Self Watches a Movie

Self met niece at her Stanford dorm, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and in the course of an afternoon and evening spent having lunch, watching a movie, and eating gelato with her in downtown Palo Alto, self found out the following:

Niece had a front-page article in The Stanford Daily, an article about Stanford opening a new center in Madrid (“But there was a typo in the headline, Tita, it was pretty embarrassing.”)

Niece’s boyfriend, S, who’s from Orange County but whose parents are from Jamaica or some such, likes listening to radio station 100.7 (“a Latin salsa station?”)

Niece has decided not to do an honor’s thesis (“It’s too stressful; and besides, staying in a party dorm makes it hard.”)

As self always does whenever she is with niece, she called son. It was 1:30 PM and he sounded very close-mouthed. “Perhaps he just woke up,” niece offered.

Self and niece watched “The Counterfeiters.” What self loves so much about watching foreign movies is that she gets to see actors who she’s never seen before, and thus doesn’t have any previous roles to associate them with. And so, she really enjoys looking at their faces. And the guy who played the lead (with improbable name “Sally” Sorowitsch) was very good. With demeanor self adjudged to be appropriately Kafka-esque: hunched shoulders, gloomy mien, etc. But the supporting actors were very good, too: in particular the two baby-faced German officers, and a camp inmate named Burger who self sincerely wished would not get to indulge a problematic martyr complex. There were two parts of the movie when self had to close her eyes: one was when the (male) camp inmates were doing the “Can-Can” at an SS-organized entertainment called “Carnival Night.” Another was when young Russian inmate was told to kneel down before beefy German officer.

Self always enjoys these outings with niece, but they cost, too. At the end of the day, she’d spent $90. And, out of some kind of residual guilt (at not “being there” for him — he is such a resourceful person she never worries), she wrote out a check afterwards for son and mailed it before she could have second thoughts.

And by the time self got home, she saw that hubby was already home. And, while hubby walked the dogs, self heated up a dinner of leftovers: potato salad and sauteed salmon.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

About That Mouse . . .

A page further in David Sedaris’ “Nuit of the Living Dead”:

This mouse had nothing going for him, and yet he struggled, using what, I don’t really know.

And yet further:

A creature that determined, you want to let it have its way, but this was for the best, whether he realized it or not.

Self wishes this story would never end. She wishes that David Sedaris were always in his house in France, that it would forever be 3 A.M., that Hugh would never return. So that Dave could write, over and over again, about all the various ways in which it is possible to kill a mouse.

Dave, You Kill Me

It is late. Judging from hubby’s position on the couch, self has just succeeded in inducing in him a massive headache. A few minutes ago, self insisted on reading to him the following hilarious (self thought) passage from the Dave Sedaris piece, “Nuit of the Living Dead:”

. . . I went upstairs and found a mouse caught in one of the traps Hugh had set. The steel bar had come down on his back, and he was pushing himself in a tight circle, not in a death throe, but with a spirit of determination, an effort to work within this new set of boundaries. “I can live with this,” he seemed to be saying. “Really. Just give me a chance.”

I couldn’t leave him that way, so I scooted the trapped mouse into a cardboard box and carried him down onto the front porch. The fresh air, I figured, would do him some good, and once released, he could run down the stairs and into the yard, free from the house that now held such bitter memories. I should have lifted the bar with my fingers, but instead, worried that he might try to bite me, I held the trap down with my foot and attempted to pry it open with the end of a metal ruler. Which was stupid. No sooner had the bar been raised than it snapped back, this time on the mouse’s neck. My next three attempts were equally punishing, and when finally freed, he staggered onto the doormat, every imaginable bone broken in at least four different places.

@@##!!!

Alas, dear blog readers, all good things must come to an end. The aforementioned essay is the final piece in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. And self has found the book a great comfort to her (especially after reading two exceedingly violence-steeped novels by E. L. Doctorow). Reading this book, and encountering a brother like Dave’s Paul — who cheerfully informs his family, after his wife has just given birth, that “Mama’s got some tubes sticking out of her pussy, but it ain’t no big thing. She’s lying back, little Maddy’s sucking on her titty just as happy as she can be” — self is beginning to think her own family is not that bad after all. Oh how she will miss Dave’s descriptions of his sisters, one of whom has “appendages connected to her ankles. They feature toes and arches, but I cannot call them feet. In color they resemble the leathery paws of great apes, but in texture they are closer to hooves.” Thank God, self thinks — thank God Dear Bro did not look askance at self’s feet while they briefly shared the apartment on Ruppin Street and at least he did not take notes on her appendages, as Dave apparently did after quickly glimpsing his sister’s feet.

But, as self has said, all good things must come to an end. And though self arrived at this juncture by reading the book ever so slowly, it has come. The end is near. Next on her book list: a novel about a circus, with the intriguing title Geek Love. Because self knows, as everyone from a dysfunctional family knows, and as Dave Sedaris has demonstrated once and for all time: there is a strong connection between families and circuses.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Stella Has a Blog! And More NYTBR (23 March 2008)

Self multi-tasking again this evening (2000 movie “The Replacements” starring Gene Hackman and adorable Keanu Reeves is on flat-screen HDTV).

The world should know: Estimable Stella K now has her own blog!!!

stellakalaw.blogspot.com/

Check it out. It’s very cool.

* * * * *

Self read three issues of The New York Times Book Review yesterday, but will only post one this evening, as she’s actually somewhat “low-bat” (to borrow a term from Dearest Mum) after loooong afternoon spent teaching a class of widely yawning students at xxxx community college. If only self’s English students were as entertained as self’s antics by dear blog readers! But, alas, they are bored with all things literary (And matters were not helped by assigned reading of the day, Herman Melville’s bleak moral fable, “Bartleby the Scrivener.”)

Books Self is Interested in Reading After Perusing the 23 March 2008 Issue of The New York Times Book Review:

(1) After reading Colm Toibin’s review of Nicholson Baker’s latest, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization:

Two of Nicholson Baker’s earlier books: The Mezzanine and Room Temperature

Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

(2) After reading The NYTBR Editors’ “Up Front” piece:

Colm Toibin’s first novel, The South

(3) After reading Prof. Deborah Roberts’ (Haverford College) Letter to the Editor:

Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” in which “a group of Greek mercenaries makes its way through often hostile territory to the coast of the Black Sea”

(4) After reading Jon-Christian Suggs’ (professor emeritus, City University of New York) Letter to the Editor:

Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel, The Warriors

(5) After reading Sarah Towers’ review of Jennifer Cody Epstein’s first novel, The Painter From Shanghai:

Jennifer Cody Epstein’s first novel, The Painter From Shanghai

(6) After reading Louisa Thomas’ review of Samantha Hunt’s second novel, The Invention of Everything Else:

Samantha Hunt’s The Invention of Everything Else

(7) After reading Alison McCulloch’s short reviews in the “Fiction Chronicle”:

Matt Haig’s “curiously affecting” The Labrador Pact
Yoko Ogawa’s “bright yet eerie” The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
Beth Helms’ first novel, Dervishes (about 1970s Ankara)
Jeffrey Ford’s “part mystery, part fantasy” novel, The Shadow Year
Michael Kruger’s “taut little novel,” The Executor

Nostalgia for a Lost New York: The Economist Review of Richard Price’s LUSH LIFE

From The Economist of week March 22- 28 (Self still catching up on her reading, after all!)

The Lower East Side of New York has long been a gateway for sweaty, dreamy immigrants. Its narrow streets feature the residue of older struggles, its tenements and synagogues inhabited by earlier boatloads.

But the pickle shops and leather outlets now share space with fancy French bistros and sleek, glassy condominiums. Chinese immigrants crammed 20 to a room toil alongside young, white artists sporting ironic tattoos and writerly goatees. It is a “Candyland of a neighborhood,” writes Richard Price in Lush Life, his gripping eighth novel, a murder-mystery set in the area. With gritty, rhythmic prose, full of interrogating cops, wry bartenders and street-wise kids, Mr. Price captures the complex jumble of race and class in this “checkerboard of demolition and rehabilitation.”

New York has long lived in self’s imagination as her own personal mecca. Was it those pictures of Dearest Mum at 14, playing in Carnegie Hall? Or Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” which self saw three times?

But self no longer loves New York. She thinks she stopped loving the City (which isn’t even referred to as “The Big Apple” any longer — or, if it is, only by those who are too old to be considered “cool”) when she saw her first Starbucks in the upper East Side. She had called an aunt who played the piano for American Ballet Theatre. Imagine her consternation when aunt suggested meeting at Starbucks, just around the corner from her brother-in-law’s Park Avenue apartment. (Why on earth would self want to meet her New York aunt in Starbucks? There are no less than three Starbucks within a mile of self’s abode in California!)

Self thinks one of the reasons she loved Tel Aviv so much was that there was not a single Starbucks anywhere in the city. AND there was great, great coffee everywhere, even in chain bakery/coffee shops like Rolodin.

Last summer, when self was spending a sultry August in the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and getting to know so many fascinating East Coast artists, a number of whom were from New York City, she overheard them discussing at breakfast the opening of a — Heaven Forbid! — KMart in, of all places, her beloved Astor Place on the Lower East Side. That was when self knew that, without a doubt, Manhattan was no longer the Manhattan of her dreams.

And, for heaven’s sake, there is a Whole Foods on 14th street which beggars the Whole Foods in Palo Alto. And self’s brother-in-law was so gaga over Whole Foods when it first opened that he could not stop talking about it.

And, furthermore, Madison Avenue now looks like the Stanford Shopping Center, for two of the biggest stores are these:

Banana Republic
Williams Sonoma

And the old FAO Schwarz store on Fifth Avenue is now an Apple Store.

Self is just waiting for the first Jamba Juice to open.

(And, oops, dear blog reader: Self just did a google search and found that the aforementioned KMart had opened, but not, thankfully in Astor Place: on One Pennsylvania Plaza).

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Dave Sedaris’ Older Sister

God love Dave Sedaris. For this evening he’s saving self from most abject depression. You see, dear blog readers, self had an awful class at xxxx community college. And afterwards she had to hot-foot it to her other job at NDNU. And somewhere in between Los Altos and Belmont, she had this thought:

What is it all for?

Indeed.

Then, after dinner this evening (leftover hamburger patties, thank goodness hubby kept mum), self found herself struck by a particular passage in one of his books, this one having to do with the husband of Dave’s older sister (whose name is Henry). And it is such a very interesting description. Here it is, dear blog reader.

* * * *

From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, p. 146 (“Repeat After Me”)

Of all the elements of my sister’s adult life — the house, the husband, the sudden interest in plants — the most unsettling is Henry. Technically, he’s a blue-fronted Amazon, but to the average layman, he’s just a big parrot — the type you might see on the shoulder of a pirate.

* * * *

And the thought occurred to self — the thought just hit her, in fact — that the way Dave Sedaris views brother-in-law Henry (Note: Dave equates him with a “big parrot”) is possibly the same way Dear Bros view self’s husband aka “Hubby.”

For instance, when self was in Tel Aviv (a scant week or so ago), self had this most enlightening conversation with Dear Bro in the apartment on Ruppin Street (This was when self and Dear Bro were still talking):

Dear Bro: Why does xxxx keep changing jobs? If I were his boss, I wouldn’t hire him.

Self: Well, in America there is no such thing as “job loyalty.”

(Ha ha ha ha ha ha!)

Self: Besides, I have a friend whose husband hasn’t worked in four years.

(Actually, self’s friend’s husband hasn’t worked in more like six years: the awfulness of this fact is such that self is momentarily rendered speechless, so wrapped up is she in contemplating her friend’s — probably eerie — domestic life)

Self (after short pause): And Cxxx’s husband, Bxxx (our first cousin) has sometimes been jobless for as long as two years. At least, hubby has never been out of work. He may have had short periods of joblessness, but he always manages to work.

Which fact has enabled self to write three books and edit one, thereby enabling self to contribute to the edification of the world (if not of self’s immediate family). But of course, Dear Bro has not read even one of self’s books, so what would he know of such?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Signs of Summer I: CalShakes 2008 Season

In self’s “In” box today, an announcement of the Cal Shakes 2008 season.

Self gets pretty excited whenever she sees the announcement of the new plays.  She tries to go at least once each season.  Now, she can’t envision experiencing Shakespeare any other way than out in the open, in hot summer sun (and getting sooo tanned after just a few hours exposure), after a picnic in the Berkeley hills. 

She and hubby took son when he was a sophomore at Sacred Heart.  The play they saw was “Romeo and Juliet.”  A few years later, they took son again, and this time he invited a friend, Aubert.  The play they saw was a magnificently acted conflation of “Henry IV” and “Henry V.”  Last year, son invited two more friends, and by this time it was a pretty tight fit in the back of self’s old Altima.  But everyone had a fine time.  The play was “Richard III.” (For more on this, please see post “Brain Cloud, Saturday, 23 June 07)

So, dear blog readers, here are the list of plays for the upcoming season.  Summer is just around the corner, hurrah!

PERICLES
By William Shakespeare
May 28 – June 22
Acclaimed Minneapolis-based Director Joel Sass makes his directorial debut with this wild fairy tale.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Jonathan Moscone
July 2- 27
Calshakes Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone, fresh from his acclaimed production of Man and Superman, directs Wilde’s timely comedy.

UNCLE VANYA
By Anton Chekhov
August 6 – 31
Marks both Chekhov’s long-awaited return to our stage, and the CalShakes directorial debut of San Jose Rep Artistic Director Timothy Near.

TWELFTH NIGHT
By William Shakespeare
September 10 – October 5
Director Mark Rucker (Richard III, Romeo and Juliet) returns to direct.

 

Oh, Those Terrible Amazon Rankings!

Niece G e-mails self this evening: she is taking a Creative Writing course at Stanford; would self be interested in going with her to attend a reading? She’s thinking of one this Wednesday evening. The speaker is Mohsin Hamid (Self had never heard of him) who wrote The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

And, in weird Pavlovian response, self finds her fingers moving (as if in a trance) to Amazon.com, where she types in a search for The Reluctant Fundamentalist and — oh, oh, self’s eyes go very round at the discovery that this book is ranked

# 4,130

Which is absolutely the BEST ranking self has ever seen, for any book she has ever searched for on Amazon.

(No, wait, that’s not absolutely true, for now self feels the itch to try one other search, and that is for a book that friend Sandy pressed on her last month, a book called The Secret. Tee-hee, tee-hee, that book’s ranking is an amazing # 2,091)

And, do you know what comes next, dear blog reader? Absolutely. Self then tries googling her own book, and this is the ranking of Mayor of the Roses, as of 10 PM this evening:

#878, 244

And, would you believe, self is now almost unaccountably happy! For above ranking is a big improvement over her book’s rank of a couple of months ago.

Tra-la-la-la-la . . .

(Sweltering) Sunday Afternoon: Planning Dinner & The Return of The NYTBR

Be careful what you wish for. Just a week ago, self was complaining how cold it was in the Bay Area. The weather made her groggy and tired and self wanted to sleep all the time.

In contrast, yesterday and today were hot. This afternoon, self wheedled hubby into watching “Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” showing downtown.

The streets felt empty. The two restaurants across the street from the Redwood City Main Library on Middlefield Road — A Tavola and Milagros — were shuttered and silent. Self used to love seeing the customers chatting at tables on the sidewalks, but A Tavola hasn’t been open for almost a year now — a sign says the restaurant is closed for re-modeling, but no work has been done. She hopes it hasn’t shut down.

There was a little more life in the theatre lobby. Self couldn’t help thinking: Is this what a recession feels like? Silent streets, and everyone moving sluggishly? Hubby declared the movie “sappy” (though self thought Lee Pace was dee-lightful!) He said he wished he’d spent the afternoon watching Tiger on TV.

Now, self is home. Ah, what to do, what to do? She watered, a few buckets. She continued digging a hole for the passiflora vine she’d bought from the Mountain View Farmers Market before going to Tel Aviv. The vine is so long now that its stems flop all over the place. But the ground is so hard and gravelly that self gives up after just a few minutes.

Self should probably plan dinner. In Cooking Thai Food in American Kitchens, Book 2, there’s a recipe for “Delicious Hamberger” (spelled exactly that way). Self thinks she can manage this: the photo shows a white serving plate, hamburger patties (in some kind of brown sauce) arranged around a centerpiece of pearl onions, cherry tomatoes, and chopped green beans.

Perhaps that’s too simple. Here’s another dish: on a round serving platter, an arrangement of brussels sprouts, asparagus, and broccoli. The caption identifies the dish as “Asparagus, Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts in Oyster Sauce.” Self doesn’t have the asparagus or the broccoli, but she does have brussels sprouts. And, how silly, this morning self was in Costco and she forgot to get soy sauce. Also, hubby complains about the rice she bought a few days ago from Marina Mart, which is some fancy Japanese rice that he says is too sticky. But since self bought a 25-lb. bag, it will be several weeks yet before self can think of getting a different kind. She’ll just have to put up with hubby’s grumbling.

In the meantime, self has begun reading The New York Times Book Review again. Amazing that it’s been almost a month since she read the last one. This morning, she reads the March 9 issue. And here once again, dear blog readers, is the list of books self is interested in reading after perusing it:

(1) After reading Walter Kirn’s (in self’s opinion, somewhat digressive) review of Richard Price’s new novel, Lush Life:

Richard Price’s new novel, Lush Life

(2) After reading Thomas Mallon’s review of Joshua Kendall’s The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus:

Joshua Kendall’s The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus

(3) After reading Scott McLemee’s review of Eric Alterman’s Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America:

Eric Alterman’s Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America

(4) After reading David Rieff’s review of Michael Scheuer’s new book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq:

Michael Scheuer’s earlier book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror

(5) After reading Lorraine Adams’ review of Jenny Siler’s — aka Alex Carr’s — new spy novel, The Prince of Bagram Prison:

Jenny Siler/ Alex Carr’s first Stella Rimington spy novel, 2004’s At Risk

(6) After reading David Berreby’s review of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions:

Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Today: A List of “Firsts”

Conversations: Self’s first with a San Francisco taxi driver in decades. Of course, it began with the standard, “Where are you from?” But what was interesting was, before self had a chance to answer, driver said, “Mongolia?” (!!@@##)

Eats: Self’s first “Golden Gate Roll”, at the Japanese restaurant behind Books, Inc. in Opera Plaza. Ingredients: salmon, tempura shrimp, manggo and tobiko. Self thinks hubby’s order, “Dragon Roll,” looked much much more appetizing (When self asks hubby what the ingredients were, he replies: “I don’t know.”)

Music: Don Quixote-themed night at the San Francisco Symphony. At the talk that preceded the concert, extremely entertaining gent (James Keller) imparted the following information:

Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the best-selling fictional creation of all time, having sold half a billion copies since its first publication in 15-something something (Its sales bested only by the Bible and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book)

Miguel de Cervantes had a rather shady character for a father. His father’s trade was listed as “surgeon,” which is more akin to what we think of today as a barber, though Mr. Keller explained that “a 16th century surgeon removed other things than just hair.” (What sort of things he coyly left to audience’s imagination)

Miguel de Cervantes fought at the Battle of Lepanto (1571).

He was captured by Barbary pirates and held for ransom for five years in a filthy stinking jail.

Reads: David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, the first book by Sedaris that self has ever read (And after Billy Bathgate and Welcome to Hard Times, self is extremely, extremely excited to read a book where the most horrible thing that can happen to you is getting kicked out of your house because your father has discovered you are gay)

Reads 2: Because self was able to drop by Books Inc. and pick up freebies like the San Francisco Bay Guardian, self learns about these two exceedingly interesting San Francisco events:

At Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: “Tracing Roads Through Central Asia: On Traders’ Dilemmas and Travelers’ Perspectives,” at the Terrace Galleries, Apr. 17 – June 29. The exhibition ” explores the complex relationship between the process of nation building and the political nature of historical memory in the work of artists from Central Asia’s newly developing countries.”

The 51st San Francisco International Film Festival opens April 24 and runs to May 8.

And now, self is off to bed. Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.