What to write when you have nothing to write

Some days I think I have something I want to write about and then I realize that I really only have one or two sentences to say about it and so it doesn't seem worth the post. (Is this why Twitter is so popular?). Normally, I let these things die or else pad the post with photos of my cat, but today, I'm just going to throw them together incongruously in a single post. This post.

Websites like this one make me wonder if I'm not under-utilizing Dinah's incredibly tolerant nature and willingness to be photographed. I think I should start a line of greeting cards with her image.

I went for a hike in the Palisades in New Jersey this weekend. It was a beautiful day and the trail was surprisingly empty, but for a group of teenage girls. We saw them fleeing the scene after they spray painted a heart on some historic stone tower thing at the start of the trail. You give teenage girls everywhere a bad name, teenage girls of Bergen County.

I recommend the book Sea of Poppies. It's one of those books with a number of characters whose lives all intersect, but remarkably you still are able to care about all of them. It also offers some very compelling evidence for why you should never succumb to opium addiction.

I saw the movie A Dangerous Method this weekend purely because my friend wanted to go and it was showing at a movie theater that served movie themed food to you while you ate (a phenomenon which is apparently slow to reach the East Coast). I got "Jung's Beaten Biscuits" which I didn't really understand because do you really beat biscuits? Wouldn't there have been a better food to put on the menu if you wanted to draw on the S&M aspects of the film? Also, if they were beaten it was probably a bit too much because they were not fluffy and delicious, but rather the type of biscuits I imagine they gave to sailors on overseas voyages in the 1800s. I ate them only because I paid for them and because the apple chutney they came with was tasty, but it likely would have been just as good with something like "Freud's Over-analyzed Pork Sausages" had they but been on the menu. The movie was only so-so.

In other movie watching news, I finally arrested my attention from watching Law & Order episodes on Netflix long enough to actually watch a movie. If you like satires of college-kids-killed-off-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods type slasher movies that still have a fair amount of gore (albeit comedic), I recommend Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. Actually, you can really get the whole movie just from the trailer, so maybe just watch that instead.

Another near-victory at trivia night was thwarted by not knowing any of the noble gases other than neon. The only thing I remember about high school chemistry (being the last chemistry class I took) is that my teacher would go out to his car on lunch and smoke cigars.

Have a happy Mardi Gras readers!

Tři veteráni: A Review (sort of)

Back in January 0f 2008, I went to visit a friend in the Czech Republic. I was ostensibly in the country on a grant to study "Czech ballroom dance culture" because one of the advantages of going to a small liberal arts schools is that they will give you grants to research such things. However, my true aim was both to visit said friend and have a nice winter vacation in a place that, for obvious reasons that I somehow reasoned wouldn't phase me, has much fewer tourists in the winter. I did the usual site seeing in Prague and then rode a train 6 hours (a journey I think would have been much shorter if I'd spoken enough Czech to know how to ask for the express train) through the snow covered countryside to the town of Prostějov.

My friend was working on a paper while I was there, but I realized all I really wanted to do was relax after some busy traveling. There was thus a full day spent in which I didn't leave the house once. I enjoyed being warm inside and watching the snow, and while my friend worked on her paper, I drank copious amounts of tea with some sort of delicious cookie I've never found in the United States and watched children's programming with her nieces. Children's tv is actually perfect both for young speakers of Czech and adults who don't know it because I was able to follow along and shout out the word I knew meant "spider" thanks to the corresponding image on screen. However, the most enjoyable part of this day, specifically in terms of Czech children's media, was the discovery of the movie whose title translates in English to The Three Veterens.

I've always enjoyed an offbeat fairy tale and after seeing this one, felt that this story was too enjoyable to not be better known. I was even convinced that it should become a project of mine to translate the screenplay into English. Ever since that visit, I've been hounding my friend to procure me a copy. This year for my birthday, she sent me the movie on DVD (a most welcome gift--thanks, B!). Watching it again I realized it probably wouldn't be as easy to Americanize as I had thought. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it just as much the second time around.

The movie tells the story of the three titular veterans who, released from the army, find themselves on hard times. Luckily, they are visited by three dwarves who give them magical gifts--a hat that can create anything out of thin air, a purse that always has gold coins in it, and a harp that when strummed will create people who do whatever the harp's owner requires. The three men have differing opinions on what they should do with their newfound fortune--one wants to conquer the world, one wants to go fishing, and the last just wants to laze around and do nothing (which, as an editorial note, is probably the camp I would fall into were I to experience such a windfall). Hijinks ensue when they meet a greedy king and his beautiful and manipulative daughter. Not to spoil too much...but to give you a sense of the film...there is a long series of scenes in which a woman's nose grows so long that it visits multiple countries in Europe. It's madcap situations like this that I worry would fall flat with American audiences, despite being some of my personal favorites.

The nose makes it to Germany where it is initially mistrusted, but eventually given a medal.

Anyway, if anyone wants to take over the project of Americanizing a Czech children's classic--let me know. I might just have a copy I could lend you.

The year I didn't see Book of Mormon

Last year around this time, I fell into the trap of doing a recap of my year because all the cool bloggers were doing it. But really what is the point of it? I ended up just writing about the same stuff twice and some of it had just happened. It was like one of those flashback episodes on sitcoms that everyone always dreads in re-runs. Those of you who do want to recap my year are welcome to do so through the handy archives feature. For the rest, let's just move on to new, exciting 2012 things, shall we?

My sister was here (in both New York City and Astoria) to celebrate New Years. In the meantime, we kept trying to do things like ice skating or going to the Book of Mormon lottery (we tried and failed not once, but three times to get tickets) and deciding against it while marveling at the sheer number of people in the city also trying to do fun things. We had fun though, if for no other reason than because for the first time in four New Years that I've now spent in this city, it was not bitingly cold. In fact, up until this morning, it didn't even feel like winter. We New Years Eve'd at a bar in Manhattan (making this oddly my first non-Brooklyn New Years since moving to the five burroughs--next year Astoria, for sure!). There was an open bar, crowds, and questionable food stuffs, but overall it was a fun way to ring in 2012.

Here are a couple of photos from this part weekend. These were actually all taken in 2011, but henceforth all posts will contain nothing but the new, exciting, 2012 stuff I alluded to earlier. So far I guess there isn't a lot of 2012 stuff. All I've done is eaten tapas and lost at trivia night by not remembering that Peter Brady's real name, in full, is Christopher Knight. Nevertheless, I'm hoping for good things this year!

Walking through Central Park, shadowed by an iphone toting photographer.

You can't tell in this picture, but we're standing on a castle.

We made an important stop at the "Little Lebowski" a small shop in Greenwich Village devoted to fan merchandise of the film The Big Lebowski, of which my sister is a devoted fan. They seemed to be running low on merchandise (perhaps there was a Christmas rush?), but she got a couple of bumper stickers and a weird collection of movie tschotskes that included, among other things, a severed toe with green nail polish. Not that those are hard to find...

Hope you're all having a happy first few days of 2012!

The James Francos of tomorrow...today

Last year, around this time, I wrote about attending Erasers for Breakfast, 826 NYC's annual film festival to showcase the kids' masterpieces from the summer film program. This year, around this time, and specifically last night, I attended Erasers for Breakfast 2011 and was yet again blown away by the talent and creativity of the young'uns. This both inspires me to work on my own creative pursuits and makes me jealous of 10-year-olds for having seemingly endless time and a fountain of fresh ideas. I probably should have written more down when I was 10 because I'm pretty sure I had better ideas back then, and I certainly had more of them.

But enough stewing on past regrets! I wanted to share some of the kids' stories and film ideas because I enjoyed them so much and because they deserve credit before I try to pass them off as my own. My favorite film this year (almost on par with last year's favorite "There's One I in President") was called "Shhhhh!" and told the story of a fairy tale village in Prospect Park beset by an evil librarian (I hope no umbrage will be taken by any of the wonderful, far-from-evil librarians in my life). The villain of the story was on a mission to capture all the world's sounds in little jars and thus the townspeople were reduced to speaking with signs and resorting to silent movie over-acting. Her mission would only be complete when she captured the final missing sound, which, as it turns out, was that of a ukulele. The cleverness of the film was mostly in the details. In the librarian's evil layer they had taken the time to label all the canisters of sound behind her including everything from "ringtone" to "birds whistling" and my personal favorite "Bieber." Not to spoil the ending, lest "Shhhh!" should ever receive the wider audience it deserves, but suffice is to say it involves bagels, an army of ukuleles, and just the right amount of karmic justice.

The evening included two other "feature length" films and two short films which were all equally charming. One of the shorts "Old Ninja" was about an octogenarian ninja who fights crime in mostly serendipitous and stereotypic old-man-in-New-York sort of ways. It was made even more delightful through the use of a catchy theme song. There was also an excellent story involving a set of interns who have to take over the news show after all the real anchors are beset by donut-induced food poisoning. This could seriously be a Judd Apatow movie by next summer, only it will sadly lack the raw authenticity.

One of the films scores was done by a musician who is apparently well known (by Brooklyn hipsters) as evidenced by how many people took out their iphones to record him. However, being hopelessly unhip (I still mostly just listen to ABBA...is that wrong?), I've never heard of him. In fact, I thought based on the few words he spoke that he had a southern accent, but apparently he is Norwegian. At any rate, I liked the song he played, so I will leave you with that.

Hamptons holiday

This weekend, I traveled eastward on Long Island to visit some friends in their summer house in East Hampton. By virtue of generally being friends with people in my own tax bracket, weekending in the Hamptons at someone's summer house is not something I generally do. Luckily for me, one of my friends is working as a production editor on a movie (I won't go into details, but it may or may not be the sequel to Men and Black II), and the director wanted to do the director's cut at his summer house. Naturally, as would explain the large expense that goes into making big studio films, room was found in the budget to rent houses for the staff to live there for the summer. Columbia Pictures' largesse is my gain. I might even repay them by spending the $15 to go see the movie in the theater. Then again, by Memorial Day 2012, my Hamptons tan will undoubtedly have worn off, and I might not feel so magnanimous.

So what are my impressions of the Hamptons as seen through the eyes of someone who regularly summers in the same place I winter, spring, and fall? East Hampton is quite a lovely small town with very clean beaches, huge houses, and a not so subtle air of entitlement wafting through the summer breezes. It's also very dark there, making for excellent star gazing. On Saturday, we went to the beach at one of the nearby state parks. Apparently it was one of the few beaches that didn't involve some expensive permit to set foot on. That said, you still needed to pay $400 a summer to park there. We chose to park in town and walk the mile or so instead.

Thanks to the shade of this beach umbrella and some SPF 45, I was came away from this beach experience unburned.

My new favorite New York beach. That said, if I had millions of dollars to invest in summer real estate, I'd probably get a place on the Riviera.

Isn't that quaint? They even let you rent bath houses. For the hoi polloi who don't have houses right on the beach, that is.

After returning from the beach, we'd considered going to a polo match apparently held every Saturday afternoon in East Hampton. None of our group were particular polo aficionados, but it seemed like a very Hamptons pastime. Unfortunately, not all of us could fit in one car and they charged by the car to park. We considered parking in a nearby K-Mart parking lot (I'm as shocked as you are that a K-Mart could be within walking distance of a polo field or allowed by the zoning laws of East Hampton all together). However, despite being in close proximity, it appeared on google maps that the walk entailed crossing some train tracks and possibly wading through a shallow marsh. In the end, we forewent polo in favor of an evening of grilling, eating mass amounts of potato salad, drinking vodka lemonades, and playing board games.

In the rental house, we found a game called Identity that was made in 1988. Basically, you get a card with a the name of a famous person (that is: a person famous prior to 1988). You have to get the other players to guess the name of famous person by answering questions they ask you. These questions range from the fairly obtuse "If you were a doctor's medical speciality, which would you be?" to the query-on-a-1980s-personal-ad-video "If you were a message in a bottle, which would you be?" All questions were formed with the grammatically rigid "which" as if there are a finite number of messages in a bottle out there and you simply have to pick one. Based on the level of dust on this game, we suspect we are the only Hamptons house renters to attempt playing.

On Sunday, after the most delicious pancakes I have ever eaten, we decided to try another upper crust Hamptons activity: croquet. There was a set in the basement, so it seemed logical to dust it off and stick some wickets.

Part of the rules of our croquet game was that the shooter had to wear this straw hat. Don't let my superior croquet form here fool you, I came in second to last.

Most of the weekend was spent grilling food of some sort. Everything tastes better on a BBQ, and it is one thing I sorely miss about living in the city and not having a backyard. Above are some delicious kebabs being made. Not pictured, but also consumed this weekend: hamburgers, loaded baked potato salad, spinach stuffed shells, breadsticks, 3 bags of potato chips, cookies, cucumber salad, one rainbow cheesecake, pancakes, bagels, and a number of s'mores. These things are what I truly miss about the Hamptons.

Now I'm back in the city listening to the rain and thinking about how even if the clouds were to clear, I could not see the stars. Much thanks to my friends for a lovely weekend away! Also, thanks to Barry Sonnenfeld, without whom, none of this would be possible.

Oscar predictions, based soley on personal prejudices

I don't usually write about movies here (or anywhere really), and that's mostly because I hardly ever go see them anymore. Priced out of movie theaters, I've begun the practice of obsessively watching trailers online, patiently waiting for the movies to come out, and then excitedly looking up the spoilers on wikipedia. It's sad really, and I acknowledge that fully.

Last year, I had only seen one of the best picture nominations, despite the number being increased to 10. (Although strangely, I had seen almost all of the animated nominations.) However, this week when the Oscar nominations came out, I was happy to see that even with my negligent movie-going, I have actually seen a total of four of them. Naturally, this means I need to celebrate Astorian Dream style by blogging about my opinions of all those nominated (whether I've seen them or not). Spoilers may creep in, so consider yourself warned.

The Fighter: I've always had something against Mark Wahlberg. I think because I decided, irrationally or not, that he was trying too hard to be Matt Damon. That coupled with the fact that I don't particularly enjoy boxing movies (no, not even Rocky), means that this one really hasn't made a blip on my radar.

See? Poor man's Matt Damon.

Toy Story 3: Saw this one. Twice actually. This won't win naturally, but I'm content knowing it has the "Best Animated Film" award in the bag. My only quibble was that they had to sully the franchise by going the 3D route. I didn't notice any actual 3D effects, which was nice, but they still made me wear the glasses and pay an extra $5 to see it, which was not.

127 Hours: I can't be impartial about this movie for obvious reasons. I did enjoy how the trailer focused totally on the main character biking around to catchy music and hitting on hikers, when undoubtedly the majority of the movie was a much more somber, watching him drink his own urine and sawing off his arm.

I think we can all see who the real star of 127 Hours is. And it's not the guy whose face didn't even make it onto the movie poster.

The Kid's Are All Right: I thought this movie was pretty funny (once you get past the tool shed that is Mark Ruffalo); however, the Academy has so conditioned me to disregard comedies that I was almost confused to see it on the list. Granted, there is some substance behind the comedy, but I just don't think this one stands much of a chance. Also, the ending kind of dragged.

Inception: This was a fun one--well-paced, good concept, well cast. As long as you are willing to turn your mind off a little and not ask too many questions, it's an enjoyable ride. I think this could have had a shot last year, but this year, they're are too many movies on the list without questionable plot holes.

True Grit: Points to this movie for containing Matt Damon over Mark Wahlberg. Also, this was just a fun film. I only recently (within the last few years) realized I really like Westerns. That said, I don't think this will win, partially because the Coen brothers just won a couple of years ago with No Country for Old Men. I actually think True Grit is the stronger of the two movies, but I don't question the politics of the system.

Winter's Bone: Followed it when it first came out, and, based on the spoiler, have no real objections to it. Also, it's set in the backwoods of Ozark country, and I do have a soft spot for the unique beauty (minus the meth labs) of that part of the country.

The Social Network: I tried to rent this at a Redbox the other day, and it was already out. Now, I'm not saying that's David Fincher's fault...but it does make it more difficult for me to say anything positive about this movie. I do, however, like Facebook okay. Well, not "like" so much as "harbor the usual 20-something addition for."

Black Swan: One of my friends kept trying to get me to go see this with her, but having already read the spoiler (something I do as soon as soon as the movie comes out, if I have no intention of seeing it), I knew there were plenty of disturbing things I didn't want to see on film. Regardless of how well she does it, I just don't need to see Natalie Portman self-flagellating for 2 hours. I do appreciate that this movie made this fact possible (quoted from the No Strings Attached New York Times review): "[Portman] may be the only Golden Globe-winning actress to simulate sex on screen with two former members of the cast of “That ’70s Show."

Hasn't Natalie Portman been through enough without adding self-mutilation and losing toenails in the name of art to the mix?

The King's Speech: This is my pick to win. Based predominantly on the fact that I enjoyed the little mini Pride and Prejudice reunion it contained. Also, it was just an engaging, well-told story backed up by excellent acting. I found it to be not only an enjoyable watch, but the most Oscar-worthy of the films I've seen this year.

I guess it's a little early to be getting out the Oscar predictions, but I want to have mine on the record before they get diluted by my actually seeing more than half of the films in question. I think it was actually a pretty decent year for movies. I only hope 2011 can live up. Based on the trailers I've seen thus far, I'm not really sure. I can't seem to wrap my head around this one at all.

Also, on a completely unrelated to movies note, a friend of mine just started a fun food blog called the Ignorant Epicure. Check it out if you want some New York City restaurant tips. I haven't gotten her out to review any Astoria eateries yet, but I'll work on it.