Happy anniversary to us! Two years ago today, we stood in my mom’s backyard under a little tent and said our vows, then ate cheesecake with everyone and took off for Cape Cod. And it’s been pretty happily ever after since then.
Gideon Strauss, who is, well, my boss at Comment, has a review of Andy Crouch’s excellent Culture Making in the latest Books & Culture.
And correspondingly, Andy kindly posted about The Curator on his site when it launched on Friday. I’m not just saying this, though: please read his book.
We had an excellent weekend with my grandparents on the Jersey shore. My mom drove in for a day, too. We ate great seafood, toasted in the sun, frolicked in the ocean, and played mini-golf. We went to a waterpark and enjoyed having cable television for a couple days. And we were sad to come home.
Not too sad, because yesterday was my first day in the IAM office, and if I might say, a vastly superior working experience to any office I’ve ever worked in, and a significant improvement on the two offices I’ve worked in since moving to New York. It’s refreshing to actually be trusted to be competent in doing the job you were hired to do. Ahem.
In other exciting news, The Curator generated some good buzz on the internet and we had well over 3,000 hits over the weekend - impressive, since we’re relying entirely on word-of-mouth advertising for now. Some interesting opportunities floated our way as well. And now that the first edition is out, I’m brainstorming where we’ll go from here.
Tonight I have my first “A History of Media Theory” class, with a professor who is immensely popular in my department and is rumored to be tough, but fascinating. The books range from McLuhan to Turkle and I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy it and be challenged. My other class is on Mondays, so it doesn’t begin until next week.
Also, our second anniversary is this Friday. Tom has some supersecret plans and has only asked me to leave work at noon (which, happily, I can do). Oooh, intrigue.
I nearly finished a few books this month, but I just haven’t been pushing myself. After classes ended (I got As in both classes, by the way!), I needed to relax a little. Nevertheless, I did finish one very long book in its entirety.
The Twenty-Seventh City - Jonathan Franzen
Franzen wrote The Corrections, one of my favorite novels, and this was his first novel. It’s sprawling and messy and reminded me of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth for its emphasis on racial and political issues through characters. It wasn’t as awesome as The Corrections, but you can definitely see his style evolving. And it’s good in its own right. [3/5]
I am on the verge of finishing a couple books, but classes start tonight so I promise nothing!
In all the excitement, I’d forgotten that I have an article in Comment today about Tara Donovan’s work.
And our good friend Albert is Comment’s featured artist this week.
Well, bloglets, I have successfully launched The Curator and am officially testing the waters of grassroots, no-budget, almost-entirely-digital marketing. I’m intrigued to see how far the interwebs can go in generating traffic for a web publication with no official marketing. Stay tuned.
This is my last full-time day, and a short one at that; we close a little early for the holiday. So I’ll shortly be heading out to spend the evening on a bus, fighting our way through the traffic (oh dear) to south Jersey, where I’ll be chilling on the beach (or in the cottage, since it looks like rain tomorrow) with Tom and my grandparents and possibly my Mom and trying not to do anything too productive. Last year we young’uns (that would be Tom and I) hit the boardwalk for mini-golf, arcade games, and cotton candy, and I’m expecting similar pursuits. And salt-water taffy.
We’ll be back in town Monday night to start the autumn with a vengeance - screenings, class, new jobs, all that good stuff. My favorite part of the year.
Check it out, and leave comments here if you have anything to say!
Donald Miller posts his correspondence with the Obamas - on his blog!
The comments are possibly the funniest part, especially the people who - um - don’t get it.
[HT: Jeffrey Overstreet]
I was about to head out the door this morning when I realized that though tomorrow is my last full-time day here (which, I think, means I’ll soon be losing my desk), I will be leaving tomorrow afternoon and heading straight for Port Authority, to catch a bus down to visit my grandparents. Which means I need to bring home my personal items today. So I grabbed a sturdy bag and will instead be schlepping them to the screening of Tokyo! (emphasis theirs) tonight.
The beach this weekend! The real beach, with waves and a boardwalk and seashells. For three whole days. I am a little ecstatic.
Aaron Sorkin is writing a Facebook movie, and he wants your help.
Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Lars and the Real Girl are up for the 2008 Humanitas Prize. I am mostly intrigued by the fact that there is something called the Humanitas prize. Here’s the website. This is its mission:
We honor excellence in film & television writing. Stories that affirm the human person, probe the meaning of life, and enlighten the use of human freedom. The stories reveal common humanity, so that love may come to permeate the human family and help liberate, enrich and unify society.
The Curator launches tomorrow. Stay tuned for the announcement!
We spent the weekend in Albany with my Mom and brother. Tom hasn’t been there much since Christmas, because of his working schedule, so it was delightful to hang out with them. Tom cooked mussels in white wine sauce for dinner; we lazed around by the pool; we watched Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole; and in general, we did very little and enjoyed it (especially the weather).
Unfortunately for me, I contracted a nasty cold late last week and by Saturday I was quite sick. I was a bit better when we got home on Sunday, but yesterday I woke up and the right side of my head was swollen, mostly from sinuses, so I stayed home.
Which is, of course, bizarre, because this is my last week as a full-time employee of anyone, at least for a long time! We’ll spend this (long) weekend with my grandparents on the Jersey Shore, and then on Tuesday I’ll be starting at IAM. I’ll be doing about two days a week at NYU and three at IAM until the end of October (plus my duties at Comment, plus two classes, plus editing The Curator, plus a couple movie reviews for Christianity Today), when the NYU job will end and I will hopefully be able to breathe again. I am looking forward to it, but with a small bit of apprehension. Really, though, how can I complain? I’ll be spending most of my time on things I love, at long last. And hopefully soon Tom will have work again, so I’ll probably have a bit more time to myself anyhow. It’s much easier for either of us to be working a lot if we both are.
In other news, it’s beautiful in New York today - warmish but not hot, and sunny - and I am so excited for beautiful fall to arrive. Not just for the weather, either - for the movies! Most of the year’s best movies come out in the fall (for Oscar consideration) and there’s a number of great ones this fall. We just got invited to an advance screening of Burn Before Reading (the Coen brothers’ comedy), and there’s many more in the works. Cue popcorn season!
There’s an MP3 on the Museum of the Moving Image’s website of the panel discussion on the making of The Wire, an event which happened last month (and which Tom attended).
I enjoyed the answer to this question in the PaperCuts blog’s tiny interview with D.T. Max:
How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?
The Web began as the cyberrevolution’s gift to the writer but then … well, then we became the cyberrevolution’s gift to the Web, our content engorging the Movement. I treat the Web with respect. I cage it in one room in the house, like a dangerous dog, visit it daily and feel lucky to get away.
We all gripe about not having enough time in our day, but I think the real truth is that most of us don’t have enough discipline. That said, I thought this article, somewhat clumsily titled 25 Painless Ways to Free Up an Hour A Day for Your Goals, was very useful.
I have not hidden my love for Andy Crouch’s new book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, but I think his article from last week’s Comment is an important and incisive companion to the book, even if you haven’t read the book.
If you are afraid of failure you will ultimately create safer, smaller things than God made you to make. You will seek to save your life, but you may well lose it. Indeed, the secret of practices, patience, purposefulness, and real partnerships is that they all require us to embrace risk, and therefore lead us to the question of whom we ultimately trust. Do all these ‘p’s pay off in the end? Followers of Jesus know the answer.
Let me highly recommend this essay, which is a review of Mary Swan’s book The Boys in the Trees but contains an interesting analysis of “cosmic realism”, a new strain of literary-ness perpetuated by the likes of Marilynne Robinson and Annie Dillard.
On the basis of these rhythms, the cosmic realist novel develops a distinct syntax of its own. Typically, the prose is lyrical and crisp–rich without being lavish, sumptuous but not florid. These books find the fewest strokes with which to paint the freshest image. “She watched blue shadows on his white shirt stretch and shrink as he moved,” Dillard writes. But the economy of language is not merely pretty. It calls to mind the classical Chinese poets– like them, commanding attention by demanding it. This prose promises to be experienced as poetry. It engrosses when it engages.
Paste sent an email to “us contributors” today, looking for our top ten albums of the year, for the January 2009 issue (which they’re already working on).
I don’t write about music for Paste or anyone else, and in fact, I don’t even think I know ten albums that were released this year, so obviously I am keeping mum on this one. But it got me wondering: what are your top ten albums of the year? Or just top three? Maybe I’ll find something new.
Can I just point out that this is one of the many reasons why we love New York and hope to never have to move to LA?
“All of us in New York, Hollywood and across the country should be concerned about how this failure to reach an agreement is impacting our members,” said N.Y. SAG president Sam Freed. “They have already suffered significantly as a result of the WGA strike, and now they are experiencing an additional loss of work, made worse when they can find a job, by having to work without a contract under old terms and conditions. There are some who feel we have all the time in the world to make this deal. We on the N.Y. board do not.”
The New York statement also accused SAG’s leaders of playing politics by not moving forward on the contract until after the guild’s election concludes Sept. 18. Rosenberg issued a blistering response that made the same accusation.
We saw Ne le dis a personne (Tell No One) on Friday night after work. It was pretty tight, a French crime/psychological thriller with some real moments of humor, and it held it together until the very end, and even when it stumbled it wasn’t story-killing. Thoroughly satisfactory for a Friday night movie.
We also rented the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. It had two effects on me: I laughed riotously when I recognized the actor playing the Texas ranger, because he also played Briscoe Darling on the Andy Griffith show to great comic effect and he had the same exact moustache in this film; and I appreciated Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us a lot more.
We have nary an evening free this week, and we’re heading to Albany on Friday night. Only two weeks left in this job!
Tom made me a manga avatar. Of me. This is her:
You can get one too. (Don’t ask about the F on the scarf; I don’t know.)
Have a great weekend!
It was freakishly strange to go home with nothing urgent to do last night and nobody else there. I went grocery shopping on the way home at Whole Foods.
Odd note: We went to Pathmark last week, figuring that we’d save money because, you know, Whole Foods is supposedly so expensive. Not so (and I suspected as much after our food bill jumped only a little when we left the co-op). We spent about double at Pathmark and had to go to the “health food” quarter-of-an-aisle for lentils. Back to Whole Foods, where I don’t want to scream by the time I leave and where they don’t have giant unwieldy shopping carts that people angle specifically to fill the entire aisle while they’re pondering brands of peanut butter.
I came home and actually cooked dinner for my solitary self; skewered some pieces of chicken, brushed them with peanut sauce, put them under the broiler, and voila, chicken satay. Yum. And I broke down and bought a Ms. Bento this week (this one, not this one, because three tiny containers is better than two big ones) because I was dismayed at my work lunch-eating habits, and it works like a dream. I heated half a can of chicken chili and some broccoli and put them in this morning, along with some pita chips, and the warm foods were still properly warm when I got to work - though they’re microwavable if they cool too much. And mmm, pita chips with chili brighten the day considerably.
After a quick brunch at Smoke Joint, I spent all day Saturday until about nine o’clock writing my paper. The thesis clicked into place about halfway through the afternoon and went relatively smoothly from there. So now I am free! For three weeks.
We also watched The Bank Job (could have used three more rounds of revisions, I think) and Giant (very long, a little messy, but enjoyable), and ate at 67 Burger. I made grocery lists for the week. We did not watch the Olympics at all, because we can’t, really, except by streaming the video, and I am not that motivated.
Tom is working for a few days this week on the Jonas brothers’ 3-D movie (first job in six weeks), or something like that, and I have my evenings free except a screening on Wednesday night of What Just Happened. I am looking forward to finishing my book (The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen) and starting another (probably The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross), maybe watching a movie (we have Bottle Rocket and A Mighty Wind from Netflix for my own especial viewing pleasure), and probably working on getting The Curator ready to launch by the end of the month. After today, there’s only two more Mondays at this job!
Last night we finally saw The Dark Knight, and I can’t say anything about it that hasn’t already been said but yes, it is brilliant and nervewracking in the very best way.
I had my last class of the term on Wednesday night. I spent a little time on my walk to the subway reflecting over the summer’s classes and realized that though they’ve been intense, they’ve really propelled my critical thinking about literature forward. I don’t think I’ll ever pursue a degree in literature, but I have definitely learned a lot. I’ll have to finish my paper tomorrow (wish me luck) and then I’ll have a few weeks off before the fall semester begins. I’m hoping to be taking two classes: History of Media Theory (in my department), and The U.S. and the Long 20th Century (in the American Studies department).
We saw a lot of trailers last night, many of which were awesome - Quantum of Solace and Watchmen in particular. The former is one of the better trailers I’ve ever seen (along with all the many WALL-E trailers). We sat contemplating why so many trailers are so bad, even for great movies. What is up with that?
I purged my makeup collection of everything old, yucky, or ridiculous yesterday, in my pre-fall-pre-new-jobs-pre-new-semester effort to streamline life. So now I have a wastebasket full of cheap old eyeshadows I never wore, or three-year-old eyeliner, or wrong shades of concealer.
And to my joy, Stila - which I love, but seldom purchase - is having a very good sale on some of their oldies but goodies, and some collections, too. Plus, free shipping! Go fast!
Watch me go all domestic on you.
Since I’ll be working something like three part-time jobs, editing a magazine, writing a bunch of film reviews, and taking eight credits this fall (which starts in, oh, less than a month), I figure I should start thinking now about how I will keep our household from falling apart. (Again, let me reiterate my praise of tiny living!)
So I’ve been thinking about crock pots again. I have a wee one (2 quarts, maybe?) that is adorable for two chicken breasts or a little soup, but not for a big hunk o’ meat or a whole chicken, and I am all about the leftovers. I’d like to have it be big enough that we could throw chili in and have people over after church, but I don’t want it to be the GIANT FAMILY SIZED one. What size do you all recommend?
And, are there any favorite crock pot recipes you have? (One of our favorites that I think will work in the pot is Rachael’s family’s chicken and dumplings recipe.) I’m particularly interested in anything with lots of vegetables, or beans. I’m also trying to find a time-tested overnight whole-grain breakfast thing, either with steel-cut oats or with other grains. I grew up on millet, quinoa, spelt, and lots of other things that people can’t pronounce, so I am open to anything you can buy at Whole Foods.
I’m also planning to invest in a Mr. Bento, which I’ve been eyeing for months, which can pretty much carry anything around and will hopefully make it easier for me to bring my lunch to work (and dinner, in some cases). Plus, it’s so CUTE!
We got our assignments a while ago, but I forgot to mention the results. These are the films I’ll be reviewing for Christianity Today between now and December:
• The Women
• What Just Happened?
• Synecdoche, New York
• Changeling
• Youth in Revolt
• Doubt
This is a great list, but even if it weren’t, any lineup that includes two films starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and a movie directed by Clint Eastwood is fine by me!
What did we do this weekend? Saturday was mostly laundry and a lot of angst from my corner at the direction (or, shall we say, non-direction) of my term paper. By the time we went to dinner around 9pm, after wading through a two-foot-high stack of Very Old And Smelly Books from the eminent NYU library, I finally had a grip on my topic. In between my two articles to write this week, I’ll get the paper written, by hook or by crook.
Yesterday we had the delight of the Shake Shack with Angela, who was in town, and various others. We stood in line for an hour and it was worth it. Everyone had regular burgers, but I had the ’shroom burger, which was divine; a portobello mushroom, stuffed with mozzarella and other cheeses, breaded, fried, and on a bun with shack sauce. Everyone duly oohed and ahhed, and Angela tried to take a bite and was inundated with cheese.
Tom and I came home and watched Kubrick’s version of Lolita, which is pretty tame (considering the source material, and no, I haven’t seen the 1997 Jeremy Irons version yet) and includes a hysterically twitchy Peter Sellars as Quilty. Also, Tom read the IMDB trivia, which noted that you can clearly see a famous building in Albany off in the distance near the end, when Humbert is visiting a slightly more grown-up Lolita, which means she was living in relative squalor in . . . Rensselaer. Teehee!
I have officially finished my stack o’ novels for class, and it was with much joy and deliberation that I picked up a book off the shelf since February that wasn’t assigned either by a professor or an editor. Happiness! I went with The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen’s first novel, and I have about four weeks until school starts again so I’m hoping to polish off The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross, and then maybe something by Joan Didion or Kathleen Norris. I am practically salivating at the thought. I discovered this morning that the gym is the ideal context for reading the New Yorker (I can finish a lengthy profile and a shorter article in the half hour or so that I’m on the treadmill), so I can finally get back into reading.
We saw two excellent movies last week, one of which you might be able to see soon if you have an art theater nearby - Frozen River, directed by Courtney Hunt (a hometown girl!), a deeply moving, low-budget drama about smuggling, single mothers, and the working poor in the extreme northern US. The other film was the ensemble dramedy A Christmas Tale, which I’m reviewing for Paste and can’t rhapsodize about too much except to say it was funny, heartwarming, and French, with a cast to die for (including Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and legend Catherine Deneuve). It will be out in November.
Hurrah; because we are under 35, we can get very steeply discounted tickets to events at the 92nd Street Y, which is one of the best cultural centers in the city. So, we’re going to A Celebration of Maurice Sendak (with such luminaries as Tony Kushner, Meryl Streep, James Gandolfini, Dave Eggers, Spike Jonze, Linda Emond, Catherine Keener, Anika Noni Rose, Stephen Greenblatt and others), and Marilynne Robinson!
While working on my term paper, and reading T.S. Eliot’s Collected Essays, I ran across this quote in his essay “Religion and Literature”:
It is our business, as readers of literature, to know what we like. It is our business, as Christians, as well as readers of literature, to know what we ought to like. It is our business as honest men not to assume that whatever we like is what we ought to like; and it is our business as honest Christians not to assume that we do like what we ought to like. And the last thing I would wish for would be the existence of two literatures, one for Christian consumption and the other for the pagan world.
The times, they are a-changin’.
As mentioned in the sidebar which accompanies Comment’s articles today, I’ve joined the editorial team at Comment as Associate Editor. What exactly that means, we’re still working out, but it’s a part-time position with many and varied interesting responsibilities. I’m thrilled with the position and delighted to be working with such a great magazine and organization.
I also have accepted a part-time position beginning in September at IAM, which if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know is close to my heart. I’ll be doing a lot of things, including working with artists to get their events off the ground, other event planning, coordinating the office, doing some design work, and probably lots of other things that crop up in the course of the year. Being relatively familiar with the inner workings of IAM, and knowing my future co-workers quite well, I’m very excited about the position.
What does this mean for NYU? Well, firstly, I’m biting the bullet and sticking with grad school, because I love it. I’m twenty credits and a thesis from having the degree and it’s completely worth the time and cost. Employment-wise, I’ll hopefully be doing a few hours of contracting work for my current office for a few more months, beginning just after Labor Day, helping them to make a transition and closing out the projects, though I won’t be an official full- or part-time employee.
And of course, I’ll still be writing articles, mostly film reviews for Paste and Christianity Today, and I’ll be the editor-in-chief of The Curator, which will be launching by the end of this month.
Yes, I’m excited!