Oh Oscar!


Went to see The Fighter. Trying to fight my anti-stereotypical Boston film bias. It's a stereotypical Boston film (set in Lowell) AND and a stereotypical boxing film AND it looks like it was shot on a flip cam through a lens dipped in clam broth. However, Russell, as ever, has wrought great performances from his actors including Amy Adams who looks great with a tummy but gets lost in the final act, Mark Wahlberg who creates the strong backbone everyone gets to hang their ham on, Christian Bale who canned the ham and Melissa Leo who smoked the ham and nailed it to the screen. There is absolutely not one false note in her performance. It is truly remarkable. If Leo doesn't win Best Supporting Actress, the quintet who played her daughers should.


As for Best Film, I have seen seven out of ten nominated pics. I have not seen The Social Network [for reasons discussed here previously], The King's Speech [if you think I have a anti Boston film bias, you should hear what I think of small, well wrought Britishy oh Brit films], or 127 Hours [I know how it turns out]. Of course either Social Network or King's Speech will probably win, but I'm hoping that either The Black Swan or Winter's Bone wins. Winter's Bone has no chance, but wouldn't it be wonderful if, as Beth suggested the hill women from Winter's Bone slugged it out with the Ward women from The Fighter? The Black Swan is the most complete film of the lot save one, but it probably turns too many people off on its face. The one film that was better than The Black Swan and better than any of others on the list, is the most complete of all ten, the richest, and most fully realized. The film also contains the most enduring characters, some of the finest ensemble work you'll ever see in a movie and it was, by far, with only Inception [the boys' pick] coming in second, the most well crafted and visually stunning of all the Best Film nominees. This movie will NEVER win, but it should because the best film of 2010 was Toy Story 3.

Reposted by popular demand:

Ski Day with Beleaguered Dad in 82 Steps: 

1. Wake up
2. Make coffee
3. Make breakfast for boys
4. Get boys dressed, loaded with gloves etc.
5. Get self dressed, loaded
6. Load car w skis, etc.
7. Forget lift tickets
8. Drive to slope
9. Park
10. Get Max in ski boots
11. Get self in ski boots
12. Carry skis etc. to slope
13. Take Simon to ski school desk
14. Get ski school pass
15. Go to ski office to get temporary lift passes for day
16. Wait for and get temporary lift tickets for day
17. Find Max give, him pass, send him off skiing w no rendezvous plan except the one he forgot from last time
18. Take Simon to rental place
19. Get Simon boots and board
20. Take Simon to ski school at foot of bunny hill
21. Go back to ski school desk to sign Simon up for another hour b/c he just missed first 15 minutes of 60 min lesson
22. Explain to guy at ski school desk that I’m the beleaguered dad
23. Go get my own skis on
24. Try to find Max
25. Give up and go skiing
26. After two runs, run into Simon getting onto the ski lift w his instructor: asks me “Where’s Max?” [he cares about his brother!] then tells me I was getting paged
27. Run into ski school desk
28. Ask if it was they who paged me [Yes and they knew it was me, beleaguered dad, Max was looking for, so after he waited around a while until they told him to go ski and meet up w me at noon when Simon’s lesson would be over]
29. Noon: all reunited at last
30. Back to lodge to eat lunch
31. Get table
32. Get food [one cheeseburger, two orders of French fries, a cup of cookies, two hot chocolates and a Diet Pepsi = $32]
33. Eat lunch
34. Take Simon back to bunny hill and leave him there, so I could ski w Max whom it turned out I had left alone for two hours
35. Do two runs w Max, drop a pole off ski-lift on first one
36. Pick up Simon
37. All take lift
38. Simon and I get off lift half way up hill, Max continues to the top
39. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall, board…until he gets tired of my watching him board, fall, board, fall, board, fall and sends me to the bottom to wait
40. Do it again
41. Meet up with Max and we all go to top of mountain
42. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall…
43. Using video cam on cell phone, I video Simon boarding while I ski with one pole. [Back in NYC, Beth disappointed I only videoed Simon]
44. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall…until he gets tired of my watching him board, fall, board, fall, board, fall and sends me to the bottom to wait
45. Do it again
46. Send Max to lodge to get himself hot chocolate
47. Simon and I return to rental place to return his board and boots
48. Go to ski repair shop to look for guy who sold us skis in November on the super cheap
49. Find guy
50. Ask for new pole and snowboard and boots for Simon [I realize now that Simon’s boarded twice, the skis I bought him will be useless]
51. Go outside to check my pole size [no jokes here please], second pole gone
52. Lewis [the ski repair guy] sells me used board and boots and set of poles
53. Cost of boots and board: $50  -- Not having to wait for Simon to get rental equipment next time and thereafter: Priceless
54. Get Max from lodge
55. Buy water for Simon and myself [flop sweating is really dehydrating]
56. Bring Max to ski repair shop while Simon is getting fitted
57. Listen to black guy make anti-semitic crack to Lewis
58. Pay Lewis
59. Bring gloves, hats, scarves, new poles, board, boots and boys out to pick up area in parking lot
60. On way out of rental place pass two guys dressed like they’re trolling for paparazzi at Sundance instead of for night skiing at Catamount
61. Almost get in fight with two guys, who are dressed for night skiing at Catamount like they’re trolling Sundance for paparazzi, because as I passed them I couldn’t help saying, “Really?"
62. Leave boys to get car
63. Take off ski boots
64. Bring car around
65. Load car with boots and boards and gloves and hats and scarves and boys
66. Leave mountain
67. Go to supermarket, leave boys in car listening to music
68. Buy food for dinner
69. Get home, unload car
70. Crack a beer and some pain meds
71. Make dinner
72. Eat dinner
73. Make the boys clean the damn kitchen
74. Nod off watching Monty Python w the boys
75. Wake up to put them to sleep
76. Put them to sleep
77. Tell them I love them to which Simon responds, “You don’t have to rub it in.”
78. Shower off flop sweat
79. Watch golf on Slingbox
80. Draw
81. Read Time and Again
82. Sleep

Hey Charlie. I'll do it! I'll do it!

"Hur, hur, hur!"

from New York Magazine, Feb 13 article
Fight Like a Pretty Boy --
Where male models go to prove they’re not Ken dolls.

http://nymag.com/fashion/11/spring/71649/

“Rockstar” Charlie explains, “I’ve been fucking decked at these things, but I’m not worried about it,” he says when I ask why he’d risk those cheekbones now that his career is picking up speed. “I wouldn’t mind if my face looked more like a boxer’s. It would give me some more character. I’m just like, ‘Come on, break my nose!’”

If This Is What You Get When You Put Up a Bird Feeder....

Good thing we didn't put up a cat feeder!

The 23rd St. Doughnut Plant Has Opened!


The best thing to happen to the Chelsea Hotel since Sid & Nancy.

Must?


Jerry Saltz recommended Christian Marclay's video in the listing section of New York Magazine this week. In about 50 words he described the piece [I can do it in 33:  Marclay did a tour de force clip job and pieced together movie fragments that tick off every minute of the day in a video that is shown in synch with the actual time]. Saltz ended his description by calling it a "must see" piece. My issue with this piece and most concept pieces is: if they can be described thoroughly enough so that you get the whole schtick in 50 words or fewer, what in all that makes the piece a "must see" or even a "see"?

It would, however, be cool to play it instead of having a clock in your home

To be fair, I feel this way about many books [novels, non-fiction and academic tomes alike] and most films which are often sold on one line concepts. Once you know the premises of these works [people in Brooklyn have feelings,  poverty is bad, Jennifer Aniston needs another paycheck], you can pretty much posit their entire  scope and obviate the need to experience them.

Bullet Point Wednesday

• Twitbook

As if to prove my point about having the whole social network thing shoved in my face like snow by a bully, when I woke up this morning and flicked on the clock radio in the kitchen the first three words I heard, swear to god, were "Facebook and Twitter." 

I listen to a lot of radio; radio loves to talk about all the new media and the death of the old media. So much so that the words "Facebook and Twitter" have become linked like "salt and pepper" as the special flavor combo of newness and young-nocity. I wonder if the other old dying media talked so much about the new ones back in the day. Are there thousands of stone carvings fretting about papyrus? Were the telelgraph lines abuzz with talk of the telephone? Did lps devote cuts to discussions of cds? Did cd's have special bonus tracks that dithered about mp3s? Did horses chatter ceaselessly about cars?

• Another Small Business Closes

     It is sad, but if ever a business was asking for it, it was this one:

Curl Up & Dye has curled up and dyed

• Buffalo New York

If New York City is going to turn into Buffalo, they could at least lower our rents and make us better bowlers.

Each morning I arrive at my office exhausted from getting the kids to school and then getting myself downtown. Today my sons argued over who held provenance over a chunk of ice. Today. The entire upper west side was a chunk of ice. Beth insists they're geniuses.

• Anything But the Rand Paul Ads

Keep clicking. After four years of intermittent and now mittent blogging, my adsense dollars are up to $5.17. Google sends you a check after you've cleared $100, so at this rate I'll be receiving my first check in 2091. I promise, at that time, to give all the money to the committee to Landmark the Freedom Tower. 

• Catch

Now that golf Dave has one kid, he asked me what it was like to have two. I told him to imagine that having a wife and one child was like juggling a chain saw and a bowling ball, and then someone tosses you a cat....