November 1, 2009 at 11:31 pm (Books, Brain Cloud, Movies, Quotes)
Tags: Redwood City, reviews, Sundays, The Economist, weekends
Beautiful post-Halloween Sunday! Hubby and self had dimsum at China Village in Belmont (Nice, unassuming place: Self has taken Barbara Reyes and Luisa Igloria for dimsum there!) and walked around downtown Redwood City afterwards. John Cleese is performing Nov. 8 at the Fox Theatre! Self was excited enough to check out ticket prices: They start at $50. Oh. But – John Cleese! Self will have to think about it.
Walked to Century 20 and glanced at the movies showing. Briefly wavered at “Couples Retreat.” A young girl standing directly in front of us was waving around one sequined glove. But hubby did not want to see “This Is It.” (Self is gonna have to see it by herself; maybe tomorrow . . . )
We went home. Self checked the expiration date on her Economist subscription: Dec. 5, 2009. Brother-in-law gave a subscription to her as a Christmas present, 15 years ago, and has paid for the subscription every year since then. Self checks the price of a year’s subscription: $109. Oh.
Then she began to read the “Books and Arts” section and saw a review of two new books on Ayn Rand. Self rather used to think this woman was a crackpot, but son came home from his first year at college toting two of her books: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. (Lately, whenever self is madly typing away on her blog, hubby suddenly erupts in explosive sneezing. They are so loud, the window shades start to vibrate. And he does so now, five explosions: HAAAA-CHOOOO! HAAAA-CHOOOO! HAAAA-CHOOOO! HAAAA-CHOOOO! HAAAA-CHOOOO! It’s a miracle: self’s eardrums are still intact). Here’s a paragraph from the Economist review:
. . . her most important attribute was her talent for myth-making. Rand perfected her literary art as a screenwriter in Hollywood. And she dealt in Hollywood-style dichotomies between good and evil, between white-hatted capitalists and black-hatted collectivists. Greys don’t interest me, she once said. Atlas Shrugged conjured up a world in which all creative businessmen had gone on strike, retreating to Galt’s Gulch in Colorado, and culminated in a dramatic court scene in which Galt detailed the evils of collectivism.
Meanwhile, self is still lost in the world of Irene Nemirovsky’s simply ravishing Suite Francaise.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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October 26, 2009 at 10:59 pm (Brain Cloud, Food and Drink)
Tags: diets, errands, Halloween
Self is exhausted. After spending the morning at Writing Center, then wandering over to Long’s to pick up some prescriptions, then to Safeway to pick up bags of Halloween candy (self made sure to buy only the kinds she hates: Hot Tamales), then failing to find any good pumpkins selling for less than $3, and picking up Luis Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter from the Redwood City Main Library (and, now that she’s seen the cover again, self is 99.76 % sure she’s borrowed it before, but she can’t remember when), self arrives home pretty “low bat” again. What is wrong? Could it be the fact that she’s had nothing to eat all day except a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips from the vending machine just outside the Writing Center, and a coke float?
Alas, self finds it is quite impossible to go the whole day without eating, as was her plan. Yesterday, there was Crouching Tiger with Jonathan, Liza, and Zack, and afterwards self came home to find the whole house smelling like hot buttered popcorn (hubby was snacking on that on the couch). This morning, self successfully made it to the Writing Center without Read the rest of this entry »
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October 18, 2009 at 2:41 am (Brain Cloud, Calls, Conversations, Food and Drink, Relatives, Surprises, Writers and Others)
Tags: desserts, Events, exhibits, museums, photography, Readings, restaurants, San Francisco
Dear Bro called from LA around 10:30 this morning. Self said, no problem, she could pick him up. Did he want to come with her to Filipino authors reading in the City, in the Bayanihan Community Center, at 2 p.m.? Dear Bro said yes, with alacrity.
Then, the following things happened:
Somewhere around Millbrae, on the 101, self’s engine overheated. Car slowed to 20 miles an hour. She barely had time to nudge it onto an exit. Luckily, a few feet from the exit was a Doubletree Hotel. Self glided into the parking lot. So gracefully that she actually landed in a space directly across from the hotel’s main entrance, and exactly between the two white lines of the parking stall, which is a very rare occurrence.
Then, she called Dear Bro. Ah, could he possibly get a cab and meet her at the Doubletree? He said he could, and he did.
Next, self asked Dear Bro’s taxi if he could take the two of us to the nearest car rental place (as self was determined, simply determined, to take him to the reading with Read the rest of this entry »
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October 12, 2009 at 10:33 pm (Brain Cloud, Conversations, Food and Drink, Insomnia, Relatives, Surprises)
Tags: Holidays, reading, Redwood City, restaurants
There is no mail delivery today. Self just realized this when, after she got home from lunch and a walk around downtown Redwood City with Dear Bro, she stuck her hand in the mailbox and was surprised to find it empty. Then she realized it was Columbus Day, a holiday. Ergo, the library will be closed as well. Self has to wait until tomorrow to return James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (which she read until 3 a.m. this morning) and borrow Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-nominated novel of a couple of years back, Never Let Me Go.
Self did have to work at the Writing Center, however; she is starting to see a core group, students who present week after week, who self has formed a tutoring relationship with, and also a student she taught in African American Lit, last semester. And that student was a very good writer!
But, in general, self found herself rather “low bat.” (Could it be the overcast weather? Could it be all the nights staying up reading?)
Self arrived home to find the house empty. But she wasn’t undisturbed for more than five minutes, for then the phone rang and it was Dear Bro telling her that he was on the way home: would she like to have lunch somewhere? Self said sure, and suggested he might like to see Whole Foods, “because they have this great buffet, and everything is weighed by the pound, and we can take the food home to eat it here.” But she sensed some reluctance on the part of Dear Bro, so she asked, “Or did you want to eat at a real restaurant?”
It turned out Dear Bro would rather eat at a restaurant. And he surprised self by saying he wanted Indian food. And self knew just the place to go: Read the rest of this entry »
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October 7, 2009 at 8:32 pm (Brain Cloud, Conversations, Movies, Surprises)
Tags: lists, teaching
She can always pass by for eggs when she goes to the post office (where she has to go to mail something for son), but she’s already spent all morning in the Writing Center, it’s 1:20 p.m., and she wants to just run to the post office and back, quickly, so she can spend the rest of the afternoon writing.
Already, such an interesting day. Only one person came in all morning, but just as she was getting ready to leave, a student came by. So self decided to help him, and his paper was on the Book of Ezekiel and was full of Biblical quotes about God (Remember to capitalize that word, self reminded him). Then, suddenly, he indicated the book self had brought in with her to read while waiting for students to show (Freakonomics).
“Do you like that book?” he asked.
Self said she did.
“I love that book,” he said.
Self told him she had only reached the part about the sumo wrestlers. He said the best part was still ahead, about halfway. He went on and on and talked about how much he liked it.
So, a conversation like that, so unexpected, is really one of the joys of working in the Writing Center.
After self gets home, and before she rushes out the door again (and while she’s finishing her Netflix movie, “The Class”), she decides to update her Netflix queue, which she hasn’t looked at in many months. And here are the movies self has lined up:
- Tyson
- Fighting
- The Last House on the Left
She decides to drop “Fighting,” as the only reason she requested it was so that hubby could watch it. But, on second thought, he probably won’t like it (not as much as self did, anyway, for hubby can hardly be expected to go ga-ga over Channing Tatum), so she drops the movie and adds “Year One.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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October 7, 2009 at 2:08 am (Brain Cloud, Home, Quotes)
Tags: Literary Journals & Websites, reading
So, here is self. It is just shy of 7 p.m., and it’s been a long and somewhat up-and-down day (although all the stress has been entirely created by self — over such things as: what to cook for dinner; and what time will hubby present; and how many pages of writing constitutes a “good” output for the day)
All afternoon, self kept the TV on the National Geographic channel. First they had a piece on Gitmo. Here were the guards, young men and women, and they looked scared. A constant stream of abuse emanated from the prisoners in the cells, and the Arabic words were provided with helpful subtitles (“American bastards! You create terrorists! Your women are bitches!”). Self thinks it is quite interesting that National Geo was able to get this kind of access. Probably would not have happened under the previous occupant of the White House.
Immediately after the Gitmo piece was one about a team of National Geographic reporters imbedded with a unit in Afghanistan. At the end of one day, they had the bad luck to hit an IED. Seven people, including two members of the National Geographic team, were either killed or wounded, the worst IED incident “in five years.” Self hadn’t really been paying attention until it got to this part: as usual. she was multi-tasking, reading a gazillion different things, all scattered on the couch around her. But that last episode did get her attention.
And the piece she just happens to be reading in New Letters, “Three Hooks,” (the Essay Award winner, judged by Thomas E. Kennedy), just happens to be about a soldier. The first sentence is:
“The bullet left a hole in the man’s belly large enough you could see the ground through it.”
Well, that’s quite a grabber of a sentence. The setting of the piece is Lebanon. The author is Robyn Anspach, identified in the Contributor notes as a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan who “currently works for Google.”
Self is writing a piece about a body that vanishes. No, this is not “The Invisible Man.” At least, self doesn’t think so (though how can she say for sure, when she’s never read the Ralph Ellison novel? What if she were channeling him unawares? Self has to admit it could happen). Sometimes she thinks she should stop because she has no idea what she is doing. But, then, she would miss out on the fun of knowing how the story can/should end.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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October 4, 2009 at 1:43 am (Brain Cloud, Movies, Other Sites of Interest, Surprises)
Tags: weather, weekends, desserts, Edward Norton, Whole Foods, Saturdays, Goldilocks, comedies
Why do the weather newscasters never warn us when to expect a weekend of blustery, bone-chilling wind? You can be sure that when they say it will be hot and sweltering, it won’t be. And when they say it will be cool, that’s when it will be hot and sweltering.
Today, self’s hands and lips are sooo chapped. She and hubby went to see “The Invention of Lying” at the downtown Century 20 (Five Stars! Ricky Gervais killed! Also, there is a short appearance by Edward Norton, and what’s so cool about his one scene is that it’s not immediately apparent that it is Ed Norton — I looked up the movie on IMDB, and after scrolling down a seemingly endless list of actors and actresses, I thought I’d made a mistake. But no, there was his name: the very last on the list, and even then the entry says only “uncredited, unconfirmed.” What convinced self that it was indeed he was the voice. — Edward, hurry up and make more movies! Self misses you!). Self nearly froze on the walk from the car to the theater (Very interesting: there were hardly any people in the audience, but of the few hardy souls who were there for the first screening of the day, two were deep into books, and one was using the Read the rest of this entry »
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October 2, 2009 at 9:47 pm (Brain Cloud, Calls, Home, Movies, Son)
Tags: Fridays, weekends
The weekend is upon us! Self is in very mellow mood, for she’s finally been able to satisfy her movie craving: she saw an early screening of “Love Happens,” with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart, at the downtown Redwood City cinema. While the movie’s probably not going to make it to Read the rest of this entry »
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September 24, 2009 at 2:29 am (Brain Cloud, Food and Drink, Surprises, Writing)
Tags: decisions
Self is preparing to send out a manuscript for another contest (Yes, hope does spring eternal, and so forth and so on). She was dithering about whether or not it was worth coughing up the contest entry fee, but she was looking through some old letters and there was something from someone praising that very manuscript self had been planning to send! Self then took it as a sign from God and decided that she would mail out her piece (yes, nothwithstanding $25 contest entry fee– GAAAH!) forthwith!
In addition, self got a new rice cooker. It is an eight-cup capacity, bright red and chrome thing (from Read the rest of this entry »
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August 31, 2009 at 8:38 pm (Brain Cloud, Eavesdropping, Movies)
Tags: classic movies, lists, Mondays, recession, San Carlos, Vanity Fair
Today self had to work in the Writing Center. She actually had students come in, even though it is practically just the beginning of the semester.
On the way home, self considered stopping by Chocolate Mousse in San Carlos and picking up strawberry shortcake. But she desisted. Thank God.
Back home, self did a little watering, a little browsing of literary websites, a little more writing (a new piece! Yay!). She tried to calculate how long it would take her to reach the City if she took the BART as opposed to if she took Caltrain (for Luis Francia’s play reading at the SF Main Library’s Koret Auditorium, this Saturday). She did a little riffling through Vanity Fair and saw that they had a kind of Hollywood section, much reduced from previous years: The gimmick was that the actors had to pose like characters in one of seven “Depression-era” films (But, hello: no Chris Pine or Zach Quinto, no Jeremy Renner from “The Hurt Locker” or anyone from the cast of “Inglorious Basterds” – what’s up with that?). That is, the films weren’t necessarily shot during the Depression, but the stories had to be set in that period.
Self earlier wrote a rather glib post about who looked good in the pictures and who didn’t, but her mood changed drastically when, around 4:30 p.m., she went back to San Carlos to satisfy her cake craving and found that Chocolate Mousse had gone out of business. Not only that, Claire de Lune, the clothing store next to it, where self used to spend hours browsing the Sale racks, was also out of business (or, at least, had butcher paper all over the display windows and was apparently closed).
So self went home, and looked at her Vanity Fair post in a rather darker mood. Here are the movies that were “re-cast” in the Vanity Fair photo shoot:
- “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969): a classic. The movie where self fell in love with Michael Sarrazin. The Vanity Fair photo featured the following young actors: Kat Dennings (of “Forty-Year-Old Virgin”), Anton Yelchin, Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, Elizabeth Banks, and Hugh Dancy. Hugh Dancy looked like a 12-year-old. Self tried imagining John Krasinski in the Michael Sarrazin role. Hmm . . . results inconclusive.
- “It Happened One Night” (1934): James Marsden and Rose Byrne
- “Paper Moon” (1973): Josh Duhamel and Elle (younger sister of Dakota) Fanning
- “42nd Street” (1933): a whole line-up, the only actors self recognized were Moon Bloodgood (Yay!) and Rashida Jones
- “Letty Lynton” (1932): Self had never heard of the actress picked to channel Joan Crawford, but her name is Mila Kunis.
- “My Man Godfrey” (1936): Channing “Step Up” Tatum, dressed as a butler and holding a tray of hors d’ouerves, and Amanda “Mamma Mia” Seyfried channeling Carole Lombard (and doing it really well)
- “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940): re-cast with some of the actors in Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” but the only actors self recognized were Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch (who, self is convinced, is good in just about everything), and Demetri Martin.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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