Dudes, I hate the Olympics. I hate the nationalism, the capitalism cloaked in sportsmanlike conduct, the feats of strength, the heartwarming tales of overcoming adversity, the drug dogs at the airports (okay I guess that last one doesn't really affect me, but still). The fact that I have to be subjected to this garbage during the darkest of dark winter months makes me want to barf and then die. Hyperbole be damned: I hate them so much. I treat them as a personal affront. Any televised sporting event brings back repressed memories of not being able to do a somersault in gym class and of being asked to manage the field hockey team instead of actually playing (although that one was actually a blessing in disguise--time off school without physical exertion!). I can't handle this kind of emotional pain right now, folks. It's just too much for me.
With that in mind, here are a few things you should watch instead of watching people hit each other with sticks (that's a sport, right?). I've tried to think of the least sporty programming of all time. It wasn't hard.
1. Big Love. I am currently addicted to this show. The weirdness of polygamy and Utah/Mormon society hooked me, but the amazing character development has kept me watching. Also, not a sport in sight, since the FLDS crazies believe women's menses may be interrupted by physical activity. Furthermore, any reason to listen God Only Knows over and over again is fine with me.
2. Me and You and Everyone We Know. While Miranda July, the writer of this zany, hipster orgasm of a film, once penned a short story about secretly offering swimming lessons to the elderly in her living room using a bowl of water to simulate immersion in a pool (you must must MUST read it, and you can find it in her book No One Belongs Here More Than You), this movie is a sports-free zone. This is the story of an artist/cab driver and her alternately boring and ridiculous life, which spokes out like a bicycle wheel into the worlds of the people around her.
3. Casablanca. Much as I despise Valentine's Day, I always get a little bit sentimental around this time of year. I saw this movie for the first time in a highschool English class, but I don't think I really appreciated it till I saw it on the big screen for the first time a few years ago. I'm always surprised at how funny it is. Bogart is fucking dry, man. And who doesn't love a good unrequited love story? If you don't get a little weepy hearing As Time Goes By, you have no soul.
Now let's never speak of the Olympics again.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Give a hoot, read a book.
Oh hey, are you interested in an audiobook you can listen to in your car without developing a paralyzing fear that a cult member and/or murderer is on your tail all the way home at night?
Then Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, is probably the worst possible choice for you.
Someone whose tastes I occasionally appreciate, and who begrudgingly uses the library even though he is convinced we are tracking him everytime he checks anything out, returned this book on CD awhile ago and told me he'd listened to the whole thing in one sitting. The other night, as I was searching for something to bring home with me, slim pickin's on the shelf meant it was basically a choice between Norah Roberts and Palahniuk, and when in doubt, I always try the darker, hipper option. I haven't slept much since.
Seriously, this book is terrifying. It opens with the narrator inexplicably telling his life story into the flight recorder of a plane he's hijacked, and if you can believe it, the story plummets downhill (downwind?) from there. He's one of the lone survivors of a Waco-esque cult. He's obsessed with death. He's routinely abused by the people he works for. He advertises his phone number as a crisis help hotline and advises the people who call to kill themselves. He quotes highschool home ec minutiae ad nauseam to the point where you will pick up seventeen different home remedies for blood in your carpet.
Wow, you're probably thinking, what a feel-good story.
And yet, I cannot stop listening. This book on CD is the audio equivalent of rubbernecking at a car crash (which, frankly, is not the best jumping off point for something you're going to be listening to while at the wheel of your car). Like all Palahniuk, there's something strangely hilarious about the morbid, morose, hopelessness of it all. This book isn't for the faint of heart, but if you feel like something wildly different and wildly disturbing, check it out. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll maybe feel queasy. It'll be better than Phantom of the Opera. (Not really, though.)
I don't recommend listening to it all at once, though. You will probably need frequent music breaks between tracks of insane confessional. I recommend this song as your first pause.
Cute as a bug's ear, that one.
Then Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, is probably the worst possible choice for you.
Someone whose tastes I occasionally appreciate, and who begrudgingly uses the library even though he is convinced we are tracking him everytime he checks anything out, returned this book on CD awhile ago and told me he'd listened to the whole thing in one sitting. The other night, as I was searching for something to bring home with me, slim pickin's on the shelf meant it was basically a choice between Norah Roberts and Palahniuk, and when in doubt, I always try the darker, hipper option. I haven't slept much since.
Seriously, this book is terrifying. It opens with the narrator inexplicably telling his life story into the flight recorder of a plane he's hijacked, and if you can believe it, the story plummets downhill (downwind?) from there. He's one of the lone survivors of a Waco-esque cult. He's obsessed with death. He's routinely abused by the people he works for. He advertises his phone number as a crisis help hotline and advises the people who call to kill themselves. He quotes highschool home ec minutiae ad nauseam to the point where you will pick up seventeen different home remedies for blood in your carpet.
Wow, you're probably thinking, what a feel-good story.
And yet, I cannot stop listening. This book on CD is the audio equivalent of rubbernecking at a car crash (which, frankly, is not the best jumping off point for something you're going to be listening to while at the wheel of your car). Like all Palahniuk, there's something strangely hilarious about the morbid, morose, hopelessness of it all. This book isn't for the faint of heart, but if you feel like something wildly different and wildly disturbing, check it out. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll maybe feel queasy. It'll be better than Phantom of the Opera. (Not really, though.)
I don't recommend listening to it all at once, though. You will probably need frequent music breaks between tracks of insane confessional. I recommend this song as your first pause.
Cute as a bug's ear, that one.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Lorrie Moore, you have my heart.
Can we talk about Lorrie Moore for a second?
I've devoured most of her short story collections (try Like Life to start) and was so incredibly and nerdishly excited when she published a novel late last year, A Gate At The Stairs. It finally came in at the library for me, and I've spent the last couple of days wishing I could just unplug the phone, hunker down, and do nothing but read it. It's the story of the ludicrously named college student Tassie Keltijn (this name alone nearly threw me off but don't let it get to you, seriously), who takes a nanny job for a couple in the process of adopting. This incredibly simple premise spirals out into a really remarkable universe of troubled characters, social tension, and amazingly hilarious turns of phrase. Moore is one of those writers whose command of the structure of a sentence is just so perfect, so poetic and so clear, that you find yourself reading bits over and over again. A Gate At The Stairs is part post-9/11 satire, part bildungsroman (how long have I been waiting to use THAT word?), part strange, dark, psychological study. Okay okay, it drags a little at some points, but the dizzying linguistic highs totally compensate for the occasional forays into over the top socio-cultural commentary.
So just so I can prove it, here's the best passage in the book, between Sarah, Tassie's boss and a new adoptive mother, and Tassie. The first part is Sarah's reminiscence of a favourite food:
'"When I was little Dannon made this delicious prune yogurt that came in a waxy brown eight-ounce container. Well, now they don't make any of those things. Completely gone. Although I was in Paris last year and found some there."
'I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science. I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seem to be saying, "Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!" '
My god, the woman is a genius.
I've devoured most of her short story collections (try Like Life to start) and was so incredibly and nerdishly excited when she published a novel late last year, A Gate At The Stairs. It finally came in at the library for me, and I've spent the last couple of days wishing I could just unplug the phone, hunker down, and do nothing but read it. It's the story of the ludicrously named college student Tassie Keltijn (this name alone nearly threw me off but don't let it get to you, seriously), who takes a nanny job for a couple in the process of adopting. This incredibly simple premise spirals out into a really remarkable universe of troubled characters, social tension, and amazingly hilarious turns of phrase. Moore is one of those writers whose command of the structure of a sentence is just so perfect, so poetic and so clear, that you find yourself reading bits over and over again. A Gate At The Stairs is part post-9/11 satire, part bildungsroman (how long have I been waiting to use THAT word?), part strange, dark, psychological study. Okay okay, it drags a little at some points, but the dizzying linguistic highs totally compensate for the occasional forays into over the top socio-cultural commentary.
So just so I can prove it, here's the best passage in the book, between Sarah, Tassie's boss and a new adoptive mother, and Tassie. The first part is Sarah's reminiscence of a favourite food:
'"When I was little Dannon made this delicious prune yogurt that came in a waxy brown eight-ounce container. Well, now they don't make any of those things. Completely gone. Although I was in Paris last year and found some there."
'I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science. I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seem to be saying, "Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!" '
My god, the woman is a genius.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday Night at the Movies.
Burrowing time is Caitlin time. I love nothing more than coming home after a long day, heating up a can of Chef Lonelyheart's soup (or maybe just some Habitant Split Pea) and taking full advantage of the library's DVD collection. Tonight it was The Apartment, starring my time travel secret husband (ie., I would really only want him in or around 1960), Jack Lemmon. Also featuring Shirley MacLaine in my second favourite role of her career (the first is, of course, Ouiser in Steel Magnolias). I love this movie. I hadn't seen it since I was a doe-eyed undergrad on summer vacation, meticulously watching my way through another library's video offerings, on a personal journey of filmic edification. I was really into Billy Wilder. (That was also the summer I developed a mild obsession with Jon Voigt as a sexy paraplegic in Coming Home, but that's a story for another day.) The Apartment has always stuck with me, for a few reasons.
1. I love stories set in mid-century offices, all those people crammed in close, riding the elevators in shifts, sneaking out to the Automat over lunch, throwing crazy Christmas parties.
(Skip ahead to about 1:20.)
2. I love unrequited love that works out perfectly in the end. Coincidentally, this is the second movie I've watched this week where the lovers never even kiss, and yet it is so endearing and romantic and kind-hearted. Sincerity in the face of flaws and downfalls--that's what this world is missing these days.
3. I love that the apartment is a character in the story, because I always feel like my homes are major players in my life too.
4. Jack Lemmon's character is sort of the 1950s Seth Cohen. Not a day goes by when I don't miss The OC with all my heart.
5. Ray Walston, who later went on to play the judge on Picket Fences, has a minor role. Remember Picket Fences? CLASSIC!
6. I love the closing shot of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine playing cards. It just makes me feel all cozy inside.
7. Billy Wilder was a man ahead of his time.
Then, to undo any quasi-intellectualizing I might have gotten myself into, I watched 2 hours of old episodes of Friends on the internet. I think I'm a Monica.
1. I love stories set in mid-century offices, all those people crammed in close, riding the elevators in shifts, sneaking out to the Automat over lunch, throwing crazy Christmas parties.
(Skip ahead to about 1:20.)
2. I love unrequited love that works out perfectly in the end. Coincidentally, this is the second movie I've watched this week where the lovers never even kiss, and yet it is so endearing and romantic and kind-hearted. Sincerity in the face of flaws and downfalls--that's what this world is missing these days.
3. I love that the apartment is a character in the story, because I always feel like my homes are major players in my life too.
4. Jack Lemmon's character is sort of the 1950s Seth Cohen. Not a day goes by when I don't miss The OC with all my heart.
5. Ray Walston, who later went on to play the judge on Picket Fences, has a minor role. Remember Picket Fences? CLASSIC!
6. I love the closing shot of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine playing cards. It just makes me feel all cozy inside.
7. Billy Wilder was a man ahead of his time.
Then, to undo any quasi-intellectualizing I might have gotten myself into, I watched 2 hours of old episodes of Friends on the internet. I think I'm a Monica.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
that's the one-second time travel machine i told you about.
Last night I couldn't sleep, so I watched The Science of Sleep, the next best thing. Seriously, I think this is one of the most overlooked movies of the last ten years. I've seen it a few times and everytime I watch it I pick up some new esoteric existential question. It's in three languages and you hardly even notice the transitions. It's visually mind-boggling. It unpacks a lot of the issues Michel Gondry obsessed over in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (maybe my favourite movie of all time): the tricks our minds play, the tricks we play on each other without even knowing it, all the time unconsciously feeling like it's the best thing, like we can't live without someone, like it's the only option, all the time stuck in our own minds, unable and unwilling to tell dream or memory from reality. Also, I defy you to not fall in love with Gael Garcia Bernal when you watch him in this opening scene.
The little dance he does while playing the keyboard around 1:09 is particularly endearing.
Also also, for a wannabe crafster like me, some of the effects are like sweet sweet porn:
Optical illusions as flirtation: Genius.
I have a bit of a lady crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg.
You must see this movie. Really.
The little dance he does while playing the keyboard around 1:09 is particularly endearing.
Also also, for a wannabe crafster like me, some of the effects are like sweet sweet porn:
Optical illusions as flirtation: Genius.
I have a bit of a lady crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg.
You must see this movie. Really.
don't tell anyone anything. if you do, you start missing everyone.
Well, friends, I'm back.
And JD Salinger is dead.
I'm taking it pretty hard, I have to admit. I know everyone probably has that Catcher in the Rye moment, the memory of reading it at some pivotal moment in your life. For me, it was the loft at the cottage we used to go to. I was thirteen, and pimply, and I read it because I'd just finished an article in Seventeen where they asked a bunch of people their favourite and most influential book and a whole load of them said Catcher. And I admit, at the time, I didn't really get it. I sure did wish I could get my hands on a copy of the Little Shirley Beans record, though.
A few years later I read Franny and Zooey, and that was the book that sealed the deal for me. I loved how weird the Glass family was, and I loved all the 50s details, the train stations and the radio programming and smoking cigarettes in the bathtub and all that. And the perfectly articulated spiritual and existential malaise, the trap of your own family, the love and the hate and all the emotions running together till you don't really know what you're doing anymore. After that I devoured Nine Stories and had nightmares about Bananafish for years. Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction followed. I've since read my way through Salinger many, many times, usually while incredibly freaked out about something going on my life. I have a distinct memory of reading Franny and Zooey on a plane from Vancouver to Toronto, sleepy and confused and wondering whether I was flying to my home or away from it. Last summer an incredibly clever person at my library put Raise High the Roofbeam out on a Home Repair book display and I lauded them for their ingenuity and then picked it up again. God, I hope my wedding is that chaotic and anticlimactic (and as much of a non-event, now that I think about it). Like the Times obit says, he just had this knack for writing the way people speak. I could hear those voices in my head. Sure, maybe the slang was dated and the references went right over my head, but my oh my, did I ever want to be a fly on the wall in the worlds he created.
One time I went on a date with a guy who had somehow gotten his hands on what he said was Salinger's unpublished manuscript. He showed it to me, and I got through about three sentences before we started making out, and was it ever a romantic moment. Maybe I should have gone on a second date with that one, just to see how it ended. I guess I'll never know now.
Au revoir, JD.
And JD Salinger is dead.
I'm taking it pretty hard, I have to admit. I know everyone probably has that Catcher in the Rye moment, the memory of reading it at some pivotal moment in your life. For me, it was the loft at the cottage we used to go to. I was thirteen, and pimply, and I read it because I'd just finished an article in Seventeen where they asked a bunch of people their favourite and most influential book and a whole load of them said Catcher. And I admit, at the time, I didn't really get it. I sure did wish I could get my hands on a copy of the Little Shirley Beans record, though.
A few years later I read Franny and Zooey, and that was the book that sealed the deal for me. I loved how weird the Glass family was, and I loved all the 50s details, the train stations and the radio programming and smoking cigarettes in the bathtub and all that. And the perfectly articulated spiritual and existential malaise, the trap of your own family, the love and the hate and all the emotions running together till you don't really know what you're doing anymore. After that I devoured Nine Stories and had nightmares about Bananafish for years. Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction followed. I've since read my way through Salinger many, many times, usually while incredibly freaked out about something going on my life. I have a distinct memory of reading Franny and Zooey on a plane from Vancouver to Toronto, sleepy and confused and wondering whether I was flying to my home or away from it. Last summer an incredibly clever person at my library put Raise High the Roofbeam out on a Home Repair book display and I lauded them for their ingenuity and then picked it up again. God, I hope my wedding is that chaotic and anticlimactic (and as much of a non-event, now that I think about it). Like the Times obit says, he just had this knack for writing the way people speak. I could hear those voices in my head. Sure, maybe the slang was dated and the references went right over my head, but my oh my, did I ever want to be a fly on the wall in the worlds he created.
One time I went on a date with a guy who had somehow gotten his hands on what he said was Salinger's unpublished manuscript. He showed it to me, and I got through about three sentences before we started making out, and was it ever a romantic moment. Maybe I should have gone on a second date with that one, just to see how it ended. I guess I'll never know now.
Au revoir, JD.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
arrrrrrrriba!
So I'm off to Mexico tomorrow, which means I won't be posting anything here for awhile, which probably won't throw anyone off, given how sporadic I am with this blessed blog. Anyway, I've just come to the realization that I have the most ridiculous vacation reading list ever. I didn't want to bring any library books with me in case I am somehow set on fire or buried in sand, so I've spent the last two weeks pillaging the Friends of the Library's booksale shelf. The result is pure madness.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink--Holocaust!
My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates--Murdered siblings!
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath--Suicide!
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk--Dystopia AND murder!
My only saving grace is going to be Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which I've been urged to read by many people I really trust. It's probably just as bleak as the rest of them, but at least I know it comes highly recommended. And if all else fails, I'll have my standby copy of the New Yorker, which I always buy for travelling and then fail to read past the movie review section.
Later, skaters. Here's some music that's bound to be more painful than waiting in the airport.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink--Holocaust!
My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates--Murdered siblings!
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath--Suicide!
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk--Dystopia AND murder!
My only saving grace is going to be Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which I've been urged to read by many people I really trust. It's probably just as bleak as the rest of them, but at least I know it comes highly recommended. And if all else fails, I'll have my standby copy of the New Yorker, which I always buy for travelling and then fail to read past the movie review section.
Later, skaters. Here's some music that's bound to be more painful than waiting in the airport.
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