Archive: December 2005
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Dec 20 05: I give
I am bad at giving presents. Not because I don’t like to give them—I love that. I just need each gift to be a jewel-like distillation of my affection for the sender. They need to demonstrate my unique and insightful understanding of who that person is and what makes them happy. Is this so much to ask? All I require is perfection.
As a result, rare indeed is the gift that doesn’t get selected at the last possible moment. I usually consider and then mull over possibilities and then stall and then fret and then panic. By late December a friend with Mad Shopping Skillz is often required to talk me down off the ledge, take me by the hand, and tell me to take a few deep breaths.
However: I feel really good about the two individuals pictured here. I may still be panicked about my parents, but these were a labor of love from start to finish. That’s right: I made them with my own two hands. They make me smile every time I look at them. They are soft and squishy and have promised to be good companions for two small children on Long Island, whose uncle loves them very much.
Dec 18 05: Gorilla gorilla gorilla!
Saw King Kong tonight, which should not be confused with Brokeback Mountain, which is the movie we have not seen. (Now, if somebody could do some sort of mashup of the aforementioned films, that would be something to see as well. The mind boggles.)
Before I begin, though, can I ask a question here? What kind of person brings a four-year-old to see King Kong?
Yes, the big ape was cool, and there were dinosaurs, but. The big ape was intermittently scary. The dinosaurs were almost always scary. The giant bugs were unfailingly scary and frequently also likely to induce the heebie-jeebies. And then there were the gigantic… the gigantic very toothy man-eating penises. What the hell were those things? Gaaah. At any rate, I feel sorry for the many, many small children who were at our screening today, because they won’t be sleeping so well over the next week or six. I do not feel sorry for their parents, who will be comforting them tonight and/or paying their therapists’ bills later.
Anyway, other than having to deal with the usual ringing cell phones and chattering kindergarteners, the movie rocked. I only wanted to slap the Jack Blackiness out of Jack Black once or twice. Naomi Watts was generally fabulous and looked eerily like Nicole Kidman. Kong himself seemed like a really big gorilla and not a guy pretending to be a really big gorilla. The tribe of ooga-booga people on Skull Island I wasn’t entirely sure about; I feel like we didn’t get enough of an idea of who these people really were, or what their lives were like, but then this was not Ursula K. LeGuin Presents King Kong. Which is another film I’d love to see. I would also note that Act III, Kong’s night on the town, passed awfully quickly—the hours between the curtain going up on the Kongstravaganza and the sun rising over Long Island pass in about twenty minutes, with no obvious lacunae to stash the leftovers in.
Still: it’s great fun, and absolutely worth your eleven-or-so bucks. Afterwards the movie clan agreed that (a) it might be fun to see on the big screen a second time; and that (b) the inevitable DVD-with-all-the-trimmings, if it holds up to the standards Jackson and crew established for LOTR, will be an utter gas.
Dec 10 05: stampede
Failed to see Brokeback Mountain this afternoon. The four of entered the hushed darkness of the theater 30 minutes before its scheduled beginning and were astonished to find it essentially full. A few empty single seats were scattered around the room, but beyond that only the frontmost row had any vacancies. My back and neck are in knots this weekend as it is, so front-row moviegoing was out of the question. When we got to the customer-service desk, we were told that all subsequent showings today were sold out, so we got a refund and came home.
On one hand: Fie. I really want to see this movie. On the other hand: Wow. I realize that yes, this is NYC; and yes, it’s only showing at three venues in the city right now, so demand for seats is being concentrated into fewer places; but still. A lot of people seem to think that a gay-cowboy-romance picture might be something worth seeing. Enough so, even, that the house was packed well before showtime. And not just a bunch of queers, either—I saw a whole lot of straight people there. Maybe this means that some day romances with people like me in ‘em won’t be major events created once a decade. Alongside my disappointment, I entertain a shy spark of hope.
Dec 5 05: in media res
I wish I could say that I haven’t posted because my life is so damn glamorous, but it’s just been busy. The job, she is bonkers. The night before Thanksgiving I was at work until 10:30, just so I could go away for the weekend and not have to think about the office.
Actually, no. There has been some glamour. Just this evening, for instance, we saw electric guitar legend Les Paul at the Iridium. The man is 90 years old and still swings a mean axe. I found myself wondering what it is that makes Les Paul Les Paul, though. Why is he a legend? I mean, sure, he basically invented the electric guitar. But there’s something in his sound, and I wondered what it was. Not being a guitar player myself, alas, I couldn’t tell you whether it’s in his technique or it’s somehow inherent in the chemistry of his instrument and the specific way his equipment digests the signals from the pickups. I dunno.
So yeah, there was that. There have been movies. The new Harry Potter is dark and fun; Syriana is good, I think, but be warned that it will do nothing to improve your outlook on US involvement in the affairs of the Middle East. Pride and Prejudice is delicious and should be seen straightaway, and I don’t just say that because I’m a sucker for a happy ending. We also saw my friend Mano in the fabulous new production of Sweeney Todd, which lacks a happy ending but is nonetheless equally must-see.
I have almost finished knitting a teddy bear. I just have to sew the arms on and he’ll be finished. He wears a red sweater and has a rough-hewn charm about him. Don’t tell my niece, though, because he’s a surprise.
Our deeee-lightful friends from Oxford get here on Thursday to spend a long weekend, which will be great; and the weekend after that, friends from Ithaca will be here; and the weekend after that is Christmas and I get to spend it with my sister and her family.
I may barely have thirty seconds to grab naps in a corner, but I am happy.