Midnight in Paris

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a big Woody Allen fan. I went through phase in late high school/early college when I tracked down a bunch of his mid-period films - Alice, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, etc. It's probably significant that I remember very little about any of them. His films from the 90s forward failed to appeal to me although I tried here and there - Shadows and Fog, Bullets Over Broadway, among others.

But last night, Suzy and I watched his latest, the Oscar-nominated Midnight in Paris. It already had one strike against it, as neither Suzy nor I are Owen Wilson fans. Nevertheless, we gave it a try and were pleasantly surprised. The film is so lightweight, I'm surprised it's nominated for Best Picture which is something usually reserved for Important Films about Important Subjects. Midnight in Paris is about an easy-going, slightly listless screenwriter who is visiting Paris with his fiance and her parents. While there, each night at midnight, he's transported back to the 1920s and into the company of Earnest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, the Fitzgeralds, and other luminaries of the time. Daylight comes, and he finds his way back to the 21st century and his increasingly critical, bossy fiance.

It's fun to see portrayals of famous literary figures. Hemingway alone with all his talk of truth and bravery makes the film worth watching. The actor, Cory Stoll, plays him so utterly deadpan, it's hilarious. It's loving but also parodic of Hemingway's tough-guy image. One party scene ends with Hemingway looking around and roaring, "Who wants to fight?" It's funny.

Rachel McAdams plays the fiance as though Regina George, her character from Mean Girls, grew up and got engaged to Owen Wilson. She's snappish, shrewish, unfaithful, and generally uncool. It's in this that I found the movie the least effective. The deck was kind of stacked - her character is so unlikeable and unredeemed, we already know their relationship is doomed. It's just a question of how it will end, not if. That lack of humanity on her part lost the movie what could have been some valuable tension. Ah well. Marion Cottiard is appropriately beguiling as the muse of Picasso, Hemingway, and Wilson's screewriter. Michael Sheen employs an excellent American accent and creates a perfectly deplorable academic know-it-all you love to hate.

In the end, the message of the film seems to be that there really never was any kind of a Golden Age. People always think they're living in the worst times and that someone else had it better. By the simple, sentimental ending, the film suggests that all we have is the present and the best we can do is create our own personal Golden Age by spending our time with like-minded people. As I said, it's not complex, but it's charming and fun. Not a bad way to spend 94 minutes.

Weirdness! Weather! Crying! Poetry!

Is it weird that I can use my fingers to count how many times it has snowed this winter and still have a couple of fingers left over? It's been a weird winter, hasn't it? Almost no snow at all, temps nearly reaching the 60s in December, tulips shoving their green little spears up into the air in February - weird, right?

I'm not complaining. I hate the winter, I hate snow, and few things cheer me more than bright, warm days. But I do wonder what this means for summer. Will it be even more blisteringly hot than normal? Will we have drought conditions here in America's bread basket? Will it be super buggy because it never got cold enough to kill the larvae in the ground? Inquiring minds want to know.

It was a weird day at work today also. I had a student start crying in my creative writing class because the book of poems she was reporting on moved her so much. Mind you, this is not the sort of student who strikes me as particularly emotional or given to tears. She's a type-A overachiever who is a student ambassador, works in the Writing Center, and gives off the air that she is headed for bigger and better things. Today, she was telling the rest of the class about Tess Gallagher's Moon Crossing Bridge, a book of poems commemorating the loss of Raymond Carver, Gallagher's husband.



As the student was describing a particular line, she choked up and her face blanched. She talked about Gallagher's description of Carver's absence, how she feels his "kissless kiss" everywhere she goes - and the girl (Emma is her name) said, "It's just so, so sad!" And she had to stop talking for a little bit because she couldn't get any more words out. It was strange. I told her that I figured Gallagher would be flattered that her poems moved her that much. I told her that there's nothing wrong or embarrassing about being moved by literature and that we'd all be better off if we could be touched so readily by it. She seemed satisfied by that, and we moved on to the next student's report.

I've never cried in a classroom. (Not as an adult anyway. Who knows or remembers what drama childhood brought?) I do remember an English class I took at Ricks College from a guy named Brother Pearce. Actually, it was my first post-mission English class, and it was the one in which I was reunited with another recently returned missionary - a slender blonde with the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen - a young Suzanne Day.

Anyway, it was a British lit class, and Brother Pearce was teaching us about poetry, about the difference between good poetry and doggerel. First, he read a poem by Helen Steiner Rice called "The Magic of Love." Google it if you're feeling masochistic - it's awful - sing-song rhyme, lame abstract language, trite cliche sentimentality, etc. We all had a good chuckle as would-be English major sophisticates. Then, he read a second poem and, for the life of me, I can't remember what it was or where to find it. It was a poem from a husband to a wife and it was all about her clumsiness, how everything she touches becomes a shipwreck of some sort, and yet - how that small foible made him love her more. The poem, as I recall, was original, written in fresh language, and lovely - the opposite of "The Magic of Love," of course.



Anyway, about midway through the poem, Pearce, this tall (6'4 or so) gawky guy in a shirt and tie, starts to cry and he can barely squeeze out the last couple of lines. After he finished, he closed the book, and dabbed at his eyes with his necktie. He apologized and said, "I didn't expect that. It's just that my wife is a little clumsy sometimes, and this makes me think of her." It was such an odd, intimate moment to share in a windowless, cinder block classroom with twenty other people. It was sweet too, and he was clearly a guy who loved and feel very tenderly toward his wife.

Anyway, poetry doesn't have much power in today's world, if it ever did. No one reads it with any regularity except other poets. But still, here and there, like a little sniper of words, it takes someone down when they are least suspecting it.

Sweet Moves

Is there a better thing in the world than a warm, sunny Friday afternoon? I think not. The feeling of having a couple of free days stretching out in front of you combined with some bright sunlight and a warm breeze is about as close to secular heaven as I get.

Other things that make me happy are:

The fact that the movie John Carter is only a few weeks away from theaters. The film is based on a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan. The premise is that a Civil War veteran named John Carter is somehow transported to the planet Mars where a war between different Martian races is going on. Because of the lower gravity, Carter is stronger, faster, and generally more awesome than everyone else. He sorts the Martians' problems out in a two-fisted sort of way.



The Black Keys song, "Lonely Boy." It's loud, fuzzed-out, and rocks harder than any song by a two-person band ought to. If you don't believe me, check out the sweet moves:



Speaking of sweet moves, this makes me happiest of all:

So Very 80s

A week or two ago, the only thing on television (or so it seemed) was 1987's Baby Boom with Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard. I remember when it came out but had never seen the whole thing. I still haven't, but I watched more of it with Suzanne that night than ever before. I was struck first by how startlingly dated it was. The clothes, the issues at stake, the behavior. Diane Keaton's shoulder pads alone scream 1987 like nothing else. The set and lighting design, the hairstyles, everything. It's such a relic of its time, it's more entertaining to watch for it's 80s quirks than for the story or acting. When Sam Shepard and Keaton are arguing as she tries to change her flat tire, he responds to her finger-pointing insults by pinning her against the car and kissing her into submission. 21st century man that I am, I thought, "Jeeze, there's a sexual assault suit waiting to happen."

The other thing that hit me was, "Wow, I really can't stand watching Diane Keaton act." I can't. Not in anything she's made in the last twenty five years. The only thing she was in that doesn't make me feel like I'm having a root canal is The Godfather trilogy. Admittedly, I've never seen Annie Hall, but, from what I've seen, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to stand it either. (I am one of the few film people in the world who isn't enchanted with Woody Allen, not even his early stuff. He bugs me - not as much as Diane Keaton but still.) Keaton is just excruciating. Her acting makes me think of a fidgety noodle in cartoonish clothes that's hooked up to a car battery and is periodically receiving shocks. There's nothing authentic or entertaining in her performances for me. It's just a collection of annoying physical and verbal tics that's supposed to add up to a character but only equals caricature.


My reaction to her reminds me of my dad's reaction to the actor Elliot Gould. Most recently, he was Ross and Monica Gellar's dad in Friends. (Actually, most recently, he was a brilliant scientist in the germophobe creepout Contagion.) Anyway, Dad couldn't stand him. Every time he came on the screen in a movie or on TV, Dad would look over at me and say, "I hate that guy. Can't hardly stand to even look at him." Random, right? It makes me laugh now to think that of all the actors and actresses in the world, Dad had a personal beef with Elliot Gould. It's funny even to type.

So, here's my brain teaser for you - it's a two-parter:

#1 - Name one movie that, for you, utterly represents the 1980s. What, to your mind, is the most 80s movie ever made?

#2 - Name one actor you just can't freakin' stand to watch. Who is it that makes you want to change the channel as soon as they walk on the screen?

Do tell. Inquiring minds want to know.

High There

I was diagnosed with high cholesterol in my early 30s. The doctor told me to eat less crap, exercise more, and try to eat fish two or three times a week. I did none of those things. I was barely out of my 20s and still looked and felt good. I'm pretty sure I thought to myself something really smart and informed-sounding like, "It will probably go away on its own."

Genius.

Surprisingly, it has not. I went in for a checkup last year and got put on a statin called Lovastatin. Three months ago I was commanded to start taking Omega 3 capsules too. Last week, I went back to the doctor to see if any of it is doing any good.

Long story short, it's not. Apparently, I might as well have been eating Pez for the last year instead of Lovastatin. I might as well be attacking a tank with a sling shot. I might as well send Pee Wee Herman in to wrestle Hulk Hogan (how's that for a dated 80's crossover reference?)
I might as well be Obama at a fundraiser in southeast Idaho. I might as well try to knock down a house by spitting on it really hard.

Have I made my point? Lovastatin + Mark's cholesterol = no workie.

My good cholesterol is low, my bad cholesterol is high, and the only thing to have budged more than a few measly points was my triglyceride level. Thanks, Fish Oil!

The thing that got to me in this last appointment (besides the fact that the doctor made me wait an hour and twenty minutes - seriously, what is it with me and doctors? Do I have a sign hung round my neck that says, "This guy loves to be ignored! Go get yourself a sandwich!") is when the doctor said, "A man your age with a lipid profile like this really can't afford to ignore these numbers."

A man my age. Yup. The time for youthful arrogance and expecting to melt away blood fat through a strict cheeseburger and Chicago Dog diet is over. Sigh. Sometimes I hate being mortal.

So, the doctor discontinued my Lovastatin script and gave me something more powerful. I guess he's moving me up from a BB gun to perhaps a .38 or a .45 in hopes of blasting the high fat perps lurking around in my blood. I'll keep taking my fish oil capsules (thank freaking heaven for whatever technology that makes them almost not taste fishy at all) and try to eat a little less crap while taking in a little more fresh fruit. Maybe I'll walk on the treadmill or something.

I'm scheduled to go back in three months and see if any of it is working, so I'll keep you updated. Hopefully, the doctor won't say anything like this: