Greetings From the Teeny Demographic

First of all: yes, I am still alive. I resurrected myself on this long-neglected blog because I found it mentioned on several "Blogs I Follow" lists, most notably Dog Eared Copy (I am not worthy). Time to earn my place on those lists.

So I updated a few things in the profile, added a few new blog-follows (run, don't walk, to Hyperbole and a Half . . . and then run over to Hanna Olsen's blog); and I will now try to think of a clever topic with which to re-establish my presence.

I know! I'll launch a new random feature: Essential Vocabulary. Today's list, with hints:

lmgtfy -- If you don't know this word, you could maybe Google it.*

Selon Moi -- You don't know what this means? So, then, why do you subscribe to my blog, again? (Kidding.) (But not really.) Selon moi, anyone who speaks English should know at least some French, as it's responsible for a third of our English vocabulary, and that ain't just on account of the Norman Conquest. (Latin's even better, but I know that's a pipe dream, even for me.) Hey, even if you don't know French, as an English speaker you automatically know at least 15,000 French words. But sadly, that group does not include selon moi, so you might need to resort to lmgtfy.

Descartes -- As in: Descartes walks into a bar. "What'll it be?" says the bartender.

"Hmmm, a gin and tonic, I think," says Descartes.

"You want peanuts with that?" the bartender says.

"Oh, I think not," says Descartes -- and then he disappears.

Grok -- If you grok "grok," then you are probably in a very special category of 7% of Facebook and Twitter users -- in other words, you are 55 or older. Despite all the press about our demographic's being the fastest-growing segment of FB and Twitter users, I found a recent set of pie charts that indicates we are perhaps a much more, um, exclusive club.

Troglodyte -- People who don't grok this word in English might know it by its French name, troglodyte. My friend and favorite voiceover partner Mark Lewis* definitely groks it -- enough to have coined an adjective out of it -- troglodytic -- which he used to describe himself by way of explaining in a Facebook message why he's not on Twitter. I, in turn, apologized for my troglodytic delay in replying to his message, since I log on to Facebook maybe once a month. I do glance at my professional FB page more often, but my personal FB site is kind of like one of those big parties back in high school that I usually avoided, preferring to (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) read Robert Heinlein.

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*Credits: Mark Lewis gave me not just troglodytic but also the Descartes joke. (Thanks, Mark. I just hyperlinked your name to your site to show my gratitude.) And my daughter Whitney (who inherited her snarky genes from me) introduced me rather snarkily to lmgtfy.com. My writing students are indirectly responsible for the facts about English and French vocabulary, since I couldn't help them prep for the vocab part of the SAT without first teaching them Greek and Latin roots, which conferred on me, selon moi, the moral obligation to give them a nutshell history of the English language.

And with that, I am

Yours Snarkily,

Heather

Movies, Take One

So here's what I've liked recently, and why. Remember: I love to argue / learn / hear about movies, so be sure to add your two cents'!

Frozen River: Bleak, grim, chilling (literally and figuratively), unforgettable. I wasn't necessarily in the mood for such an intense film, but it drew me in. The plot is basically about the intersection of desperate lives, and it gives you a vivid insight into a gritty corner of life on and off the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk Reservation that straddles the border of upstate New York and Quebec. Melissa Leo, one of the two female leads, is awesome; she definitely deserved her Oscar nomination for this role. Grand Jury prizewinner at Sundance.

The Spitfire Grill: I guess this is an oldie now -- 1996 -- but I hadn't seen it. It's kind of a grown-up Mystic Pizza (remember that one from 1988? A young Julia Roberts showing lots of promise; a young Annabeth Gish overacting like crazy; Conchata Ferrell as the crusty heart-of-gold pizzaria mama?) This film is a little more authentic and believable. Ellen Burstyn is the exact same crusty heart-of-gold restaurant mama, but with a little more finesse in her acting; and I really liked Alison Elliott's performance, even though it was uncertain and forced at times. Marcia Gay Harden is such a good actress and so it's too bad that she so often slips over the line into stagey high-school-Our-Town acting. Still, in The Spitfire Grill she has the best Maine accent of the cast.

Waiting . . . Okay, so the mood required for this one is: "I'm ready for a raunchy Ryan Reynolds flick. A really raunchy, really Ryan Reynolds flick." He pretty much dominates any film he's in (I don't care if all his characters are snide and ego-driven, so long as he takes his shirt off at least once per movie.) If you've ever worked in a restaurant, especially a big chain restaurant, I'm guessing you'll like this movie and agree that its depiction of the sleaze behind the scenes isn't much of an exaggeration. Okay, so I never put dandruff on a customer's salad when I was a cook at Farrell's, and I never slept with the manager when I was a waitress at Denny's, but, well, I followed the five-second rule a lot, and I worked with people just like the characters in this movie.

The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio: Whitney and I loved this movie. First of all, you can't go wrong with Julianne Moore (hmm, except for Laws of Attraction). Secondly, you usually can't go wrong with Woody Harrelson, especially because he picks excellent scripts (speaking of which, I'll talk about Trannsiberian in a later post). So there's excellent acting in this film. But it's also just unique and surprising in lots of ways -- plot, script, production values, directing. The main story is interspersed with little surrealistic retro clips done like late '50s / early 60s TV ads, where Moore's character speaks directly to viewers about her "career" as a contest winner. It's based on a true story about a desperately poor Catholic mother of 10 whose husband is both a loving father and a rage-filled drunk. She manages to support her family with her prize winnings -- everything from cash to cars to appliances. It brought back vividly to me those days in the 60s when contests and promotional giveaways were everywhere: Queen for a Day, green stamps booklets, jingle contests. I even won one of those contests myself once! I submitted a name and a picture for a new Kool-Aid flavor: "Poop-Deck Punch," with a little sailor in a tipsy cap. Got a pair of walkie-talkies. Anyway, The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio is a more complex story with more nuanced characters than its retro theme might imply.

The Cider House Rules: Everyone I know has already seen this, but it was a catch-up for me, and what a wonderful surprise. Sometimes Michael Caine irritates me, but in this film he showed all his power as an actor; he clearly loved his character, inhabited it so fully that you love him, too. The film's already an American classic, so I won't bother summarizing it, but if you haven't seen it yet, put it on your list (along with anything else directed by Lasse Hallstrom that you've missed).

All for now. Next post: Angels and Demons, The Ex, In Bruge, Shrink.

Your Personal Movie Valet

But first, you have to listen while I whine. I'm two weeks out from Shoulder Surgery #2, and I continue to be amazed (actually, I use a different word) at how much I cannot do. You just need those darned arms for every darned thing, and every movement reveals a series of steps that you never noticed before because they never hurt before.

Filling a water glass, for instance, is painful four times: you you reach forward to the tap, twist or pull the tap to open it, lift the empty glass (easy) to the faucet and then lift the full glass (hard) up to your mouth. Going for a walk starts with the pulling-on of coat and hat (or if you live in Oregon and it's January, the pulling-on of coats, plural, and hat and gloves and hood and rain pants). Then there's the reaching down to get shoes and socks on, and reaching up to get the house key from the hook, then reaching forward and pressing to turn the key in the front door lock, and then reaching over to put the key in my pocket. Then there's the (ouch) swinging of arms while you walk. I've discovered that if one arm is in a sling, the other arm tends to swing even more to compensate, and so it's always a toss-up which post-op shoulder is going to hurt more. Sometimes I'll shift my sling from one arm to the other several times during a walk.

More often, these days, I just give up the walks altogether.

Are you bored with me yet? I am. However, Dear Readers, your patience will be rewarded. In the next several posts, I am going to share an annotated list of the films I've seen during my convalescence!

Aside from pointing the remote control and pushing buttons, watching DVDs is pretty easy on the arms. I can even ice my shoulder while I do it! (Pathetic, the things that excite me these days.) As a result, during the past few months I've been blowing through my Netflix queue, and I've acquired quite a viewing list. Over the course of the next several posts, I'll write a brief comment and opinion for each of the films I've seen. My goal is not a series of extensive reviews, but some quick commentaries to give you ideas when you can't think of what to rent. And if you take issue with me -- or agree -- or have recommendations of your own to add, please contribute comments!

Gotta go rest my keyboard-weary shoulders. Next post: Frozen River, Waiting, The Spitfire Grill and more!

Age

I spent five days in the hospital a few years ago when I had my surgery for . . . well, let's just say it was for feminine things, and let's just say it wasn't cosmetic.

Anyway, those five days were like a trip to my distant future, and the trip was sobering. One day (or evening, or afternoon -- you lose track of time when you're pressing that morphine button), I woke up from a nap and struggled to remember where I was. Robe . . . slippers . . . matted hair . . . . Oh, yeah: I was in the hospital, and I must have fallen asleep reading. My reading glasses were cockeyed; my magazine had fallen against my neck and was covered in drool.

I suddenly imagined how I'd be seen by people glancing into my room as they walked down the hall: Old. Nursing-home old. Worthless old. A Gome from the Home, as my husband and his fellow med students used to say. ("Gome" meaning "elderly," short for GOMER, or Get Out of My Emergency Room.)

Later that day (or the next, or that night), I was dutifully taking my I.V. pole for a walk down the hallway, shuffling, aching, cursing the nurses for making me do this; and ahead of me I saw a genuinely elderly lady pushing a walker. My first reaction, which shocked me, was envy -- man, I'd love one of those things.

I was able to stuff this chilling experience into the back of my memory drawer for a few years, stay in denial about the inevitability of my own aging.

And then my son turned 16.

There is nothing like a scathing stare from a smug teenager to make you feel like a Gome from the Home. You stare back for all you're worth, mentally straightening your dignity and buttoning up your pride. You attempt some imperious corrective lecture about his ". . . attitude, Mister." But even if he looks away first and grunts assent, the damage is done. It's all relative, man; and relatively, you're Old.

My consolation is that I am a baby boomer. Therefore, as I like to say, I am The Demographic. My age group gets the lion's share of advertiser's attention, reminding me how hip I still am (even with leakage protection!) My daughter's iTunes library includes some of MY music -- Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Cream; Pink Floyd; The Beatles. When my kids watched a TV documentary about Woodstock the other night, they were fascinated by the ethos of that time. I made the most of it, singing along with the songs, pathetically pretending that I was at the core of the movement instead what I really was at the time: a clueless 14-year-old in go-go boots.

Consolation, too, comes in reminiscence from the book I'm currently reading: Girls Like Us, by Sheila Weller, a wonderful intermingled biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. What a vivid, evocative trip back to the 60s and 70s this book is, especially for someone of my gender and age (in other words, someone who can still sing every word to every song Joni Mitchell wrote).

That's what my 50s feel like so far -- a duality, a precarious poise between flower child and Gomer. And so when I watch my son pull the car out of the driveway, I don't feel like his middle-aged mom; I feel 16 again, heady with the freedom of a new driver's license, driving downtown on a summer evening with the windows open and "You're So Vain" blasting on the radio.

FFriends

I used to be very selective about which Facebook friend requests I'd accept. This came from the mistaken idea that Facebook friends were actually friends. I mean, my Facebook friends are friends, of course, but it took me awhile to figure out that Facebook isn't a coffee date, or a party at my house, or a private gathering of BFFs.

It's like a big interactive address book. I can assemble all my acquaintances without having to write down their contact information -- without even having to contact them at all. What used to feel like a disturbingly public place is now, I realize, actually very private. It's Facelessbook.

If, for instance, I regret getting back in touch with Paula Peilmeister from 6th grade, I can filter out her Status Updates, or hit Ignore when she asks for my birthday, or delete her altogether -- and I never have to find out how she felt about it. And because Paula, like most of us, is inured to the facelessness of the Internet, she probably doesn't even care that much.

And so I've updated my definition of friendship: I now have FFriends (pronounced fffriends), Contacts, Speed-Dials, and ICEs. FFriends are everyone on my Facebook friends list. Contacts are good enough friends to be in my cell phone. Speed-Dials are the 20 people I call most, and ICEs are my In Case of Emergency designates (not to be confused with just any old relatives).

These days, if you're legit and not a Facebook Slut (someone who collects FFriends like Pokémon cards), I'll probably accept your friend request. Just don't expect me to read your Status Updates. No offense, but honestly, I'd rather fold laundry.

ADHD in the Big Apple

So imagine one of my favorite foods, eggplant, made into a kind of creamy baba ghanouj and then baked.  Oh, and throw in one of my favorite meats, lamb.  Then imagine another of my favorite foods, halvah (okay, I have a lot of favorite foods), also made creamy and baked.  Those were the entrée and dessert last night when Dan and I went out for Turkish.  Considering how rich that halvah was, it sure went down nice 'n easy.  I was still full this morning.

I have been hanging out at Steps dance studio way too much.  Hey, cut me some slack -- it's right there, across the street, the biggest dance studio in New York!  I loved my ballet class yesterday, but I love the atmosphere at Steps just as much.  You walk through a tiny doorway hidden beside the entrance of Fairway Market, go up a dingy, deserted staircase to the third floor . . . and you enter a world of noise and music and dancers and laughter.  It's in a beautiful old building with lots of wood and French doors, so you can see what's going on in every room as you look around.  There are dancers stretching in the hallway, dancers putting on pointe shoes as they sit against a wall covered with celebrities' inscribed 8 X 10s, dancers practicing alone in empty rooms, dancers in a big classroom doing beautiful jazz, dancers in the next room executing perfect arabesques in unison.  I could hardly tear myself away from watching them to go to my rinky-dink beginner's class, although I was consoled by finding myself at the barre between two gorgeous male dancers -- both clearly professionals picking up an extra workout.  (I had to duck when we started the grand battements.)

And I haven't even talked about the day before, when I went down to the Alvin Ailey studio to take class with the illustrious Finis Jhung.  He was stern and scary, and he zeroed in on me (how did he do that? it was a big class and I tried to blend in with the rookies in the back) and made me get on that standing leg and stay on that standing leg.  By golly, my pirouettes started to stabilize by the end of the class.  Sheesh.  I'm such an addict.  There's got to be a 12-Step program for Heather's passions.

After Alvin Ailey, I bought a 7-day unlimited subway card and rode around on the subway for awhile just to get the hang of it again.  I remembered that New York subways aren't as easy to navigate as the ones in London or Washington, D.C. or even Paris.  And I'm glad I practiced -- during the daytime, in a good part of town -- because I had to do conspicuous things like taking out my subway map and wandering around looking for the exit.  (I didn't want to be doing that later this week when I was in a hurry and going through some funkier stations.)

Dan enhanced the whole subway mystique when he told me last night about what homeless guys used to do.  I guess that when the subways still used tokens, homeless guys would stick pieces of cardboard in the slots so that when people dropped in their tokens, nothing would happen and they'd give up and go through another turnstile.  Then the homeless guys would put their mouths over the coin slots and suck up the tokens.  They were called "coin suckers," and they started showing up in ERs with horrible diseases -- typhoid, tetanus, T.B.   Ick ick ick. Gonna be using my elbows a lot more on doors and turnstiles from now on.

Dan regaled me with this story, by the way, just as I was tucking into my baked halvah.  And it didn't slow my spoon down a bit; the halvah was that good.

New York, Sunday morning.  Back to the clamor of NY noise and smells, the bustle of the Upper West Side, the damp grey air off the river.  I looked out my hotel window this morning and saw that right across the street is Steps on Broadway, the biggest dance studio in New York, classes all day for addicts like me.  Must . . . stay . . . away . . . .

What a different city this is when you have some money.  During my starving student days, I'd come down here from Yale every couple of weeks (research, events, dentist), and it was a splurge even to take a subway.  I couldn't afford street vendors, so I'd bring my little sack lunch with me.  One day, I set my lunch down on the floor of the train from New Haven; when I got to Grand Central, it was filled with roaches.  So I just didn't eat that day.

Fast-forward to now, where I'm in this plush hotel on the Upper West Side and it's probably roach-free.  As I plan my week, I'm deciding to walk to most places just because I want to; and I'm not stressed about going places after dark because I can just take a taxi.  Maybe I'll even buy a hot pretzel from a street cart!  

Also across the street from me (ground floor of the Steps building, in fact) is a huge gourmet grocery, Fairway, to which of course I hastened last night before I'd even unpacked. The place has a huge olive-oil department complete with tasting bar (I thought it was the wine section at first).  I also thoroughly sampled the vast array of olives and discovered that dried marinated Moroccan black olives are as addictive as crack-cocaine.

I couldn't believe that all the dairy here is still ultra-pasteurized.  When I used to live out here, I chafed at having to buy the stuff.  My healthnik research said that it's nutritionally vapid, that its fat molecules are rendered somehow more insidious and damaging.  But obviously it's the Way of the East Coast. Even Organic Valley pre-cooks its whipping cream here.  Whores.

I've morphed, Hulk-like, to my old East Coast persona – iron-shelled but amused underneath, like an actor who studies the audience from the wings.  Yesterday at the market, the young clerk grinding my coffee (grind-your-own not allowed) was sniffing inside a can of Sharffenberger cocoa powder, and I barked, "Smells good," and he hooded his eyes and said guardedly, "What's it for?" and I said flatly, "Baking.  Hot chocolate," and he looked right at me now and said, "How?" and I looked right at him now and said, "Heat a cup of milk, add two tablespoons of it and some sugar.  Delicious," and just like that, we were friends.