baking blog, Tipsy Baker.

I had to ask my 5yo son Drake this morning how to review pictures on our digital camera.

He showed me two ways to do it.

A companion to her Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead, Home is similar but different. Like Gilead, it is a thoughtful novel with lovely prose and complex characters actively seeking spiritual growth. If you’re interested in questions of faith and redemption, and if you liked Gilead, as I did in 2005 and 2007, you’ll probably like Home too. But vice versa. It is a slow, perhaps sometimes ponderous, read, often painful in its brutally honest characterizations of fallible, sad and aging people.

Home is about the return of Jack, prodigal* son of the Reverend Boughton, and namesake of John Ames, the narrator of Gilead. Similar events and characters are showed through different perspectives. I found Gilead framed around the eras of people’s experiences of God: thunderous revelation of the early Bible, quiet respect of the later Bible, and then theology in the absence of an immanent God. Home takes the progression to the next step in its examination of the flawed nature of humanity, and its characters wonder if grace is earned and whether predestination plays a role, or exists at all.

Jack and his sister Glory are deeply sympathetic characters, and reading Home made me want to reread Gilead to see the same events through Ames’s eyes. I was hurt, and moved, and buoyed as I read. Low on plot and action, this is not a book for everyone. But its still waters run deep, and it will linger long for those inclined to listen.

Home is up against Hari Kunzru’s My Revolutions, which I read and appreciated last year, this Wednesday, 3/18 in the 2009 Morning News Tournament of Books.

*NB: Prodigal means wasteful, not “someone who ran away and came back.”

Me, to husband G. Grod, about the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books:

Three upsets in four days! It’s so exciting!

G: I don’t think you know what that word means.

Last night when I went into 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy’s room to turn out the light before 11, Drake was still awake, though punchy. (Damn you, Daylight Savings Time!) He was on the bottom bunk, Guppy’s bed, using the pillow at the top to prop up books while poor sleeping Guppy was curled up sideways at the end of his bed.

“Time for bed,” I said in my best Voice of Authority.

“But, Mom,” he said, pointing to a page in Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever.

“What is it?” I asked.

“How many is this?” he said, gesturing to the illustration of a group of wives, cats and kits in sacks coming from St. Ives.

“It doesn’t matter. Bed.” I said, trying to maintain the VoA in spite of rising frustration and desire to get into my own bed.

“But, Mom. How many?” He was plaintive.

I tried to wiggle out by spoiling the punchline. “One. Only one is going to St. Ive’s. All those cats are coming FROM St. Ives.”

Drake kept woozily pointing at the page. “But seven cats, and sacks, and kits…”

“A lot,” I snapped. “There are a lot, and I’d need a calculator, and I don’t have one. Get off Guppy’s bed. Get in your own.”

“I want to figure it out,” he begged.

“We’ll discuss this tomorrow. Get in bed.”

Finally, he listened and did what I said. I moved Guppy back to his pillow, then left the room.

The next morning, in typical fashion, Drake shoved a calculator and the book at me. I shoved the calculator back.

“OK, One man. Plus 7 wives. Plus seven wives times seven sacks times seven cats. Plus seven wives, times seven sacks, times seven cats times seven kits. Hit equals. What do you get?”

(I didn’t think we should count the sacks, only the man, his wives, the cats and the kits.)

He showed me the display with a grin. Two thousand seven hundred fifty two, he crowed. Finally satisfied, he went on to play with Legos.

So there you are, folks. If your kid ever holds you hostage at 11pm and won’t get off his sibling’s bed, you’ll know the answer to how many are coming from St. Ives. 2,752.

You’re welcome.

(If you’re going to verify my math, be sure you have a calculator that does order of operations. You remember: MDAS, My Dear Aunt Sally Multiplication and Division first, then Addition and Subtraction. Don’t know how to tell? Key in 2 + 3 X 2. A good calculator will give you 8. A cheap one will give you 10.)

Miller’s Crossing is one of my husband G. Grod’s favorite films. We watched it early in our courtship as part of our getting-to-know-each-other-via-media-we-loved.

What’s the rumpus?

I think it’s one of, if not THE, best Coen Brothers film. G. and I saw The Glass Key (1942) earlier this week, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Miller’s Crossing is based both on The Glass Key and Red Harvest.

Gabriel Byrne is Tom, the cynical right hand man of Albert Finney’s crime boss Leo. Irish Leo is dating Verna (a wonderful Marcia Gay Harden), who asks him to protect her brother Bernie. The Eye-talians in town don’t like Jewish Bernie–”It’s a matter of ethics”–and a gang war ensues. Lots of people end up dead. Unlike The Glass Key, there’s not an artificially upbeat ending.

The film is beautifully shot, and uses the cinematography to show a lot of the story, rather than having someone tell it. There are memorable shots, both gorgeous and gruesome. Carter Burwell’s Irish-influenced score also does a lot to create mood in the film. There are any number of great lines,

Black is white. Up is down.

Careful viewing is rewarded. Finney is dressed as a maid for a scene in a women’s bathroom. Parents of young children will probably recognize as a bookie’s agent the late Michael Jeter, who also played Mr. Noodle’s brother Mr. Noodle from Elmo’s World on Sesame Street. Sam Raimi shows he’s better behind the camera than in front of it in a gleeful attack scene. Frances McDormand (married to Joel Coen) has a cameo as a secretary.

Next up in related viewing will probably be Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, based on Red Harvest, the other source book for MC, and Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Yojimbo. And maybe some cheerful movies in between.

I just finished calling around my used bookstores asking if they had copies of 2666 by Roberto Bolano, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri or Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. While on hold with one guy, another picked up the call and said, “You were looking for Stephanie Meyer?” I laughed, said no and told him what I was looking for to explain why I thought it was funny. He didn’t laugh, and put me back on hold. The guy who’d been looking for me picked up again, told me they didn’t have any of the three (natch) and when I told him about the Stephanie Meyer question, he didn’t laugh either.

This is the kind of exchange I would’ve loved when I worked in a bookstore. Am I overly amused at my book geekery, or is it too esoteric?

A few things that bug me:

Flap pockets on boys pants; they never lay flat
Milk chocolate
People who wear pajama pants in public
High fructose corn syrup
Kate Hudson
Garrison Keillor’s voice
Eliza Dushku’s non-moving forehead, and the non-awesomeness of Dollhouse

I am, perhaps, being unreasonable.

Edited to Add:
CROCS. I love Tim Gunn’s assessment: “they’re like colored plastic hooves.” I don’t care if they’re comfortable. Only for kids or home, IMO.

Twilight, Stephanie Meyer books, EW covers that feature Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart’s empty stares, or worse, Pattinson’s nipple–EW, indeed. See The TV Addict for a funny takedown of the last EW Twilight cover.

According to The Guardian, two more novels have been found among the late Roberto Bolano’s effects, as well as what appears to be the sixth and final section of 2666. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

I’m going to take this to mean I’m off the hook for having to read 2666 for the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books, even if it did win its first round.

Last night we had the good fortune to find a sitter who could stay late, so my husband G. Grod and I were able to take in Take-Up Productions noir double feature at The Heights of The Blue Dahlia and The Glass Key. Both star Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, with William Bendix in a scene-stealing supporting role.

The Blue Dahlia, from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, has an excellent tagline: “Tamed by a brunette–framed by a blond–wanted by the police!” Ladd is a navy veteran who returns to an unfaithful wife. When she turns up dead, the police have many suspects, Ladd, Bendix and Lake among them. See the film’s trivia at imdb for the entertaining legend of Chandler’s writing process, and the connection between this film and the “Black Dahlia” scandal, later made into a book by James Ellroy and a film by Brian De Palma.

The Glass Key is based on a Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name. Ladd is the childhood friend of a powerful character with political aspirations. It wavers interestingly between their “bromance” and the triangle they have with Lake. Bendix plays an eager goon and an extended fight scene that’s simultaneously disturbing and entertaining. The film pulls its punch at the end with an incongruous happy ending, though one with some funny lines.

The Coen Brothers used Hammett’s Glass Key and Red Harvest as the basis for their excellent 1990 film Miller’s Crossing. Earlier, Red Harvest was the basis for Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which was later remade as For a Fistful of Dollars, the first famous spaghetti western.

There’s one more film in this noir series, The Phantom Lady, on Monday 16 March 2009 at 7:30 p.m. at the Heights Theater. A Hitchcock series starts in April, and will be shown both at the Heights and The Riverview.