Movie: Transamerica

Brilliant movie. I had such low expectations going into it. I don't why. Maybe I thought it was going to be another one of those long-winded movies that took itself too seriously.

This was not that. This was brilliant. This was about the power of transformation, on all levels, within all people. Felicity Huffman is going to be the new Meryl Streep if she continues taking roles like this. The only reason I can back up her decision to join the Desperate Housewives' cast is because it gives her more visibility, so people who normally would never see Transamerica might be more than curious to give it a shot.

This movie, wow, I have to tell you, is unforgettable. Even Dolly Parton adds her touch with an original song, and it's really fun, especially to hear her talk about it in the DVD extras.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I am highly recommending this.

Movie: The Last Kiss

It was a sunny day today, the first we've had in a while. Everyone was walking around the park and enjoying the sidewalk-sale shopping experience my town was hosting.

I pushed through the crowds and headed straight to the movie theater at the end of the block to see the first screening of Zach Braff's new movie: The Last Kiss. Apparently, I was the only soul willing to give up the sun. Ahh, what a girl will do for art.

I.LOVED.THIS.MOVIE.

I was sucked in immediately. I over-identified with each character in some way. Either I was looking at me, or someone I knew, or someone I was afraid of becoming, or someone I wanted to meet, or someone I was, or someone who someone I knew used to be.

With this movie, I didn't really care "what it was about." I didn't worry too much about how it would end, or what would happen next. There were too many subtleties, too many all-knowing looks the character shared with one another. Too many "in the moment" moments happening to the characters. This was not an "end result" type of movie, if you know what I mean. I felt utterly absorbed in their experience. A movie that allows you to do that, in my opinion, is what makes a movie GOOD.

The music was beautiful. I only wish it had carried itself through the story more. At times I felt it was a little too obvious a statement of, "Listen to this cool song" and stayed separate from the story line. For some reason, Garden State had the opposite affect. But regardless, I loved the songs. I already owned most of them anyway because of blog recommendations.

My god. I walked out of the theater with a dazed look on my face. I called up my friend, and said, "You need to go see this movie. HOLY S---."

I will see it again. This time in the experience of a packed theater.

I have to tell you, I loved it.
Loved it.

People: Garrison Keillor

I have to tell you...

A Plan to Save the Country
by Garrison Keillor

It's the best part of summer, the long, lovely passage into fall. A procession of lazy, golden days that my sandy-haired, gap-toothed little girl has been painting, small abstract masterpieces in tempera and crayon and glitter, reminiscent of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning (his early glitter period). She put a sign out front, "Art for Sale," and charged 25 cents per painting. Cheap at the price.

A teacher gave her this freedom to sit un-self-consciously and put paint on paper. A gentle, 6-foot-8 guy named Matt who taught art at her preschool. Her swimming teachers gave her freedom from fear of water. So much that has made this summer a pleasure for her I trace to specific teachers, and so it's painful to hear about public education sinking all around us.

A high school math class of 42! Everybody knows you can't teach math to 42 kids at once. The classroom smells bad because the custodial staff has been cut back. The teacher must whip his pupils into shape to pass the federal No Child Left Untested program. This is insanity, the legacy of Republicans and their tax-cutting and their hostility to secular institutions.

Last spring, I taught a college writing course and had the privilege of hanging out with people in their early 20s, an inspirational experience in return for which I tried to harass them about spelling and grammar and structure. My interest in being 21 again is less than my interest in having a frontal lobotomy, but the wit and passion and good-heartedness of these kids, which they try to conceal under their exquisite cool, are the hope of this country. You have to advocate for young people, or else what are we here for?

I keep running into retirees in their mid-50s, free to collect seashells and write bad poetry and shoot video of the Grand Canyon, and goody for them, but they're not the future. My college kids are graduating with a 20-pound ball of debt chained to their ankles. That's not right, and you know it.

This country is squashing its young. We're sending them to die in a war we don't believe in anymore. We're cheating them so we can offer tax relief to the rich. And we're stealing from them so that old gaffers like me, who want to live forever, can go in for an MRI if we have a headache.

A society that pays for MRIs for headaches and can't pay teachers a decent wage has made a dreadful choice. But health care costs are ballooning, eating away at the economy. The boomers are getting to an age where their knees need replacing and their hearts need a quadruple bypass - which they feel entitled to - but our children aren't entitled to a damn thing.

Any goombah with a Ph.D. in education can strip away French and German, music and art, dumb down the social sciences, offer Britney Spears instead of Shakespeare, and there is nothing the kid can do except hang out in the library, which is being cut back too.

This week, we mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Current Occupant's line, "You're doing a heckuva job," which already is in common usage, a joke, a euphemism for utter ineptitude. It's sure to wind up in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, a summation of his occupancy.

Annual interest on the national debt now exceeds all government welfare programs combined. We'll be in Iraq for years to come. Hard choices need to be made, and given the situation we're in, I think we must bite the bullet and say no more health care for card-carrying Republicans. It just doesn't make sense to invest in longevity for people who don't believe in the future. Let them try faith-based medicine, let them pray for their arteries to be reamed and their hips to be restored, and leave science to the rest of us.

Cutting out health care to one-third of the population - the folks with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, who still believe the man is doing a heckuva job - will save enough money to pay off the national debt, not a bad legacy for Republicans. As Scrooge said, let them die and reduce the surplus population. In return, we can offer them a reduction in the estate tax. All in favor, blow your nose.

-----------------------------------------

Published on Thursday, August 31, 2006
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

People: Dane Cook

Dane Cook makes me laugh so hard that I fall out of my chair with tears in my eyes.

I discovered him accidentally, and got hooked immediately. I watched his HBO documentary-style TV show this summer. I've listened to mp3's from his two albums, and burned copies of them to CD for my friends. "I have to tell you," I told them, "This is the funniest comedian I have ever heard."

Last night I saw his new HBO special. An hour-and-a-half of all new material; a brilliant A-Z of love and life. It was a first for this style of comedy: The theater was "in the round" which required him to walk in a circle the whole time, addressing each side, running through the crowds, cameras chasing him at all angles.

It was an interesting concept. But the truth is, he doesn't need all the flash. He could stand in a garbage can with a hairbrush as his mircrophone, and a crowd of thousands would have to stop and listen.

Do what you got to do to get to hear him.

Book: Educating Esme

I came across this book while in the library, and I used my shiny new library card to "rent it" for a month.

It's by Esme Raji Codell, and it's a diary of a teacher's first year. If you haven't connected the dots yet, yes, it's autobiographical. Actually, considering the reputation of that genre lately (thanks, Frey), let's just assume it's autobiographical.

For the first half of the book I was a bit irritated. Mostly I was reading it to learn "how to write a first-person account of a daily activity", and secondly, because the subject matter appealed to me. But I was irritated because I couldn't imagine a first-year teacher behaving so flippant and patronizing to authority. How did she always have such a perfect, sarcastic retort to everything? And why did she want to? It's quite different from what you'd imagine a first-year-teacher memoir to be: First, she succeeds quite often. Second, she's not intimidated by anything. Or at least that's the tone she establishes right from the start.

But during the second half of the book, I started to really enjoy it. I accepted her dry wit as literary liberty, and felt inspired as she delved more into her newly realized philosophies of teaching. She began illustrating more meaningful interactions with her students, and wrote a bit more universally regarding the plight of the teacher.

However, at no time did I feel like she was a babe-in-the-woods in this new career. And it seems, through her telling, that the administration was frustrated by that as well.

So, I do think this was a good book. I am glad I read it. But I did have some reservations about the "literary personality" she built for herself. I would like to have seen her soften up a bit, sooner rather than later. But then again, maybe there are too many floundering first-year teachers writing memoirs. Maybe it's time we got a tougher one on the shelves. Enter Esme.

And finally, here is a quote from the book, which is actually something a more seasoned teacher said to her, not something she said herself. And, I have to tell you, it really moved me:

The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginning teacher asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced teacher asks, "How are the children doing?"

Restaurant: The Turkish Kitchen

I've never really written an official restaurant review before, and to be honest, I find them quite boring and more like adjective competitions. But I'll give it a go here, in my own style. If I were a restaurant review, what would I look like?

Last night we took my mom out for her birthday at a Turkish restaurant that she loves and frequents, and more importantly, had a coupon for. The walls there are all red, and the tables are always full. There is a perfectly-toned buzz of conversation floating above your head that makes you feel like you're at the best party in town.

We were our own little party. And voraciously hungry. We devoured our appetizers rather quickly. Zucchini patties, fried golden, and dipped in yogurt-cucumber sauce. Filo dough rolls, crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle. A fabulous lentil soup that was so very un-lentil like. We plunged our dinner rolls into the last droplets left behind. That's the sign of a good meal: When you find yourself searching for creative ways to savor what remains.

Our entrees arrived and the wine was poured for those of us declaring we were not going to be designated drivers that evening. One plate was a melting pot of yogurt sauce and beef chunks, which looked more like gnocchi in white sauce. And tasted a bit more like it. Like a ravioli, the waiter told us, which wasn't quite true. Bread had to be ordered to finish it off, because it felt like more of a soup, in an unsuccessful sort of way. But Mom declared that's the first dish that she hadn't given an A+ too there.

I had a plate full of filet mignon chunks, appropriately colored this time. They sat along-side little triangular baked potatoes and surrounded by rice. I have to tell you, it was delicious. Mom and Dad explored the vegetarian options, and got along with their dinners quite nicely too.

Dessert was presented to us on a circle of white plates and we chose what we wanted. We nibbled at our flan-like custard rolls and our almond pudding while sipping hot apple tea.

After the opening of birthday gifts, the evening ended as it usually does. Mom and Sis stretching their stomach and declaring, "I'm so full!" and Dad and I picking up the odds and ends remaining on the table, wondering what we could take home for later.

Life: Change

I have to tell you...

The other night I was in the supermarket, ShopRite or something like that. It was past midnight. Or no, maybe it was just after 11 pm, because Starbucks had just closed. The aisles were deserted, and the air conditioning was full blast. I picked out a few things for tomorrow's breakfast because I was resigned to eat at least one of my meals at home instead of out.

I took my collection to the cashier; a 40-something woman with reddish hair that looked more burnt than dyed. She seemed tired, but I was in the mood to talk.

I remarked on the renovations the store was undergoing. I over-enthusiastically declared that this was such significant change, that the look of the place would be completely altered. In my head I thought, why do I care about this? But my eyes beamed, and my smile was wide. "It's going to be like a whole new store!" I said.

She fell right into my exuberance.

"I know, they're changing everything. The other day I came in here after being gone for a week, and there were all new cashiers. I didn't know a single one of them," she told me earnestly, her lonely face posed in what I imagined was a reenactment of that moment.

I brought up the cliche topic of prices being too high over at Whole Foods, and said I was happy to come here now for the same healthy items at a better mark down.

She agreed. "I've been here 13 years," she told me. I tried to imagine her standing in that spot for 13 years, and wondered what the benefits had been.

She lowered her voice. "But I'm thinking of changing jobs. I'm thinking of moving to A&P."

I waited for the rimshot, but there was none. She sighed, and paused, my cat food poised midair above the brown paper bag she was filling. "I think it might be time for a change."

I realized in a breath what change meant. I cherished the moment, a woman with burnt red hair in a blue cashier's jacket, confiding in me before her manager, that it might be time to alter her path and fill grocery bags at the supermarket down the street.

"13 years is a long time," she said. Maybe she sat up nights worrying about this, smoking her last cigarette of the day as she looked out on her porch. What would this mean to her life? Could she do it?

"Do it," I said, beaming. She smiled back. "Make the change."

The cleaning men pushed large floor buffering machines behind us, and their grumble was relentless.

"Maybe," she said a bit wistfully. Then, "You have a good evening." And with a perfect cashier's smile, handed me my bags.