Three Movies

February 5, 2009

I had rented three movies that I wanted to see. Haven't found Bottle Shock yet, but I'll tell you more about that one later.

I have an account at Blockbuster, which is about ten blocks from my apartment, to say nothing of the trip down four flights of stairs as I set out and four flights up upon return. Friends have urged me to switch to Netflix, but for years I've defended the concept of browsing in the stacks and looking at the covers of the DVD's in order to make my decision. I used to check the cover for "Two Thumbs Up!" but those days are over. Now I have to make my decision based upon the actors and a general feeling for the mood of the film as portrayed by the picture and title. I cannot bear to see much of the actual film--as in the eternal clips and previews on tv--or to know its plot line before watching.

There are tons of good movies out there that I need to see. This trip I selected three from my list, Recount, In Bruges, and Forgetting Sarah
Marshall. I have a friend who occasionally reads the blog and is even more of a fanatic about not knowing anything about a movie he's going to see before watching. This review is for him, with the promise of no plot-spoilers.

Recount, made for HBO audiences, is already spoiled for everyone on the planet who was even vaguely alert eight years ago during the first election of George W. Bush to the presidency. It gives behind-the-scenes details that we might never have known, and is a very good, compelling little film, except I kept saying to myself, "I know how this is going to come out. And it won't be good." So the film spoils itself just by being. But the performances are wonderful and some of the scenes are just delightful.

I have been watching the awards shows with detached interest. I never care a whit who wins what, but as an inveterate movie addict, I just gotta know who's in the running. And, although I seldom agree, I can usually dope out who will win in which category even if I haven't seen the film. The title In Bruges kept cropping up, but I had no idea what it was, except that the marvelous Colin Farrell was in it, and the film has been nominated in several categories in the Golden Globes. The only category it made for an Academy Award, I believe, was Best Screenplay. Odd how a Best Screenplay would not produce a Best Picture, but that's often the case.

I rented In Bruges and laughed from beginning to end. Not that it's a knee-slapper. The laughs are dark as the film is dark. The situations are ominous and the characters untrustworthy. You really don't know what is going to become of them. They are doing terrible things. But then they'll say something funny. And they become real, multi-dimensional. They are wise one minute, stupid the next, evil one minute, soft-hearted the next. It is a beautiful little movie, but serious and somber, at the same time you're laughing at it. I just said I laughed from beginning to end. That's not quite true. At the end, I wasn't laughing. I just hadn't forgotten how much fun I'd had on the trip.

The third film was the biggest surprise to me. I knew absolutely nothing about Forgetting Sarah Marshall except that I'd seen that it had been liked by a couple of critics. (Siskel and Ebert, where are your thumbs when I need them?) I knew it was made by one of the new breed in Hollywood, produced by Judd Apatow, who was responsible for Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, both of which I liked somewhat. You might call Forgetting Sarah Marshall a romantic comedy, or a comedy of romantic blunders. It stars Jason Segel, who wrote the script and comes over on film as the next Brendan Frasier, big and attractive and bumbling. It has an intricate plot and a lot of great comic turns, notably Russell Brand as the English rock'n'roll singer with a bizarre philosophical outlook. One really outrageous character, the blonde and brain-frozen surfing teacher, kept reminding me of Paul Rudd--until I discovered it was Paul Rudd. Let's just say I really enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and am now a fan of both Judd Apatow and Jason Segel.

With the onset of winter, I'm going to subscribe to Netflix and I'll do fine figuring out what to order. They may even have Bottle Shock.

Electronically Challenged

February 2, 2009

Saturday afternoon the odd little bell-chime sounded telling me I had a text message on what I laughingly call my cell phone. Averse to the world of touchtone maps, cameras, video games, iTunes and Internet access, a year ago I purchased a phone that only received and sent phone calls. I thought.

When my brother went into the hospital in Houston for bypass surgery, his wife, who is also my friend, kept sending me text messages, which hopelessly I could not for the life of me figure out how to respond to. I left messages on her answering machine, "Do not send me text messages. I don't know how to receive or send them." Trapped in the hospital lobby with nothing to do, she kept sending them anyway.

Then when I moved to the new apartment, I had to find a tenant in order to get out of my lease. The tenant was in her early 20's, not allowed to make phone calls at work, so she texted me the details of the move. She even showed me the basics of how to use the text feature of my phone. I kinda wish she hadn't, but never mind. We all have to go along with this stuff to some degree.

So when I heard the bell tune on my phone I knew what it was, and with a vague sense of dread check it out. It said, "Hey, I got your number from a friend of mine, but I bet you can't guess who I am! My username's gizmo 398, if you"

It stopped there.

Then it rang again. The message continued "wanna come see if you recognize me online, at gizmo 398..." and gave a web address. With some struggle I replied "I dnot think so." Of course I was trying to say "I don't think so," but my phone didn't want to get it right. Only if you've tried to send a text message will you understand why it came out that way. Finally, I decided to send it with the error since any fool could figure out that "dnot" is "don't" written by a text-illiterate.

However, I admit I was intrigued. I felt like a total fuddy-duddy expecting anybody who had my number simply to call me to talk. If it were somebody who wanted to meet me, I reckoned, why would the person not simply begin by calling me on the phone, telling me who the mutual friend was, and we could arrange a time and place to meet and have an actual talk. Also, being someone called gizmo 398, this did not sound like a person I was going to have a meaningful relationship with. Call me rigid. Call me frigid. But don't call me, gizmo.

I went to the web address and discovered it was one of those "make a friend" type sites for which you have to register all your personal data even to get on. I did not want these creeps to have my personal data. If they want to know about me, they can read my blog, on which I lay bare my quirks, foibles, and even my age. I've gotten three invitations to join Facebook in the last month, and I always pass.

I wonder who gizmo is. But I'll bet whoever it was had reached the wrong cell phone.

Jet Lag and Culture Shock

Yesterday I left the sunny South for snowy Hoboken (actually that picture was taken a month ago of my daughter in her back yard in Kingston, NY) and am layering myself for a trip to the post office to pick up the mail they've held for me for a week. Whereas I didn't even need a jacket most days in Fairhope, I'll have to wear long underwear, a tee shirt, sweater, jacket, gloves and a cap just to walk to the bus stop and take a bus nine blocks and walk three more to the post office, then three back to the next bus stop to walk another three blocks to my apartment. Must stop off somewhere and pick up a few groceries too.

Friends from Alabama will read this and ask "Why? Why does anybody live like that?"

I can understand the question, but I can answer it too. Not sufficiently so that they could really understand, but I've answered it many times on the blog. This is the place I'd rather be. I'm relearning how to deal with cold weather, and if that's all the adversity I have to cope with, I can handle it. It's a different kind of a life and I feel revitalized coming back to it. The relaxed, warm life of Lower Alabama is seductive, but to me the rewards were less. The highs were nowhere near as high, and the lows were way lower. Everybody who knows me there knows some of the stress I endured--and of course some of it was of my own making--so that sorta goes with being me. There will be some of it here, but for now Hoboken is still a vacation for me, slapdab against one of the greatest cities in the world, and in a pleasant, busy community that has a lot going on. Hoboken has the best of both worlds. It's a small town with a vibrant history (and you know how I love history) and easy access to anything I want to do in the city.

Across that water, it ain't Mobile. It's Manhattan.

Now, just give me a couple of days to get over my jet lag and culture shock. And don't bother me while I put on my long johns and get dressed for the cold.

A Long Way from Hoboken

The eastern shore of Mobile Bay is a long way from the western banks of the Hudson. The weather is in the 70's some days at this time of the year, and the view is the opposite of urban.

I'm here promoting The Fair Hope of Heaven, and today Fairhope does seem a little heavenly. I'll join a party of friends for brunch at 10:30 and take a walk on the beach in the afternoon. Yesterday I signed books at the local bookstore. In all I've sold about 40 books so far, and a few reviews are slated to appear on amazon.com if they're not already there. I've given book talks at both the Fairhope Museum of History and the Marietta Johnson Museum, and am enjoying that feeling of being welcomed home. If that doesn't warm me up, nothing can.

Which means I'm readying for re-entry into Hoboken Tuesday night, preparing to layer for the cold, don boots for the puddles amid the snow, and steel myself for a bitter six-block walk to the gym rather than a brisk morning jog in the neighborhood. But there's time for that. Let me enjoy my break. I'll get back to my city adventures in the North next week.

Better Than Woodstock

January 19, 2009

I participate in lots of things these days by watching them on television. You have to guard against that as you get older.

But for the next couple of days, even though today most of my day will be spent in airports, I expect to be gluing my eyes to any television set I get near. Scenes like the above--the crowd at the "We Are One" concert for the incoming administration in Washington--have me and the rest of us on the outside looking in both euphoric and apprehensive. Is it as good as it looks?

It's hard to put words to the elation that seems to pervade the land at this particular changing of the guard. We don't want to expect too much, but just to have a strong hand at the helm and a sense that the country is at last united in wanting to do the right thing is so encouraging. The sad thing is that we had veered so far from that in the 20th Century that we had become cynical, and until we were told it was okay to hope and promise to do better (and mean it) that we could actually do better. The sense of optimism and change reminded me of Woodstock, which I also didn't attend, but saw in film clips on television.

Dan Rather, not usually my favorite pundit, said an oddly interesting thing on the Chris Matthews Show yesterday. He said that America was ready for the kind of leader who landed that plane in the Hudson the other day. I think he was right. That weird event became somehow symbolic of what the country is hoping will happen with Barack Obama as president. In the plane crash, tragedy was averted by a steady hand on the helm, a wise and prepared professional who did everything that could be done and prevailed, saving lives and giving the whole world confidence that competence and wisdom were still alive in the U.S.

Woodstock may have been fun. But it was nothing like this.

Winterize Me

January 17, 2008

Yesterday I was up against it. I had go to outside, even though the weather forecast for the immediate area gave the chance of a temperature above 18° as slim to none.

It's my second winter in Hoboken and I've been trying to acclimate. Nineteen years of living back in Lower Alabama (aka L.A.) had dimmed my memories of having to wear long underwear, layers of sweaters, a coat, boots, mittens, a hat over my ears and a woolen scarf every day for about three months. In Fairhope, winter doesn't arrive until late January, and it usually consists of a few nights when the temperature goes below freezing and a few days when the highest the temp goes is up to the 40's. A real "cold wave" can last as long as a week, but it will be followed by afternoons when a cardigan is sufficient.

I had forgotten how beautiful snow is. When it snows, it's nothing like rain. I observe it like an enchanted infant. Falling snow is gentle, as if choreographed to float on light, freezing breezes sinking to coat the surroundings in something like 7-minute frosting. But when it melts in patches, as it usually does, and the air is cold enough to freeze the puddles, it is no fun at all. You are forced to walk with extreme care while dressed like an overstuffed mattress, and the beauty and elegance of the new-fallen snow is soon forgotten.

But yesterday I had to be across town, and downtown from 9th to 1st--which means a mile from my apartment--and I had to walk three and a half blocks to wait for either a bus or a taxi. Accustomed as I am to walking everywhere now, that three blocks in 18° is nonetheless daunting. But sometimes it must be done. I had had all week, watching the weather channel and hoping to no avail that the forecast would change, to steel myself for the inevitable.

I layered the requisite number of apparel items and set out to brave the outdoors. I had walked two blocks before I said to myself (prematurely) "This isn't so bad. This isn't bad at all." There was a longer wait than I had hoped at the bus stop for either bus or taxi. It seemed like about 45 minutes but was probably about 10 before a cab showed up and whisked me, all thawed out, to my destination.

The mission accomplished, getting home was more difficult. I saw no cabs on River Street, so I headed back to Washington via 4th. There is this block as you near Hudson where the wind comes out of nowhere from the west--Jersey City, no doubt--and as this wind hit me inner commentator said, "Wind chill factor of minus five. Well, now you know what minus five feels like." I put my bemittened hand on my knit cap, because with arms full of packages and hands covered with mittens, I didn't want to have to chase it down the block to God knows where in that weather.

Lo and behold, my bank is on the corner of Washington and 4th, so I ducked in there to warm up. Oddly, I saw no taxis and two buses had passed just as I rounded the corner. Never mind that I would only ride three blocks, when a bus finally came I got on and rode three blocks. I'm old, it's cold, and I deserve it--and it only costs 65 cents at my age. Three blocks in a warm and cheery bus was long enough to unfreeze me again and get me ready for the three-block walk back home.

Toasty-warm at last, I'm sitting here at the keyboard looking forward to what I know will be a jumpstart for the spring thaw. I leave Newark Liberty Airport Monday at 11 A.M. for a week Lower Alabama. I just hope there are no flocks of birds who have the same idea.

Upton Sinclair in New Jersey and Fairhope

January 15, 2009

Upton Sinclair was a novelist who yearned to live in a perfect community. So much so, that he started one of his own in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1907. Helicon Home Colony was founded to demonstrate a way of living that Sinclair deemed to be the path to perfection: free thinking, free love, a cooperative form of self-governance based on his commitment to socialism, and no drugs or alcohol.

Less than a year after its beginning, his colony’s home burned to the ground, leaving the author still seeking a community of like-minded idealists where he wanted to live. One stop on his journey was in the single-tax utopia of Fairhope, Alabama, where I was raised some fifty years later. The Fair Hope of Heaven/A Hundred Years After Utopia, my book, describes the fortunes of the little town from its inception through the 20th century and tells the story of Sinclair and his year in Fairhope.

Sinclair was not atypical of the type of people who were attracted to early Fairhope. A successful writer and dabbler in health foods, he had a stressful marriage and a backlog of anger at the way things were in his times that kept him writing constantly. Known as a muckraker, he wrote to change things and people. He and his wife Meta spent some time in Fairhope, where his son David was enrolled in the radical School of Organic Education.

Following is an excerpt from The Fair Hope of Heaven.

“Upton Sinclair found solace in writing. He wrote compulsively; whenever he perceived something in the heart of man that wanted correcting, he wrote a book about it. He would move to a cabin in the woods to write, or to the mountains,
Upton Sinclair and son David or to the beach in the islands or in Florida. He had dreams of creating a Utopian community in which mankind would learn to behave in ways acceptable to him. So moved was he by Thus Spake Zarathustra in the original German in 1902 he wrote a short novel (The Overman) asserting man's ability to experience "rapture and unutterable holiness." Nietschze inspired in him an almost-religious conversion to the political doctrines of Socialism.

“His most well-read book, The Jungle, was published in 1907. It dealt with the meat packing industry in Chicago, describing the lack of sanitation in the packing plants and the miserable conditions of the workers in those plants. As always, he felt he was producing art, and indeed The Jungle was a sensation, but more because of its revelations about the inhumane practices in the industry it portrayed than for its merit as literature. President Theodore Roosevelt was so moved by The Jungle that he made contact with its writer and drafted the first Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair met with the President on several occasions, and their letters back and forth show an amusing clash of egos and ideas of how to get things done. Roosevelt had no patience with Socialists or muckrakers, but he was determined to right the wrongs of the meat-packing industry as outlined in Sinclair's book.
“It was about this book that Sinclair stated, ‘I was aiming at the heart of America, but instead I hit it in the stomach.’

“The Jungle provided enough money for Sinclair to live his long-held dream of utopia. He started a colony of like-minded idealists in an old private school building on the Palisades in New Jersey. The building was called Helicon Hall, named for the Greek muse of the arts, and his settlement was called the Helicon Home Colony. This idyll was to last for only six months. However, during that time it attracted some 100 people; some, like educational philosopher John Dewey, who were to have an impact on Fairhope. Even the "other" Sinclair, (Lewis), a Yale student at the time, helped out with janitorial duties at the Hall.

“Helicon Home Colony burned to the ground in March 1907, and with it went the hopes of Sinclair to realize his own personal ideal world. He and his wife and baby traveled to Carmel, California, where he experimented with health foods and wrote books and plays intended to convert mankind to their use as well as to the cause of Socialism. Again under the stress of great poverty and the growing difficulties in his marriage, Sinclair had developed health problems which he found he could solve using unorthodox diets – raw foods, fasts, vegetarianism. Again he wrote to solve the problem, a book called The Fasting Cure. Upton did experience some relief from the headaches and stomach troubles that had plagued him during his days of deprivation and ignorance of nutritional requirements. As he wrote in his autobiography, 'I had been reading literature of the health cranks, and had resolved upon a drastic experiment; I would try the raw food diet, for which so much was promised. I ate two meals a day, of nuts, fruits, olives, and salad vegetables; the only cooked food being two or three shredded wheat biscuit or some graham crackers. The diet agreed with me marvelously, and for the entire period I never had an ache or pain.' As he became more converted to this nutritional regimen, he was very strict with his wife and child about what they ate, and was probably as much a tyrant on a personal level as he was where any other of his crusades might be challenged.
He and his wife Meta spent some time at the establishments of Kellogg and of health guru Bernarr MacFadden in Battle Creek, Michigan, and then traveled to Cutchogue, Long Island, where he hired a personal assistant named Dave Howatt, who took care of his house as well as much of his business affairs. Howatt was very compatible with his employer, and shared his commitment to the Spartan diet..."

The Fair Hope of Heaven goes on to outline Sinclair's life for a year in Fairhope, including Dave Howatt's bringing a young bride to live in the little community. The book contains excerpts from the wife's diary describing vividly the life in the little offbeat colony on Mobile Bay.

The early 20th Century in America abounded with utopias and the dreamers who lived in them. It has been said that New Jersey was an unlikely spot, yet it was home to some six or seven of them at one time. I would think southern Alabama was far less hospitable, yet it held the place called Fairhope.

The Fair Hope of Heaven is available from amazon.com or on my website.