Two Completed Shorts Categories

I saw the Live Action Shorts on Friday, and thought they were almost all really good, so I guessed that this year the Animated would be creepy or whatever, since in many years one or the other of those two sets of Shorts has been known to be a bit off the rails.  But then Saturday I saw the Animated Shorts and they were... also good?!

Live Action Shorts (in the order presented in the cinema program)
The Singers
A Friend of Dorothy 
Butcher's Stain
Two People Exchanging Saliva
Jane Austen's Period Drama 

Animated Shorts (in the order presented in cinema program) 
The Three Sisters 
Forevergreen
The Girl Who Cried Pearls 
Butterfly
Retirement Plan 

So not only do I not loathe any of this year's Best Picture nominees, but this year we're also safe from creepy what-the-hell- did-I- just- watch! shorts. So far. 

All right.  Do I have clear favorites? I just might have one or two. Of the Live Action Shorts: Butcher's Stain and  Two People Exchanging Saliva. I also think each of those has a chance to win.

I have read mixed reviews of Butcher's Stain  but really haven't agreed much with criticism I've read so far. It's hot topic political, as the Butcher in question is a (Palestinian?) Arab working in a grocery in Israel. But it's not really "about" that conflict per se, as much as it is about misunderstanding, judgment, betrayal, and how we're all struggling and lots of us are making others struggle. I think that after seeing it, when you look back you see how precise each moment was. In it, the personal is political, while in Two People Exchanging Saliva, the political (or societal) gets very, very personal. The minute I saw this mildly bodily-fluid-esque title on the Shortlist, I thought two things:  1. That's probably French (yes) and 2. I'm going to hate this, aren't I?  NOT AT ALL!  I loved it.  It is dark, moody, riveting, subversive, and exquisitely executed.  I think any voter would have to acknowledge that this is the best-crafted of the five nominees! I absolutely recommend it - and the less you know about it beforehand, the better.  I found myself thinking about it while brushing my teeth later that night. 

Of the three others, two were lovely and one is stupid. The Singers was lovely, and great in its simplicity that  really brings emotional complexity. It also makes you want to go hang out in the bar with these gruff, grizzled old guys for an evening!  It would be an honor - like this Short being nominated. A Friend of Dorothy I've heard getting some buzz for a possible win, which I think would be a mistake. Don't get me wrong, as it was sweet and also very well done, but a little predictable and the smarmy white grandson  is a caricature.  I did like that last lingering shot, though.  As for Jane Austen's Period Drama, I already knew it was stupid, as I watched it on Kanopy a few weeks ago. It is nothing more than a Saturday Night Live sketch with editing.  I could not believe I was watching an Oscar-nominated short. Ridiculous.

My favorite of the Animateds was Forevergreen.  Oh, I loved it so much.  There is a little sound the bear makes when first picked up by the tree that warmed my heart! Forevergreen is fun, humorous, and adorable, while also being profound, touching, and cautionary. It's an allegory and a joy. I want it to win! 

There are three others that I liked but don't necessarily want to win. Retirement Plan is great, and I wasn't the only one laughing out loud multiple times because it's delightful while also being starkly true, but it is kind of slight, really when you get down to it, as a cinematic endeavor. It's a bit like that world-renowned Baz Luhrmann song "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)." The Girl Who Cried Pearls is the stop-motion one (right? See, I've learned a thing or two about animation Istilldon'tcareaboutit shhhhdon'ttellanybody.)  It also has a nice story with a good, solid ending and it's one I could see people voting for.  Butterfly is pretty and also packs a political punch, but also feels a bit slight compared to some others. 

But the real contender here could be The Three Sisters. This was absolutely glorious, fun, and low-key exhilarating to watch, while being not quite like any animation I've seen before. It looks like a camera holding a wide landscape shot, and the way the drawn characters move is so interesting. It's also funny and quirky and clever.  It only loses one little half-star for, you guessed it, bodily fluids. But I basically forgive it because it's wonderful. 

I don't think I'm going to give you my Order I Think They Will Win because I don't know  I am very busy and life is Short.  (See what I did there.) 

Checking In With One Week To Go

As of 1:30 pm on Sunday (Feb 23) one week before the Oscars, here's where I am: 

I have four more categories to complete. 
* Live Action Shorts
* International Feature Film 
* Documentary Feature Film 
* Visual Effects 

I have completed: 
Documentary Shorts, Animated Shorts, Animated Feature
Lead Actress, Lead Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress  
Directing, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay
Cinematography, Editing, Production Design 
Makeup & Hairstyling, Costume Design 
Sound, Original Song, Original Score
and Best Picture 

So far I have mixed feelings about a lot of the categories, but especially the Acting awards, because there is such egregious category fraud going on in the Supporting races, and it's all but a foregone conclusion that the fraudulent will win. It's so annoying. 

The Documentary Features (I have one left) and Documentary Shorts, as in so many years, are amazing, and devastating. 

Speaking of brutal things, I do still think The Brutalist will win stuff. Will it win all the stuff?  Will it triumph over buzz-a-licious Anora?  Can The Substance sneak in and win a few things -- and will it definitely win for Actress (Demi Moore) and  Makeup?  Will Wicked get a slew of well-deserved visual and technical awards or will the wealth be spread around?  Could we have a blessedly Emilia Perez-free evening?  How amazing would that be. A step toward making up for the EEAAO year we recently suffered through. 

And will we ever know why there are so many monkeys? 

By the way, I launched myself on an additional project during this year's Oscar viewing. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is nominated for Visual Effects. Now, the last few Apes reboots have also been so nominated, but I wasn't able to be a completist in those years, and in my non-completist years it's often been a few rogue Makeup, Song, or Visual Effects nominees that are the ones lacking and I have not watched any of the reboot series. This year, I knew I'd be a completist, which would entail watching Kingdom...Apes, and so I decided a few weeks ago to watch all of the Planet of the Apes movies -- all of them.  Starting with a re-watch of the original 1968 Planet of the Apes that I saw in my childhood. And that has been my side quest, in between watching this year's nominated flicks.  During the past months I have re-watched or watched all five of the original series (some are far worse than others) and am now catching up on the modern ones, and will end with Kingdom...  thus completing both my Apes side quest and my Oscar-nominated 2024 films main quest later this week, if all goes according to plan and the world doesn't, like, collapse in the next few days or anything. 

So, coming up this week will be: 
Four more completed categories
Best Picture (which is done, but have to save that category post for last) 
Perhaps a ranking of all the nominated films
Perhaps another edition of Who Wore It Better? 

Enjoy the last week of Oscar season! 

The Oscar-nominated 2023 films in a nutshell

Here is a very brief guide - which won't really guide you at all - to all 53 nominated films. 

20 Days in Mariupol: Devastation, up close and personal, as Russia invades Ukraine. You will be haunted by some image forever; for me, it's the simple pet turtle. 

American Fiction: It seems like the type of people who stand up to applaud at the reading of We's Lives In Da Ghetto are in charge of a lot right now. 

American Symphony: Mostly forgettable documentary that tells two stories and doesn't quite strike the chord I think it wants to. Jon Batiste is fascinating but do I need to watch him lie around and have talk therapy sessions via phone? I think no. 

Anatomy of a Fall: Maybe she did, maybe she didn't, I'm straight trippin' about that dog, though! 

Barbie: Feminism for Absolute Beginners, but to make it palatable to the mens we'll let the interminable Kens sequence go on and on and on for 50 times longer than a snippet of Closer to Fine plays 

Bobi Wine: The People's President: If you weren't already thoroughly demoralized by politics in your country, try becoming thoroughly demoralized about Uganda's instead! 

El Conde: Manic pixie dream exorcist

Elemental:  The main character is named Ember which is what I call Emma the Cat, and that is not the only reason I rather liked this!

Flamin' Hot: I was definitely the first one on my Awards Season block to see this. I am, simply put, a changed woman when it comes to the Flamin' Hot Cheetos. 

Four Daughters: Another documentary, another devastating experience, this time in Tunisia. 

Godzilla Minus One:  **completist minus one -- this isn't showing anywhere and I can't watch it** 

Golda: I could watch Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger banter all day. This is likely not the correct takeaway from this film. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: I find the GotG films refreshing and funny and thoroughly entertaining and was NOT prepared for an animal experimentation torture plot. What the. Come on, Marvel. Escapism? Please? 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Time travel has never ever ever made sense in movies so why should it start now? 

Invincible: (SHORT)  Powerful performances, although the title is technically a lie, spoiler alert. 

Io Capitano: More powerful performances, man's inhumanity to man, a series of terrible events, and my goodness I am so into international human rights tragedy films. Why are they my type. 

Island in Between: (SHORT) Probably more interesting for me for the nostalgia/hey-I-used-to-live-around-there factor than the doc itself. 

Killers of the Flower Moon: More humans? More terrible things done to other humans. This is one of the most meticulously researched, planned, and well-executed pieces of filmmaking ever, but the pros made it look too easy. 

Knight of Fortune: (SHORT)  The quirky tug-at-your-heartstrings short. 

Letter to a Pig (SHORT): The beyond-quirky avant-garde quietly bizarre and profound short.

Maestro: The scene with the family where the grown kids put on the record and dance nostalgically and joyously seems to represent so much. Your hard work was worth it, Bradley. 

May December: Off the charts fucked-up humans and so delicious to watch them all self-destruct. 

Mission:Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One: Adrenaline x 1,000,000

Nai Nai & Wo Po: (SHORT) For me it's a hard pass on the fetishizing of grandmas. 

Napoleon: Batshit crazy Napoleon! Really makes me want to re-read War and Peace soon. 

Nimona: Woe is me no one understands me alas but I can't explain anything or answer a question because then I'd have to maybe stop whining?  #1 pet peeve alert. 

Ninety-Five Senses: (SHORT)  What does it in fact mean to be alive? This will sneak up on you with that question. 

Nyad: Pitch perfect performances from Annette and Jodie as they depict Diana Nyad's quest to swim from Florida to Cuba. 

Oppenheimer: Manly male humans blowing up the world, 'cause they can

Our Uniform: (SHORT) LOL @ the disclaimer to avoid offending people who like being forced to wear a hijab. 

Pachyderme: (SHORT) There is always a creepy one in the bunch. Leave the elephants out of it, you wicked humans. 

Past Lives: Writer things, Korea things, what to do with my life things, all my favorite things. Bonus for Nobel AND Pulitzer prize discussion plot points. 

Perfect Days: Also my kind of movie. And it takes my life's work of not defining people's lives by their work to the next level.     

Poor Things: The less said about this monstrosity the better, but it's basically a bunch of men using a woman's body and with a baby's brain to take advantage of, to boot! Easily the one of the three P___ ____s nominees that needs to gtfo. 

Red White and Blue: (SHORT)  My favorite live action short, which is about abortion and pulls off what it sets out to do perfectly. 

Robot Dreams: Past Lives, but for dogs who befriend mail order robots. 

Rustin: This year's flying-under-the-radar performance that will stump trivia players in future years trying to remember who else got nominated for 2023.  (Except the Obamas; they'll remember.) 

Society of Snow:  I have always been and do remain #TeamEatTheHumans

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: I still think multiple Spider-Man movies have the same titles but I found this one to be snazzily animated and engaging, if a bit heavy on the WOULD you just TELL him already plot drivers. 

The ABCs of Book Burning: (SHORT) Predictable, hot topic, but occasional bursts of awesome like the mullet kid who just likes to read and know about stuff. 

The After (SHORT): This year's oddly pointless little film with drama, violence, and a confusing ending. 

The Barber of Little Rock (SHORT): Non-profit community development is my jam! And also this guy's jam. He's good at it! 

The Boy and the Heron:  Definitely not short. As a Miyazaki heretic, I can only say: This finally ended. 

The Color Purple: Adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation. Fantastic production and dancing. The songs themselves leave a bit to be desired. 

The Creator: In the great war with A.I., who is the real enemy?  The whole A.I.-getting-smarter/emotional thing, much like time travel, never ever ever makes sense, but we're probably never ever going to stop having people try to write these plots anyway. 

The Eternal Memory: The personal is political. With a bonus cat! Who shows up at least 3 times! 

The Holdovers: The Mormon church does not send parents of minor children on missions, so I couldn't get into this film until that plot hole flew away on a helicopter. After that: Misfit Friends Story for the win. 

The Last Repair Shop (SHORT): My favorite documentary short. A random slice of life, surprisingly touching human stories, art, making a difference, giving everyone a chance, L.A., all the good stuff is in this one.   

The Teachers' Lounge: I may still be decompressing from the teaching career I never wanted and too fragile to love this. 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: (SHORT)  Wes Anderson knows that he should really only have ever been making short films, right? 

The Zone of Interest: Bizarrely uninteresting film - because it's actually a conceptual art project - that manages to take a Martin Amis novel's premise of all things and make it even more male as it mansplains that well, ACTUALLY, what happened was, the Nazis were people who smugly carried on living their lives while being responsible for evil; you know, some people don't know that. 

To Kill A Tiger: No actual tigers appear in this film. It's a metaphor! 

War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko:  (SHORT)  And produced by the dollars of Sean and Yoko. But I liked it. War Is Over? As someone said about Life Is Beautiful back in 1998: "Would that it were."

Who Wore It Better? - Oscar flicks edition

One of the last films that I saw while working my way through the nominees involved our action hero's train meeting disaster at a bridge ... and then I thought, hmmm, that's interesting, I watched a different action hero's train meeting disaster at a bridge just the other week. This inspired me to do a little bit of Oscar Nominees - Who "Wore" It Better?  Fashion, shmashion - who needs red carpet dress face-offs when you've got weird similarities popping up in the nominated flicks to analyze! 

Who Wore It Better?

Action heroes on trains arriving at bridges, off which they plunge into European rivers
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny vs.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Who wore it better?  Tom Cruise & Company, by a long shot. My heartbeat truly increased watching this film sequence. How on earth will they top it for Dead Reckoning Part Two??!

Sandra Hüller 
Anatomy of a Fall vs The Zone of Interest

(Yes we all understand we are not wearing anybody and she is not "it")
It's not every year that a lead actress is in two Best Picture nominees! A lot of United Statesians are discovering her now for the first and second time because they aren't Oscar completists who saw her in Germany's Foreign nominee Toni Erdmann a few years ago. At any rate, out of these two...

Who wore it better?  The verdict is Anatomy of a Fall. 

She powers us through this film. A talky tour-de-force. 

Marie Antoinette's guillotine
El Conde vs. Napoleon

Listen, I want to be clear: I am NOT knocking Napoleon for historical inaccuracy. I rather enjoyed the freewheeling 3-hour extravaganza of Joaquin playing batsh*t crazy Napoleon. But how can you top Vampire Pinochet actually licking her blood from the blade after? 

Who wore it better?  El Conde.  
Or as I like to call it, the manic-pixie-dream-exorcist movie. 

A prosthetic nose and make-up that made some people very mad
 Golda vs Maestro

Haha, see, get it, they actually wore this one! Although some people were extremely upset about it. Not Maestro Leonard Bernstein's own children, though. One critic I read did point out that Bradley Cooper kept his own eye color, so that should be a demerit. But the fascinating amount of work that went into aging him decades? Pretty impressive. Golda on the other hand took place mostly over mere days, so not much in the aging, just the transforming of Helen Mirren into her in the first place. I thought she was incredible in this role. "But she's not Jewish!" some people whined. So much whining about both of these films! And because of that, I'm going to have to applaud them both even more. 

Who wore it better?  TIE.

This concludes our first annual Weirdly This Thing Is In Two Movies edition of Who Wore It Better?

Birthday Bloggage: Reflection Time!

Tomorrow, yikes!, is my birthday. I don't want to say I've been depressed, exactly, about this approaching birthday, but I have at least been nigh on discomfited, mostly along the lines of "why the !@#$%&* haven't I accomplished everything I wanted to have accomplished by now?!"

But that's never a really useful birthday-approaching thought process, now is it?

So I decided to give myself some good advice: "Accentuate the positive!" (so original, I know), and to take said good advice from myself, that is to say, to think about things that I DID do during the past year.

Some things I did while I was (*) years old:

• Worked on the writing of three new books -- yes, I now have three books in active progress.
  Negative spin: I have so many works in progress and haven't finished any of them.
  Positive spin: I have put into action THREE new book ideas and made progress on all of them! 
• Wrote a bunch of songs.
  Negative spin: What am I going to do with them? And they might all be terrible.
  Positive spin: Holy shite I've been writing songs! Like, lots of songs! I've discovered this whole new part of myself over the past nine months. It's incredible and I seriously don't know what to make of it, but I'm digging it. 
• Traveled all around the Midwest and even some other parts of the U.S., with no small number of road trips during the last year, having driven to: Iowa (twice), Nebraska, Wisconsin (several times), Michigan, Indiana, and we mustn't forget St. Louis for the total solar eclipse which was AWESOME and, related to the point above, was the genesis of the first song I wrote, an eclipse metaphor about the universe/love/life that just kind of poured out of my brain while I was sitting on the highway in post-eclipse traffic trying to drive back to Chicago.
  Negative spin: I didn't get to go on the Habitat for Humanity trip to Prince Edward Island I'd been planning to attend. Positive spin: So f-ing what? I got to see family, friends, three weddings, and the super-cool eclipse event that was apparently the opening of a new chapter in my life. 
• Lost weight - I finally shed all those back-in-the-U.S.A pounds.
  Negative spin: Don't really have one. Except that so many of my clothes are too unwearably big, ha! 
• Took even more classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music aka my second home these days, adding to my regular weekly guitar class several more including guitar fingerboard theory, vocal techniques (twice), songwriting (see above!), and perhaps foremost in my joy the Modern Country Ensemble, which I enjoy so thoroughly that I am now taking it for a fifth session in a row. It is a joy and a treasure, and every sixteen weeks we perform a real live gig. My Monday nights at the Old Town School are such a given, and now Tuesdays too...
  Negative spin: I'm busy. Positive spin: I love it. 
• Became a regular volunteer at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which enables me to afford everything I just mentioned in the previous point.
  Negative spin: Yup, really busy. Positive spin: I love it. 
• Made new friends. Building community is hard enough when adults stay put, and I gallivant about the world so much that I may have had it even harder, plus I actually really need solitude and seriously carve out time each week to be alone, but whether it was the whole staying-in-one-place-for-three+-years thing, or the whole hanging-out-with-music-people and hanging-out-with-books-people and hanging-out-with-yoga-people things, I have definitely made actual new friends during the past year, which is interesting and nice. I mean, I'm disgusted with so much of humanity (negativity!) that it's rather nice if rare when I find humans I like (positivity, check it!) 
• Finished my Prez Bio reading up through Dubya, which technically is the completion of my Prez Bios reading project, which you'll recall was launched during Dubya's administration and was called Reading a Biography of Every President In Order, To See Where We Went Wrong. Of course, since then we have gone even wronger, and I am going to also read books about Obama (after which point the presidency dies and my project dies with it so don't you even dare suggest...) but I did technically make it to the "end" of what I set out to do. Finally!
  Negative spin: What took me so long? Positive spin: I did that! 
• Speaking of books, some of the great ones I read this past year: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe et. al., Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment by Robert Wright, American Plays of the New Woman ed. by Keith Newlin, and La vida util de Pilo Polilla  by Vivian Mansour Manzur, along with a bunch of other good and some not-so-good ones, AND I recently led in my local store the book group discussion of The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, which was the inaugural selection of the Barnes & Noble nationwide book club. 
• Found interesting English/ESL teaching work with some non-profits, mostly teaching immigrants, which led me to discover how much more enjoyable it is to teach these classes as opposed to the for-profit school for which I'd been working (and which I swear drove me to drink) the previous couple of years here in Chicago. That was interesting to learn.
  Negative spin: I seriously didn't want to go back to the classroom at all... Positive spin: Work. Work earns money. Work accomplishes things. Work it. 
• Speaking of work, at all three of the part-time jobs that I had one year ago and still have, I have had my accomplishments recognized with different positions/training/new responsibilities kind of things. Negative spin: They weren't promotions to full-time massive-money-making career ops. Positive spin: Employers recognize that I am smart and do things.

And ya know, those are just a.) the easily listable things b.)that I'm willing to discuss on a public blog. I have also done other things on philosophical, personal, introspective, and psychological levels that either aren't as quantifiable or easy to notate or don't really need to be delineated here or whatever. But my point is - it was quite a year, now that I stop to think about it.

AND I saw Indigo Girls perform four times during it, plus Emily Saliers' solo show. So there. Not to mention dozens of other bands and singers, and totally I didn't mention how much new music I came to know about because of Spotify. I even succumbed to Spotify Premium this year. Consider me thoroughly Spotified. . 

AND I saw a bunch of good movies. 

AND I spent so much quality time with my kittens like you would not believe. 

AND I de-cluttered my closet and got rid of clothes I don't wear anymore and got rid of some other stuff around the house, too.

AND I continued to discover new restaurants and happy hours and hiking (walking) spots around Chicago and to look at the Lake on a regular basis. 

So although I did not in fact really conquer life, the universe, and everything in the ways I had planned to do... I did other things instead! 

Let's see what the next year brings. 

Twelve Days of Oscars, Day 10: Animated Feature and Visual Effects

I was very nearly thwarted on my way to seeing the film that is my pick to win one of these categories! Specifically, I was trapped in an elevator for a few minutes. (Not knowing, of course, as one never does when the elevator fails to function correctly, whether it would be a mere few minutes.) I was in the parking garage at the cinema and the elevator went to the ground floor where I needed to get off but the doors opened just an inch or so and then stayed stuck, unmoving, unable to be moved. I couldn't push or pry the door open from inside. It opened that inch or so and then just sat, stuck. Definitely not enough room to get any leverage or squeeze through. It was trippy, and I didn't feel particularly scared, as first of all I had my phone in my hand, and secondly there was an emergency call button right there on the panel, which I used to speak to a man who promptly sent help. But. My initial thought was that, oh no, I was now going to be late to see Coco!

Animated Feature: The Breadwinner, The Boss Baby, Coco, Ferdinand, Loving Vincent

Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, War for the Planet of the Apes

And indeed, after my elevator misadventure I was just a hair late getting into the Coco showing, but I could tell it was still the very beginning, with the kid voiceover narration introducing his family and his background. Let me just say, Coco is fantastic and deserves all the accolades it has been getting. Until that fateful elevator day when I saw it, I wanted Loving Vincent to win an Oscar. I absolutely adored Loving Vincent. It's unique and brilliant, and it's about my boy Vincent! (Van Gogh) The film is, as I understand it, painted. The process of painting animation is explained here, and it ends up looking really, really cool - Vincent's paintings, alive and fluid, telling his story. It was magical and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was sure it deserved the Oscar. 

Then I saw Coco and thought - uh-oh. 

I really, really, really wish they could tie. It's the most fervently I've ever wished for an Oscars tie, or a tie for anything, really. 

Coco  is Pixar magic, and this year the magic tells a vibrant story set in Mexico Día de Muertos land. It's a boy who just wants to play guitar and release the music inside him who is thwarted by his family. I don't even want to describe the plot, because it's so much more than that, and the story hums and zips along as he wanders to the land of the dead. It's thrilling, touching, and spectacular. If it was any other Pixar film beating Loving Vincent, I'd be angry. If it's Coco, I understand. I seriously think if I was an Academy voter this year I would try to find one person to vote for one and I'd vote for the other, and encourage everyone I knew to do the same thing. 

As for the other nominees?  I didn't see The Breadwinner (really want to), and I really don' know that I'll make it to The Boss Baby, which is by all accounts terrible, and which is my absolute last priority on the checklist of all the nominated flicks. After the ceremony, I probably will lose interest  in checking that one off. I did see Ferdinand, and found it weirdly traumatic. It's about bulls who want to excel at bullfighting so as to avoid going to the slaughterhouse, who don't yet know that murder awaits them either way, but it's all talking animals/crazy characters/jolly times, so it's this kind of disconnect between the brutal truths of the plot and the song and dance and games you're watching. It was hard for me to experience. 

But Coco and Loving Vincent  are better films, seriously. 

As for the visual effects in otherwise "real" live action movies, I've seen three and a half nominees there: Blade Runner 2049, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Kong: Skull Island, and half of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Haven't yet got around to War for the Planet of the Apes - which, by the way, I hear is fantastic. But how are the visual effects? I don't know. Guardians...2's plot was so not interesting to me that even as I was watching (half) of it I kept forgetting what was happening, but it all did look really cool. Star Wars is, well, Star Wars. I might root for Blade Runner 2049 here, because I think that movie pulled off every visual thing that it did wonderfully. Kong: Skull Island was ridiculous, but enjoyably ridiculous, and you kind of believed that these various creatures and island things were interacting with the characters, so it's definitely no slouch in this category. 

What to do, what to do. 

My mother used to ask me, when I would rant about this or that person I "hated" (like, an annoying celebrity, or George Dubya, or whoever) versus some other awful person, "Whose elevator would you rather be stuck in?" It really makes you think. Like, Dubya is terrible, but you'd rather be stuck in his elevator than Charles Manson's, right? Whose elevator would you rather be stuck in, Anne Hathaway or James Franco? O.J. Simpson or Caitlin Jenner? Trump or Putin? Like such. Well, I really did get stuck in an elevator this week trying to see my animated features, and maybe that's a helpful way to make Oscar picks: which elevator would I rather be stuck in, one playing Coco on an endless loop, or Loving Vincent? 

That's actually quite hard, but it would probably be the latter because it's kind of calmer. What about a Blade Runner 2049 elevator or a Kong: Skull Island? Definitely either of those over the Star Wars: The Last Jedi elevator. 

Picks!

Animated Feature: PLEASE can we have a tie? I'll vote for my pick, Loving Vincent, and you vote for what I think will win, Coco. 

Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049, I think, is my pick. And I think that either it or maybe the ...Apes will win? 

Previous Day of Oscar:
Day 9, Animated Shorts and Live Action Shorts

Twelve Days of Oscar, Day 5: Screenplays!

**I straight up fell asleep Sunday night instead of keeping up with my awards season tasks and Oscar bloggage, so this discussion will have to wait until Monday.**

Half Birthday Checkup

November 13th is my half birthday -- six months since my actual birthday, the halfway point of this particular year of life -- so I decided it is a good time to check in with my goals and the things I was thinking about last May that I wanted to accomplish during this year.

I'm super into both New Year's Day resolutions AND new birthday year resolutions. I love the symbolic calendar-induced fresh start and I love making plans and lists and figuring out all the things I want to do. Careful readers of this blog/people who know me well understand that I tend to enjoy and excel at planning FAR more than executing, which is admittedly problematic...and which is part of what necessitates this half-year, half birthday check-in. 

I am well aware that there are many of you out there who scoff at New Year's resolutions and the like, with retorts such as "It's just a day on the calendar. You can set goals any day of the year. You can make changes any time."  Well, that's exactly right. So, do you? When you show me your awesome list of "March 8th resolutions" or "random Friday in September resolutions" and all you've done to achieve them, then you can feel accomplished. In the meantime, why make fun of my new calendar year and new birthday year dates? 

Anyway, today we are going to check in by opening up the journal and seeing what sorts of things I wrote last May 12th, 13th, and 14th, i.e., the day before, day of, and day after my birthday. Scary stuff, opening past journals, especially when they contain stream-of-consciousness morning pages, as these do. But, let's see what we find!

On May 12th I said that I wanted to:
- Heal our dying houseplant.  NOPE. FAIL. I re-potted it and everything and it just ended up dying and I felt sad because Brian and I got it a long time ago together and it has moved with us a bunch and now it's dead. 

-Go to five High Points this summer.  NOPE. FAIL. Totally took about sixty-five other road trips though (I'm exaggerating, but not by much) that are the main reason this goal got pushed aside. 

-Do 5Ks in June, July or August, and September, and then a November Turkey Trot. PARTLY ACCOMPLISHED, PARTLY FAILED. Could still do a Turkey Trot 5K and am eyeing the Santa Hustle.
-Go see more live music and shows. HEY! I FOUND ONE! ACCOMPLISHED! That's all I'did all summer, it felt like. And has somewhat continued through the fall. 

Then, on my actual birthday, the 13th, I was apparently way more into musing about the past than looking ahead, with paragraphs about the last birthday I went out to dinner with both of my parents, a digression into if/when/how my journey out of being a churchgoer would have been different if I had gone to Amherst, Oberlin, or Yale, as I wanted to do, and then this gem: "So many regrets. But how can we know what to regret?"  So that was my birthday head space, yikes! 

As for what I thought about doing in the year to come, I wanted to:
-"Read and read and read"  NOPE. I have not been reading much this year AT ALL and it sucks and that's how we all know something is wrong.
-Succeed at my Habitat fundraising. YES! ACCOMPLISHMENT!  Except then I didn't get to go on the October build and will be doing a Habitat trip next spring-ish instead, but I did raise the money for Habitat. Yay, Habitat. 

-Stay on track paying off credit cards. UM. NO. Unless paying health insurance premiums on one's credit cards counts as sound financial strategy? No? Huh. Shame, that. 

I did enjoy my birthday this year, though. We had a private yoga practice in the park, led by one of my favorite Chicago yoga teachers, with me and a couple friends, and then a group joined for dinner at our beloved neighborhood bar and grill spot for a birthday book swap. Maybe that cheered me up a bit for the next day's journaling? Let's see what I had to say on the 14th....

Regarding birthday yoga: "I am so grateful to the ladies who came and I feel so much gratitude to the universe, the sunshine, and the beautiful expanse of blue sky that was over my head - incredible."  Wow! That's a better mood. A little hippie-dippy, even. And, any goals, there, older and wiser Linda? 

-Be a better friend and do better at maintaining friendships.
-Plan a summer barbecue.
-Hang out with people enjoying life and just being. 

-"Every day I want to read read read" cropped up again.
-And then this articulate sentence with my plan for the year: "Write read yoga guitar baseball music." Which may make you think, "Wasn't she doing that anyway? Aren't those things always what she's doing?" Well, yes. Which tells me that over my introspective birthday weekend I didn't think I was living enough of my life. 

Looking at this last list, I'd give myself a solid two and a half accomplished. Actually probably three, but that's one plus one plus half plus half, not one plus one plus one...  (My real friends got that allusion to Clue, right??!?!)  

It would seem that in the next six months of this particular year of my life, in order to meet all my goals, I need to read (read read read read), pay off credit cards, visit more state high points, finish my "Five More 5Ks" plan, and be a better friend. Well. Let me get right to it. 

But I can't resurrect the dead houseplant. I'm sorry. Bringing things back from the dead is decidedly not in my job description. 

Does anybody every really know what day it is?

Longtime readers will recall how absurd I find Chicago's inability to celebrate anything on the appropriate date. When we moved here initially, in 2010, I was mystified and then just annoyed because this city never met a holiday it couldn't commemorate two weeks before or after the date on which the holiday falls.  Well, they're at it again. I'm looking for some 5K races to do in upcoming weeks and I'm sure glad to see there's a Monster Dash on Oct 21 and a Turkey Trot on Nov 4. Why, Chicago, why??

Calendars, y'all. They work. 

To end or not to end the Facebreak

I didn't really mean to give up Facebook for Lent. I don't even celebrate Lent. Wait, observe Lent. Participate in Lent? See, that's how much I don't....do whatever it is that I don't do with regards to Lent; I don't even know what verb to use. I grew up going to church, but it was a church that didn't really shove the whole pick-something-to-give-up-for-40-days thing down our throats. And now I've goodbyed to all that church stuff, so Lent is one of those things I watch other people do, like when my friends give up drinking for that whole time but still play on our pub quiz trivia team, which is rather stalwart of them, don't you think?

But what happened this year was, I had an incident that made me suddenly and forcefully decide I needed to reconsider my relationship to Facebook, specifically, the extent to which I rely on it to function as it says it does, to live up to its own standards, to not mess up. Of course Facebook messes up - nothing/nobody is perfect and all that, but we count on it not to. That's dangerous. It certainly worked out to be dangerous for me. (Details? Yeeeahhh...maybe I can get into the details later. I'm working on a project about that.)

And so, reminding myself of that time in law school when I grounded myself from going into Manhattan for one month because I was not proud of the alcohol choices I had made there, a few weeks ago I suddenly and forcefully just decided I should reconsider my reliance on Facebook being reliable by not relying on it, that is to say, not logging on, until I had accomplished a specific professional goal. And it just so happened that this whole incident went down on the night of Mardi Gras, with Ash Wednesday upon us. That didn't really dawn on me until a couple of days later, though, when I suddenly was like, Oh hey! I could give up Facebook for Lent! To which I responded to myself, What? A 40-day Facebreak? To which my first self responded, That reply shows me (us?) how much you need a 40-day Facebreak. (Let the record reflect that, see, I didn't even know that Lent actually lasts longer than 40 days, which is very confusing, and further evidence of how much I really don't do the Lent thing. Except when I apparently do.)

And so here we are, honing in on Easter, and as everyone hunts for eggs and bites bunnies to see if they're solid or hollow and remembers that after three days the Lord Is Risen, I'll be all mission-accomplished and I can actually check Facebook and see just what the hell has happened there for the last month and a half.

Although, you know, speaking of amounts of days, I've always been kind of confused by that whole "after three days the stone was rolled away bit" because I mean, isn't the whole thing that he was crucified on Friday night? And on Sunday morning he'd already fled the tomb and risen? That's basically a day and a half. Ya know? But we call it three days.

Counting days is hard, I guess, when it's Lenten time.

But the real question is, what should I DO if/when I end my Facebreak and rejoin the party? Any suggestions? What should be my first move? Will I have a million notifications to deal with? Will all my algorithms be hopelessly altered? Will I find out I have missed some crucial message offering me a million dollars or my dream job or trip around the world? No, but seriously, have you ever taken a long Facebreak? What did you do at the end of it?

One More Day Before the Storm

As Macbeth said, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."  

But I do believe that tomorrow, Monday, December 19th, will in fact signify something.

The future, which occurs after the present

I've had this super-weird confluence of personal, professional, and political timing, which all seem to be coming to a frothy head tomorrow. So, when I woke up today (Sunday, December 18th) and Facebook was offering up Fb memories of our three-years-ago trip to Hong Kong Disney, I decided this image of me at Tomorrowland says something important.

Tomorrow means hope. It's not all gloom and doom creeping in at a petty pace, Macbeth. Now, Macbeth is my boy (i.e. favorite Shakespeare tragedy) and he certainly has it right that there are fools and poor players all around us strutting and fretting (ahem TheDnldWTFTrumpface ahem). But the very notion of tomorrow brings hope, as one of my OTHER favorite plays of all time reminds us. So, so, so much hope for the wretches whom Macbeth might call "walking shadows" as they contemplate revolution in Les Misérables:

"There's a new world for the winning/Do you hear the people sing?"

When the Electoral College meets tomorrow, will they hear? Will they do the right thing, the moral thing, the Constitutional thing, and use their best judgment to cast their votes, which means casting them so that TheDnldWTFTrumpface does not ascend to the presidency?

While that's happening politically, I also personally have a huge and emotional development tomorrow in my professional life. (No, the electors aren't going to elect me...that I know of!) One era is coming to an end, due in large part to reduction-in-force layoffs that came slamming into one of my gigs, but not entirely due to that, as I have seized upon a blessing-in-disguise opportunity to do some stuff when this particular new little era of mine dawns. AND, just to compound the personal/professional/tomorrow timing of it all, the last month and a half has been a whirlwind, a mighty and fierce whirlwind, of me working two and a half jobs, laying groundwork, and figuring out lots of big stuff, and all this has been happening since Monday, November 7, the first "One Day More," which led us to the horrible Tuesday, November 8 election day or more accurately the horrible Wednesday, November 9 Day After. So for one month and a half I have been in this intense stirring up of life and time (working every day, sometimes two jobs, plus other events, with no time to think but just go go go with eyes on the prize), with big developments, and meanwhile this parallel thing happening of Trumpface and the end of the world and the burgeoning fight for the #ElectoralCollegeExMachina moment we all need and then after a particularly intense last burst of the 36 hours from 11 a.m. Friday through 11 p.m. Saturday where I was just everywhere serving three or more masters and just go go go went went went I came home and rested.

Sleeping deeply.

And waking up today to Facebook memories of Tomorrowland and the imminence of tomorrow, December 19, when one big thing ends in my personal life, AND there is one superbig chance for the whole world in political life.

Sing it, Les Misérables:

"Tomorrow is the judgment day
Tomorrow we'll discover what our god in heaven has in store
One more dawn
One more day
One day more."

Forced to Awaken to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

So, I had it all figured out. At some point in the first few weeks of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it came to me; rather than seeing the flick first, what I clearly needed/wanted out of life was to be the last to see it. I'm not the type to buy movie tickets two months in advance -- I don't even plan things out two DAYS in advance, or sometimes two hours. So, I realized, for me it would be fun to see the movie last -- I would see it on that last Thursday night show on its last week in whatever Chicago theater continued to run it the longest. What a funny plan, was how I saw it.

Then, it got nominated for five Oscars. And now I was, as they say, on the horns of a dilemma. Two months is a good long time for a movie to have its first run, but from the looks of it, I thought, a month in, it could easily stay in theaters beyond Oscar weekend. And then I'd have to make a choice between seeing it before the Oscars ceremony and my silly plan of seeing it last.

Which was more important? This newfound plan I had hit upon, to see last the film that everyone else wanted to see first, or my oldfound plan to see as many Oscar-nominated films as humanly possible before the night of the Academy Awards?

Well, I told myself, maybe, just maybe, its last week in the theatres will conveniently also be the last week before the Oscars and then everything will work out? And so I've kept my eye on the showtimes and checked mid-week to see what's changing each upcoming weekend and...here we are.

The Oscars are this weekend, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens is still playing in theatres during the movie-run week that starts tomorrow, Friday the 26th. Which of course means that I cannot both see it in its last showtime AND see it before the Oscars.

And so my choice was made.

I went to see it. (Shout-out to my mom, who had generously gifted me with an AMC gift card!)

I've seen a very good amount of the nominated flicks. Just missing three of the foreign films (two of which will be coming to theaters in Chicago in the next month or two, after the Oscars), three of the documentary Shorts (which are HBO docs and going to air on HBO this year), and three of the Original Song nominees, one of which I am going to help myself to this weekend via Netflix (Racing Extinction), one of which will be on DVD in a couple weeks (Spectre) and one of which is the ONLY nominee I have no plans to see (Fifty Shades of Grey). So I'm in excellent shape this year.

Oh, what did I think of Star Wars? It was fun! I enjoyed it!

And now we know who wins in the battle between my contrarian quirks and my obsessive quirks. Glad we could put that question to rest.

Calling 'Dibs!' on Dibs

You might have heard that Chicago experienced a huge snowstorm the first weekend in February, on Super Bowl Sunday, in fact. Some hungover people even got a snow day Monday! It was the fifth largest snowstorm on record (inches in a certain period of time), such-and-such amount fell at O'Hare, there were train delays, reporters checking out the commute, and so on..snow, snow, snow. And when the Chicago Tribune ran out of things to write about (because actually, the post-storm recovery was going pretty smoothly), they started writing daily about "Dibs."

"Dibs on parking spaces after snow is the Chicago Way," said one editorial headline. It's a "quaint custom" and a "Chicago winter tradition" whereby vehicle owners shovel out their street parking spot, drive off somewhere (assuredly it must be to work, what with the Chicago Midwest work ethic that undoubtedly is behind all things that happen here in the land of friendly earnest Midwesterners) (did we mention we're in the Midwest?), and leave in the newly shoveled-out spot a chair, or a plastic stool, or maybe some crates from the porch, even an ironing board. Thus, "Dibs!" has been called, and no pesky driver who didn't shovel the spot can violate the code of Dibs and park there. Is it legal? Is it libertarian? Is it great? These and other questions have been discussed for more than a week now in the opinion pages of the Tribune, and now we're in the public-weighing-in phase of the discourse with letters to the editor extolling the lovely communal spirit of Dibs that is just a "quirky Chicago attribute" and a symbol of the ever-great neighborly Midwest. And a cursory internet search reveals that this same self-congratulatory discussion has launched itself in the news pages in previous winters as well. 

One small problem, Chicago: Dibs is not unique to you.

What?! Sputter, gasp, the friendly Midwesterners of the neighborly vibe, earnest work ethic, and pathetic NFL team spit out their coffee (often Dunkin' Donuts, it must be said -- they do have that good sense) and choke on their deep dish "pizza" and ketchup-free hot dogs. But it's true. Citizens of other cities respond to their own snowy deluges by digging out their cars and then claiming the space with a folding lawn chair that would otherwise go unused for another few months. Dibs. I, for one,  learned about the practice when I witnessed it in Medford, Massachusetts. (Boston, another city that is proud of itself from time to time, also experiences a fair amount of snow, as you may know.)

I was passing over most of the Dibs talk with no more than mild interest for a few days but this morning the bit I read in a letter published in the Trib was over-the-top in its delight about this so very Chicago tradition, and this one was from someone who isn't even from here. The letter didn't specify the writer's original home; it just cakcled with delight about moving to Chicago a year ago and discovering Dibs.

Chicago, you're on thin ice here (<--- see what I did there?). I moved to the "Second" City (sort of) to get away from this attitude of specialness, or, as I like to call it, New York. I am forever telling anyone who will listen (all three of them) that Chicago gives New York a run for its money in offering up art, music, literature, theater, dance, people, crowds, liveliness, and anything else a city dweller could want, sometimes at half the rent. (And almost twice the rats.) I am forever reveling in the experience of life in this big, famous city that isn't so full of, well, New Yorkers...the annoying ones, I mean. The ones who have never been anywhere else, the ones who can't really distinguish between Colorado and California, the ones who are entirely convinced that New York is the one and only place in the world worth living. It's not, those people are dumb, and the attitude of specialness threatens to undo the specialness. Don't let this happen to you, Chicago.

So I commented about this particular letter to the editor and its effusive praise for the quirky Chicago attribute (which is not that at all), and Brian's response, besides just disagreeing with me that this is a problem or issue to be noted, was along the lines of, well, how can the Chicagoans be expected to know what goes on in other cities?

Gaaaaaahh! This! This!!! THIS is what I hate the most about the specialness. If you don't know what goes on in other cities, then now is not the time to talk about how quaint and quirky and special yours is.

I love bemused, self-deprecating geographical humor. I loved reading the "Only in L.A." columns as much as the next person. I re-Tweet all the great "10 Things Arizona Natives Have to Explain to the New People" pieces. It's all a good time. But in order to make the comparisons, you're going to have to know about the other place, too. "How can they be expected to know?" Nuh-uh. But if you don't know, then you can be expected not to talk.

You can't get dibs on "Dibs!" by calling Dibs!-dibs. That's like a giant, living Möbius strip or something. It's like trying to mail yourself to the post office. The world just doesn't work that way.

Cougar town

You know those dreams where something bad happens, and it's not necessarily a nightmare, I mean, it's not scary, but something bad has definitely, irrevocably happened and then you wake up and are SO relieved to find out it didn't really happen and you can go back to your normal life?  It can be anything, big or small; I mean, I've done it all from the dreaming I woke up late (and then waking up a thousand times to see that I have not, in fact, yet slept through the alarm) and, especially in the first year or two after I quit smoking, dreaming that I'd had a cigarette, to big-time life acts like dreaming I had a baby, cheated on a partner, or even killed someone (not that those three things are equal degrees of malice...)  Seriously, I've totally had the killed someone dream a few times; usually it's like I hit them while driving or something because apparently even the most deeply disturbed parts of my subconscious don't see me as the murdering type... Actually, I do realize these things are symbolic, and that just like with the Oops-I'm-taking-this-class-I-didn't-go-to-all-semester dreams they are about wasting life or "killing" it in other ways than the literal. Anyhoo, so, you know those dreams?

Well, last night was a new one on me. I dreamed  I went back and took some classes from BYU. Now, here's a little-known fun fact about me: I actually did go  to BYU, back in the day. I know, what? It's another lifetime, what can I say. First of all, I attended a five-week-long high-school summer theatre workshop there for four teenage summers in a row, and then I headed there as a bona-fide college freshman on a lovely scholarship. Good times, good dorm friends, a fabulous English department, languages up the wazoo, ski class, lots of psychotic behavioral control issues, and the well-that-certainly-had-the-opposite-effect final pushing me away from religion (which, to be fair, was sure to happen eventually anyway). What fun! This was all like so long ago now, though, that I have now had more life AFTER BYU than before it. How about that?! But anyway, back at age 18 I saw the error of my ways and transferred out of there, but not before firing off angry letters to the deans, presidents, and board of trustees promising to never again let another penny of mine go to that school. 

How would I spend another penny on BYU, you ask? Well, it was actually quite possible, because I continued to spend time in Utah regularly, mainly due to family connections. But I felt so strongly about this not-another-penny resolve that I stuck to it even in desperate situations. FOR example, one of the many times I flew into Salt Lake City and headed to Payson, Utah, to see my grandfather, I opted not to rent a car but instead took the SLC Airport Express bus to Provo, which lies between Salt Lake and Payson, where I then transferred to the Provo-Payson bus that would drop me off just a hop, skip, and jump from Grandpa's ol' homestead. Naturally, where does this Provo bus transfer take place? At the BYU Wilkinson Center on-campus bus transfer hub, which most of the Provo-bound and intra-Provo-Orem bus routes hit up. Now, I had a bit of time to kill in between buses (because I'm sure the Provo-Payson bus frequency was like once every hour or two, if that), and so I'm right there, you know, at the Wilk (as the Kidz always call it) and not only was I in the usual I've-just-been-on-a-plane-and-then-a-bus hunger/thirst mode but I discovered that they had added a Jamba Juice! A JAMBA JUICE! There had not been a Jamba Juice on campus when I attended there. I really wanted Jamba Juice. There was certainly not a Jamba Juice in Payson, and what with me not having a rental car on this trip I was going to be a prisoner of the Payson homestead, unable to even hop over into Spanish Fork on  a whim, beholden to the needs and wants of my decidedly non-coffee-drinking family members, not pursuing my daily franchised happiness of my own accord, basically. These thoughts made Jamba Juice even more appealing than it normally was (which is: very), but I couldn't do it. because this branch was on the BYU campus, paying rent or whatever to BYU, and probably the campus gets some sort of profit, I thought?  I didn't (don't) really know how it works with these on-campus Sbarros and Subways and other fast food franchises, but I just knew that despite my longing for some Jamba, I couldn't let a penny of mine pass into BYU coffers, and so I abstained. Such resolve! Choose the right, eh?

And then last night, I dreamed I was taking classes from BYU...some kind of independent study/in-person collaboration...I can't recall all the hazy dream details or why I was taking them, but what was notable, even in my dream, was after the classes were going or I was preparing for the exams or whatever, I realized with full punch-to-the-gut horror that Ooops!!! Oh no!!! I had given hundreds of my dollars to BYU to take these classes!  And I wasn't supposed to ever do that or give money to BYU ever again! Oh no! Regret washed over me...how could I undo this mistake?! 

And then I woke up to realize it wasn't true, that I was safe, that I have not in fact accidentally spent a few hundred bucks (?!) on a BYU class, that my boycott still stands. Ahhh, sweet relief. 

Well, Freudians, anyone want to venture a guess about what it all means?

Transport Tales : Hazards of Leaving Poland

I wrapped up my stay in Lomza, city of my great-grandmother's birth, and headed to the dworzec to catch my bus back to Warszawa. I amused myself when I went to wait on the outdoor platform. I had my choice of benches and opted to sit next to the two men smoking instead of next to the one woman eating. I thought that not many people I know would make the same choice.

There's nothing quite like waking up to a 5am text that your noon flight is cancelled. There's also nothing like getting a voucher for a tasty airport lunch and beer to enjoy while waiting for your new evening flight. There's probably something like watching hours of continuous "Are we, the EU, prepared for Ebola?" coverage, but I'm not sure what that something is. A post-apocalypse mini-series script read through, perhaps?

By the way, the answer changes. It's alternately cautious optimism and steadily increasing doom saying. As I mentioned on Facebook, there's more than my survival-level Polish leading to a lack of clarity when a government minister says Poland is prepared for an outbreak and then an academic expert says Polish hospitals aren't prepared for Ebola patients.

What exactly is the proper response to seeing two security guards running through the airport? I mean,  at a full-out run/chase speed? Followed by more security guards, walking briskly? Followed by more uniformed people? Followed by every single passenger looking and neck-craning in that direction but unable to see what happened? Are we supposed to keep calm and go back to the ebola coverage? Or just go find some secondhand smoke to inhale?

Working on a Building

On each of my four Habitat for Humanity volunteer projects, I have encountered a different style of house and different building materials.

Dennis surveys our work

Here in Marszewo, Beyond Poznan, Poland, we're working with clay "bricks" of clay/mud/straw that are big and heavy -- kind of the size of a breadbox, actually-- and that I probably should have taken a picture of rather than trying to describe. You can kind of see them in this picture to the right, there below the wood.

This is basically what I spent the first two days of the build doing, usually with Dennis as my partner, although on Tuesday afternoon I switched to working with Rick, and I noticed that I got a lot dirtier working with him. Rick apparently just likes to splash plaster and muddy water all over (me) without a second thought.

The upstairs scene

Of course, this upstairs work was nothing compared to Wednesday, when I moved outside to mixing. That involves pouring the clay mud liquid into a bathtub, adding straw, and mixing it together using our hands and arms, until it solidifies into the plaster we use inside for sticking the giant bricks together. It is impossible not to get very muddy during this task, despite the use of rubber gloves, and the cool, damp, gray weather kept the ground nice and muddy, too. This mixing is also a very muscle intensive job. Yea, workout!

This whole clay house thing, by the way, is very environmentally friendly, although some people in the area are confused as to why our homeowner wants to build using natural materials like they did 100 years ago or longer. Some other Barka people who have received land and will be building houses decided to wait and check out how this eco-house project went before committing themselves to the same kind of house. They remain a bit skeptical. We remain more than a bit muddy.

Karen Curtis controls my blog for a day!

Welcome to the thoughts of Karen Curtis! Today, I yield the blog to her, thanks to her generous donation to Habitat for Humanity.*
Karen (aka my mother) says:

Right now I'm pretty much fired up over stupid and irresponsible low life people who leave their children and pets in hot cars to die. There is no excuse for this. One news show recently aired a public service announcement from Mississippi suggesting people leave their cell phones in the back seat next to the child. It showed the man getting out of his car, walking away, then feeling his pocket and realizing he didn't have his phone, so he went back to the car and, lo and behold, there was his child. I hate that and if I lived in Mississippi (so glad I don't for many reasons), I would write to someone and tell them how stupid they are. The guy remembered his phone - not his child - and that's why he went back to the car. I can't stand it.

This brings me to my general annoyance with cell phone users (not cell phones). I am so tired of seeing people driving around with their phone to their ear, or walking around grocery and department stores chatting away. I'm also tired of going to lunch with friends (?) and spending the time watching one or all texting their husbands or kids or their Aunt Martha, and not turning the stupid device off so we can visit. What is it with people? Why do they have to be on the phone all the time? What am I missing? Is there something wrong with me?

Seriously!

Also, note Karen's use of the phrase "fired up" at the beginning. She alludes to one of our favorite moments from one of our mutually favorite TV shows, Designing Women, in which Mary Jo wants Julia to get "fired up" about an issue so Mary Jo can watch and learn from Julia's passionate speech. Watch a video clip from that episode, "Killing All the Right People," here. Around the 1:17 mark, Suzanne has a great suggestion about which Julia could get fired up!

*If you, too, are interested in having your say here on Linda Without Borders, it's not too late! Just click here to contribute to my Habitat for Humanity build in Poland, make a donation of $25 (or more), and this blog will be yours for a day!

Save a tree; eat an e-reader?

Sometimes, the way people's actions come back to bite them can be kind of hilarious. I shouldn't laugh, but I do. I think it's hysterical that people's quest for ease and convenience makes them do things they otherwise rant and rave about. 

Remember in the whole post-9/11 environment when there was a big to-do about whether the Feds could get all up in your reading business, the better to see what suspected terrorists were checking out of the library, or buying at bookstores, and/or the better to find some suspected terrorists by seeing what everyone was checking out from the library, or buying from bookstores?  

I do. I remember it well. I was working for Borders at the time, and, touchy-feely earthy-crunchy company that it occasionally aspired to be, there was lots of jabber as it officially released company statements about how our customers' privacy is respected and so on. If any spying NSA types came in to demand customer data, I suppose that I, as a manager on duty, would have proudly stood my right-to-read ground and protected my beloved customers' freedom from the thought police, or something like that. (This scenario never actually occurred, of course.) When silly young twentysomethings came to my cash register with The Anarchist Cookbook, defiantly giggling and exchanging "what's-she-going-to-say-as-she-rings-us-up" looks, I was unperturbed. "Your secret's safe with me," I wanted to say. That, or "No one cares." 

Well, now? Hello, e-books?  You all do realize that with this whole I-love-my-Kindle/I-read-on-my-laptop/I-never-go-to-bookstores nonsense, with Amazon doing your selling (and credit card saving, and wish listing, and recommending) and with your Nook or Kobo or iPad or other e-reading device noting and tracking and remembering searches, highlights, sales, what was started and not finished, which words were looked up, what was synced, and more, that you are handing over all the data a spying company, government, military-industrial complex, or Orwellian corporatocracy could want? All for the silly "convenience" about which you are so enthused? And that you think, somehow, "saves trees"?  (It doesn't. You run these devices on electricity. You charge the batteries with electricity. You manufacture these devices in factories and with plastics and other products and they are planned to be obsolete within a couple years so that you toss them in a landfill and buy more. Have you ever seen what a coal mine does to get you your electricity? Try visiting Appalachia. Your trees have been destroyed, all right. Books last way the hell longer than you keep your phone or tablet before upgrading it. They're also made of super recyclable paper. They can also be made from recycled paper. Meanwhile, you're blithely pillaging the Earth for your electricity consumption and pretending it's not using resources. For hours and hours and kilowatts and kilowatts each day. A book's production uses the kilowatts once, and that's it. Stop with the "saving trees" line -- it's nonsense.) 

So, enjoy that e-reading folks. You are a data-mining government spy's dream come true! Why should they hassle the booksellers and librarians for your hard copy data when you are willing to upload it all for them with your beloved e-books? 

Home Making

"Tastes just like homemade..." they say.

There are two kinds of people in the world. (Yes, yes, I know: those who say there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.) One kind is me. The other kind is people who, upon tasting something delicious in a restaurant/cafe/coffee shop/diner/bar/deli immediately think to themselves, "How could I (re)create this at home?"

You know what I hear in that question? "Wow, I've just eaten this delicious meal or perhaps I'm still eating it, and isn't it nice to sit here relaxing and enjoying it with my friends in this beautiful ambiance overlooking the water, or perhaps I'm having a quiet lunch with a book in my go-to spot, or maybe we're celebrating and accompanying this food with lots of wine on a fun night out. and all I can think about is how I could eat the same thing, but with more work involved on my part!!"

I'm thinking about this because I was listening to NPR's Morning Edition this, well, morning (duh) and I heard the host introduce the next story by asking, "Do you like Nutella? Well, you can make Nutella at home!" and I'm just over here all like, "But why? Why would you want to?" Of course the story proceeded to answer that question (nothing new here, folks: it's cheaper! it's healthier to not have the commercial preservatives and stabilizers that sometimes appear! it's "fun"! that last being debatable, of course) but mostly it proceeded to make us listeners spend time with one of the America's Test Kitchen  chaps who talked about how to make your own graham crackers and kale chips.

Personally, I have other things that I want to spend my time doing besides making my own graham crackers. That's not to say other people shouldn't make their own graham crackers. Two kinds of people!

But I have actually talked (you might say: argued) about this before with Brian. He and I disagree about what's a fun/appropriate time to spend cooking at home. I'm more into cooking/baking (mostly baking) things spontaneously, for fun. I actually get annoyed when I have to cook because I'm hungry. It's like having to do laundry before you can get dressed. One day, I thought maybe it just comes down to a two-kinds-of-people thing, and I compared it to buying a home espresso machine. Remember when that happened for a little while? A bunch of yuppies/earthy-crunchies/hipsters were all about getting their own espresso machines. Did that trend go away? Or did all the people who are going to buy one just take care of that already and now the market is done with that particular durable good until another generation or two goes by?  Anyway, I still remember the first person I talked to about that. I was a very young twentysomething in L.A., and a friend who worked in the cafe at Borders!!  I must emphasize this point!! started telling me about how she wanted to get an espresso machine for her apartment and so on and I just stood there staring at her. She didn't even have the "it's cheaper!" excuse because she worked there and had the whole free coffee/employee discount/I do this all day/access thing going on. She just wanted to have an espresso machine at home to be able to make espresso drinks at home, as did a bunch of other people who moved from having just coffeemakers to having espresso machines on their countertops and I just sit there thinking, no. I WANT to go to the coffee house! I want the barista to make it for me! Two kinds of people.

So when I had this epiphany, I told Brian that I just couldn't get inside the head of someone who's sitting there in a restaurant enjoying something and their first thought is, "I should make this at home!" My thought is: no, I shouldn't. I should enjoy it here. I should be here now.  And I certainly shouldn't think I can one-up this chef's delicious creation.

That's another part of the equation that confuses me. I enjoy going out to eat (not really in an expensive way, but in an Anna's Taqueria/take-out/street food way) and I am hard-pressed to think of any friend or relative who has ever made some particular dish that tastes better than what I can get in a restaurant, but I can think of plenty of restaurant foods that taste better than what I can get in a friend's/a relative's/my own kitchen. Let's see, I'm thinking...Brian makes a lot of delicious marinades for grilling and I understand the fun grilling out/summertime (with a beer, please, thank you)/tailgate grill/cook-out tradition, and he makes these amazing delicious burgers on the grill that will definitely blow you away, taste-wise...you know, if you like to eat meat... but I can't think of much else. There is no sandwich/pasta/potato/ burrito/enchilada/ stir-fry/salad/cake/curry that someone has ever made in a home for dinner that inspires me to not go back to a professional for sandwiches/pasta/potatoes/burritos/enchiladas/ stir-fries/salads/cakes/curries. I mean, don't get me wrong. Brian can (and does!) make delicious food. I'm all for people making delicious food. What I don't relate to is sitting in an eating or drinking establishment enjoying something delicious and pondering how I could do it myself instead of enjoying the convenience of paying someone to do it for me.

So when we had this conversation a few months back, Brian didn't really understand how interesting this insight was to me, that there are just two different kinds of people, one kind (me) who sit there enjoying their food in the restaurant, and the other kind who sit there wondering how they can do the work themselves to enjoy that food with more effort at home. Then it was really funny to me because a mere week or two later we were in a great breakfast spot in Detroit with his parents -- we're talking all the good Yelp! reviews and whatnot, that we found by searching "Best breakfast Detroit" and all that -- and while we're enjoying the pancakes that are so good and I'm plotting how to return there in the future for more pancakes or waffles or whatever, his mom pipes up, "I could make pancakes at home!" and I'm like, "Eek! See, Brian, this is what we just talked about!" and I thought it was really funny but Brian doesn't think it's really funny because he thinks I'm being mean (?) or something because I don't really jam out in the kitchen with him and his parents (which, they are there all the time. In the kitchen, I mean. Hours. Every day.) but it's not mean, it's just: two kinds of people in the world. There's me, and there's his mom.

There's "How great is the world that we can all be in a society and divide up our duties to sustain life, like some people build the roads, and some people design the houses, and some people work in the hospitals, and some people write the books, and some people make the wine, and restaurants exist and some people cook delicious food and I pay them and then I eat it!" and there's "I'm going to make this!"

Which kind are you?

States

If I am not careful, I am going to reach the point of having spent more of my total lifetime in Michigan than in Utah! That is just wrong. I am *definitely* closing in on having spent more time in Michigan than Illinois. I might even be passing it right about now...

Obviously, the states where I've spent the most time are the states where I've lived. So the top eight are, in order:
1. Arizona
2. California
3. Massachusetts
4. New York
5. Wyoming
6. Utah
7. Illinois
8. Michigan

But, see, I haven't really actually lived in Michigan, like lived-lived, and yet I kind of transitionally in progress have. And that's why it's annoying. Because of the not-really-ness of it.

FYI, the two states I have not been to, and which I really need to get to, are Alaska and Hawaii. As for the other forty states in the middle, between my eight lived-in/"lived"-ins and my far-flung unseens? There are a few where I've spent a fair amount of time (at least several weeks in a row, if not more, with multiple stints):
Virginia * Maryland *Pennsylvania
(also, D.C.)

And states I've been to a bunch of times, where I've racked up lots of days:
Nevada * Texas * Colorado * Vermont * New Hampshire * Connecticut  * Georgia * Florida * New Mexico * Louisiana * Washington

Or where I haven't been as many times, but have still spent some quality time:
Rhode Island * Maine * New Jersey * Indiana * Ohio * Tennessee * Iowa * South Dakota * Idaho * Nebraska * Missouri * Alabama * Mississippi * Oklahoma * Arkansas * North Carolina

And states I've visited, though briefly, where I should see and do more:
South Carolina * North Dakota * Wisconsin * Minnesota * West Virginia
And the states where I've done little more than pass through and look around, and definitely need to revisit:
Kentucky * Oregon * Delaware * Kansas * Montana

I like states.

Now I have to go think about how many state capitals I've been to. It's at least thirty. I like capitals, too.