Brooklyn Cherry Blossom Festival

DSC_0045, originally uploaded by HAVANA19.

What Would Godard Watch (if He Lived in Park Slope)?

Just in case anyone thought for a minute that people who live in Park Slope aren't as revoltingly artsy as those who live in other sections of the world's most artistically pretentious borrough, I refer you to the "what other people in your zip code are renting" feature on Netflix. While people in other zip codes are hording their copies of Snakes on A Plane or Bad Boys II, we're all about adventures in French surrealism.

An annotated sampling from the list of what our neighbors are watching:

1. A Life Apart: Hasidim in America
If this is being rented by residents of 11215 in order to better understand the hordes of Hasidim who live in nearby zip codes, then I applaud the open-mindedness of my neighbors. Alternately, it's being rented by Hasidim themselves, which seems sort of strange, but so is wearing a black wool coat in August.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 1 star

2. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
A Werner Herzog documentary about a German teengaer in 1828. Seriously, though, if you were going to come up with a joke title for a super pretentious foreign film, wouldn't this be it?
Artsy-farsty rating: 4 stars

3. Une Femme Est Unne Femme
Godard film #1
Artsy-fartsy rating: 5 stars

4. Weekend
Goddard film #2
Artsy-fartsy rating: 5 stars

5. Downtown 81
If there is anything we like as much as Godard, it would have to be starving underappreciated Brooklyn artists who shoot heroin and die young - in other words, this film about Basquiat.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 4 stars

6. Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1
And German avant garde cinema! We love German avant garde!
Artsy-farsty rating: 6 stars - bonus star for being German not French

7. Crooklyn
Okay, this at least makes sense to me. A movie about Brooklyn is popular in Brooklyn. Fine.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 2 stars

8. Guiliani Time
I'm fine with this choice too. Understandably, people want to watch a movie about how much everyone hates Rudy.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 1 star

9. My Best Friend: Klaus Kinski
A documentary about famous documentary film makers. Well, fine, considering that you can't cross the street without running into a documentary filmmaker. One lives in our building and one rents an office down the hall from me and I barely know anyone.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 3 stars - I mean come on, it's about the relationship between two barely-famous documentary film makers

10. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
So Godard isn't artsy enough for you? Werner Herzog too pedestrian? You know what's even better than being French New Wave or a German documentarian? Genre film from the 70s involving subway graffiti artists! Why limit your expression of irony to t-shirts that say "I Heart Cocoa Puffs" or trucker hats (which are so 2003 anyway) when you can be ironic in your Netflix queue.
Artsy-fartsy rating: -2 stars


And finally: full disclosure.
Number of films mentioned above that are in my Netflix queue: 2.
Which ones? I'll never tell.

Kentucky

This weekend I went to Kentucky for the third time in my life, but the first two times don't really count. The first time I was in college and drove down with a group of people to the Kentucky Derby. It rained, I didn't see a horse the entire time, and if I never see a mint julep again it will be too soon. The second time I went to Paducah with the guy I was dating at the time, who tricked me into going by saying it would just be a short drive to his friend's lake house. Eight hours later we arrived at the house. The next morning I jumped off a 30-foot cliff into a water-filled quary, and just being able to say that I took the jump of the insane (on multiple occaisons over the course of the next ten years) made the trip worth it, even though I broke up with the guy shortly after when I realized that his idea of a vacation included going to his parents' trailer in southern Indiana.

This time I was in Bowling Green for the Southern Kentucky Book Fest, which I'd been imagining would be sort of like Word Fest in Michael Chabon's Wonderboys, and it kind of was, minus the pediophilia and the dead dog. Which is to say, there were lots of writers, and lots of complaining about publishers and the publishing world ensued. Also there were weird people and a few Famous Authors who huddled with their groupies in the far corners of rooms and some guy playing a fiddle and men in mint green sports coats.

And there were people who backed away from me when I said I was from New York (Steven said I should just have worn a sign that said "Yes, I am judging you but it's okay, I judge everyone."), there was barbecue, and there were gaggles of teenagers in bathing suits runing through the lobby on Saturday night because apparently the Holiday Inn off I65 is the place to be.

There was much oggling of Kentucky real estate prices, some guy in a penguin suit who scared Milo, aspiring writers just wishing they could be published, writers with two-book-deals who were miserable, and a nice local couple at the playground who cited their reading of the New York Times as an example of how intellectual they were. I wanted to tell them it's okay, Steven wouldn't read the New York Times if you paid him.

And then we came back home. Last night as I lay awake thinking about the trip I counted the number of states Milo has been to in his short life: 13 states so far, which is almost one state for every month he's been in existence.

When You're Strange

So you know how sometimes you catch a glimpse of yourself and your life through someone else's eyes and you realize that at that particular moment in time you look insane? Let me recap yesterday afternoon's events:

4:00 - Milo has decided to skip his nap. He is running around the house with a slightly glazed/manic look in his eye.

4:15 - I begin to cook up the herbs that my acupuncturist prescribed to help with my sleep issues. I have been resistant to the idea of cooking herbs for the past few months because what am I, a witch? So I've been taking herbs in other formats, but last week I agreed to try the fresh herbs. They must be boiled for an hour. I put the herbs in the pot and turn on the burner.

4:30 - Nanny candidate arrives for her interview.

4:32 - Milo begins to reprogram the answering machine.

4:35 - Cat decides to try to climb up nanny candidate's arm.

4:38 - After being pried off of the answering machine, Milo screams and throws himself on the ground.

4:40 - Notice smell of boiling feet coming from back of apartment. Run into kitchen and see that herbs are boiling over.

4:42 - Yell at cat to get off nanny candidate's head.

4:44 - Milo attempts to scale wall with his teeth.

4:45 - Smell from back of apartment grows into full-blown stench. Run back into kitchen and open window.

4:46 - Return to living room to find Milo and cat engaged in battle to the death.

4:48 - Nanny candidate says thank you and politely backs away toward the door.

4:50 - Look at Steven and ask why we can't find any good nannies.

Old Age Is Like A Semicolon

Forgive me while I take a small peek back at my embarassingly sci-fi-tinged teenaged angst, but I just want to say how sad I am that Kurt Vonnegut has died. I discovered him somewhere around tenth grade and spent most of the time I was supposed to be studying reading his novels. He made me want to be a writer, say important things, and be funny. My favorite Vonnegut quote in this piece: "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon."

The End of Hugs

I just finished reading an anthology about raising sons, and concluded two things:
1. I do not share the fear that many women have regarding boy things like trucks and dirt.
2. Some day Milo will grow out of his hugging phase, stop thinking that I can fix everything, start shaving and leave home and never call.

While I was a girl myself (yes, really!) I wasn't a superstar at being a girl. I had girl toys like dolls and Barbies, but I also had a brother, which meant that I could play with matchbox cars and Star Wars figurines too. And frequently, I was silently happy about having said brother because it meant I got to play with boy stuff, no questions asked. When we found out Milo would be a boy, I felt that little happy feeling again -- I would, once again, get a Play With Boy Stuff Free card. And it would be easy and familiar. Girl stuff I wasn't sure I'd done properly, but boy stuff I could do with my eyes shut.

A few months ago my mother sent Milo a little play kitchen, which came with a set of dishes and plastic silverware. As Steven and I were unpacking the little dishes and putting them in the play cabinets, I kep holding up dishes and saying "What's this one?"
"A pot," Steven would reply.
"What's this?" I asked, holding up a grey object. "A cup?"
"It's a saltshaker," said Steven. "Weren't you EVER a girl?"
"Yes, but I was bad at it," I said.

All of which is to say, I had no fear regarding the coming years of rough and tumble play involving dolls hitting each other, or whatever this particular boy would choose to do. And, until I read the aforementioned anthology, it had not crossed my mind to worry about point #2.

But now I can't get it out of my head. Sure, we'll be able to sleep in again on weekends and go out to the movies, but there will no longer be a little person around for whom I am his everything. When Milo hurts himself he'll no longer make a beeline for my arms, yelling "HUG! HUG!" We've still got many years of Mama's hugs fixing everything, I'm sure, but it's a finite amount. Every day we are one day closer to the end of hugs.

Pool Boy

DSC_0113, originally uploaded by HAVANA19.

Adult Interpretations of Popular Children's Literature

1. Curious George
A tall, malnourished guy with a penchant for dressing in yellow steals a monkey, then neglects him, resulting in the monkey being taken to prison. In a desperate attempt to return to Africa the monkey escapes from prison, only to be deposited in a zoo where there are no other monkeys. Then everyone gets balloons.

2. Green Eggs and Ham
Sam I Am tortures the narrator with tainted ham and eggs.

3. The Little Engine Who Could
A train, overburdened with toys and spinach, breaks down on the tracks. A creepy clown comandeers another engine in order to bring the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain the toys and spinach. The little engine doesn't think she can make it up the mountian, but it turns out she can. Spinach for all!

4. Paddington Bear
A stuffed bear lives in a suitcase for a month, subsisting on marmalade and, presumably, drinking his own urine. He arrives in London and is promptly taken to tea by the Brown family.

5. The Cat in the Hat
A be-hatted cat, possibly fueled by a methamphetamine-induced mania, storms into a house and tries to balance a fish and a cake on his hat. When, predictably, this does not end well, the fish complains. Then the cat cleans up and leaves.

6. Blueberries for Sal
Sal's mother does not notice when her child disappears and she is stalked by a blueberry-crazed bear. Oddly, no one calls child protective services. Instead, Sal and her mother are reunited after Sal miraculously escapes being eaten by a different bear. Then they go home and can blueberries, despite the fact that Sal is something like 3-years-old and probably shouldn't be that close to boiling water.