Ashyknees' Time Killer

The author is willing, but her punctuation is weak.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Crowebiscuit: The Cinderella Man Sneak Preview

I avoided reading any reviews or articles on Cinderella Man until I could see it myself, but I couldn't help peeking at an online trailer. "He laughs, he cries, he punches the hell out of people wearing nothing but trunks. He's Crowebiscuit!" The trailer appealed to many of my weaknesses. But it also told me exactly what I was in for. So now that I've seen the full sneak preview, I can't say I'm disappointed.

The good news: Cinderella Man was everything that I expected.
The bad news: Cinderella Man was everything that I expected.

A simple movie movie can be a great experience. This one was just decent. I don't mind knowing where a movie is taking me, but I don't necessarily want to know how we're going to get there.

My disbelief hasn't been weightless for years. It needs a boost. It doesn't have to be anything radical. During Cinderella Man, the sparkle in Russell Crowe's eyes, his boyish grin, and even his teary wounded pride still suspended it, but then the predictable story knocked it back down. I'm too aware of this mythology for it to work automatically. A Beautiful Mind had more smaltz, but also more complexity. Perhaps that's why it worked better for me than Cinderella Man.

Cinderella Man wanted to be historic yet kind of apolitical at the same time, which couldn't help but result in a few muddled scenes about "agitators." Still, for a such a simple story, there were only a couple of moments of total high fructose corn syrup. And some of them were actually sweet and not cloying.

All of the performances were good. Paul Giamatti and Russell Crowe had great chemistry. Paddy Considine added a needed edge. The kids were cute. Renee Zellweger was spunky in spite of being saddled with the corniest lines. (I wonder why Ms. Zellweger's British accent sounded better than her New Jersey accent, and Mr. Crowe's New Jersey accent sounded better than his British accent--at least to my Midwestern ears).

The photography was surprisingly and appropriately gritty (although it was a fine grit). The fight scenes fascinated me since I know nothing about boxing and it's hard not to respond to close ups of hand-to-hand violence. The audience laughed, cheered, and clapped. I even let out an "ooo" during one of the wide shots of skyline that no longer exists. A couple of people applauded at the end.

Cinderella Man is a decent movie about a decent guy. So maybe the spell didn't quite work on me. Cinderella Man could do very well.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

More Music, Please

I want more music in my life. Any suggestions?

Monday, May 23, 2005

Championship Wedding Hustle

On Saturday, our team actually won the spring season championship. I also could have won any "See how many different kinds of smoke you can get in your hair in one day" competition. It started when I left my cooking breakfast unattended and ended...well...let's just say that post game BBQ grill got really hot. Perhaps I should retire from ultimate frisbee now and go out in a blaze of glory. But I've signed on to a new team for summer disc action. Pre-season (yes, there's a pre-season) play begins this week.

On Sunday, I attended an unconventional wedding. A Catholic marrying a Jew is no big deal. The shocker came when assorted pies were served instead of cake. Mighty tasty.

After the wedding, I saw Kung Fu Hustle. During one scene, I was too enthralled to even blink and my contact lenses kind of dried out. Maybe they can use that in the DVD ads. "Action so hot, you'll need eye drops!"

Monday, May 16, 2005

The Mulligan

I decided to call all nondescript phenomenon and cultural acts "Mulligan." Why do this to innocent Mr. and Ms. Mulligan, wherever they are? Don't blame me, blame my ultimate team.

Some guy on the team swatted down the opposing team's pass in the end zone, giving us possession of the disc, which was good, I thought. Wrong. If he'd caught it instead, we would have scored a point.

After this player received the appropriate razzing from all by-standers, I asked some teammates what the deal was. "It's a Mulligan." "Yeah, a Mulligan." Okay. Later, in the huddle, somebody says, "Too bad you threw away that Callahan."

Forget Callahan. I'm not letting these people mess with my head. From now on, everything's a Mulligan.

That little sidestep dance you do when you almost walk into someone and you both simultaneously try to step out of the way only to block each other again? That's a Mulligan. Find a peanut with more than 2 chambers? Mulligan. Call in sick because you overslept and don't want to show up late to work? Big Mulligan.

Fascinating Article

I just happened upon this intriguing bit of news in a local publication.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Special Pleat Service

I succumbed to trendiness and bought this eighties skirt from the fifties/sixties.


I also re-discovered anchovies this weekend.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Mishmash Manifesto

The unfortunate Professor Qui was "bombarded" by a "garbled personal philosophy which seemed to be a mishmash of Fidel Castro, religion according to Dr. Bronner’s castile soap, and Garveyism." This lead me to wonder how my own personal philosophy might look mishmash style.

Would it be:

A) A tossed salad of Noam Chomsky, the Girl Scout Pledge, and "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown"?

B) A cacophony of The Jackson Five's "ABC," The Police's "Spirits in the Material World" and the jingle from the Honey Hill Bunch collectible doll commercial, performed by Elvis Costello?

C) A montage of Star Wars, the back of a box of Nature Valley Granola circa 1977, and a half-read excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk?

D) Bill Moyers Special and Fat Albert lunchbox stew with a pinch of Barthes?

E) A slurpee of Toni Morrison guest starring in an episode of Star Trek, Next Generation?

The thing is, it's hard to trace the roots of my core beliefs.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

It's Never Too Late to Suck

Okay, so I am the worst woman on my frisbee team. There are men of all shapes playing in our league, but practically all the women are lean. I'm the slowest. I have the least skills. Players from the other team start to coach me during the game, I'm so obviously clueless. Yet, I'm totally engaged when I play.

Chances are I will never be great, and it will probably take a long time before I am even decent. (It's a bit hard to practice throwing a disc by myself between games. I guess I'd better work on finding a partner.) I would be embarrassed if I weren't trying so hard and my teammates weren't so cool.

Sometimes the hardest thing to remember is that I should always try hard. There are moments when my body kind of stops out of habit (sometimes fatigue, but more out of a habit) and I think, damn it, why am I slowing down? It's just that extra few seconds of effort that could make a difference. A few more inches and I could have scored.

It's fine to discover a talent and develop it, but there's something to be said for developing a non-talent. I'm learning so much more from this frisbee nonsense that I have from my other useless activity, improv. I'm not some great comedian, but improv came almost effortlessly to me when I first tried it as a teen. It's almost about not trying. Sports did not come so easily. And it wasn't because of my body. I'm tall and naturally muscular (underneath it all) and somewhat coordinated. I was all because of my mind.

Here I must do a little retrospective discussion of gender and my upbringing in sports. I kept playing sports until high school because I was okay enough. My dad would even coach my teams sometimes. Still, I have to say I wish I'd been pushed as hard as my brother was, and if I'd been a boy--and big and strapping as I am as opposed to my mid-sized sibling--I believe things would have been different. Perhaps I was a bit more willful than my brother. Anyway, after a game, he was never allowed to say I can't or to whine. If I whined, I got let off the hook. "You don't want to chase the tennis balls that you missed? You don't like being put in the outfield? Fine then, quit." This improved my whining skills, but little else. I really needed to learn how to suck. To stink up the place, at least for a while, until I got better. To stick it out on the off chance that I might turn things around.

Thank goodness it's never to late to suck.

Triple Crown

Over the last month, my dentist has been attempting to fix a new crown on a little stump of a molar, the remains of my tooth from a root canal I had a few years ago (yes, I should have had it installed back then).

The first crown cracked as they put it on. So they re-installed the well-worn temporary crown and told me to come back in a few weeks. After I'd chewed through the temporary, it sort of fell off after I pulled on it long enough. It was all frayed metal and that weird cinnamon tasting dental cement, I had to get a new temporary temporary crown.

Finally, last Friday, I thought I was done. I left my dentist with a new crown, ready for a lifetime of chewing. The next day, after I'd bitten into a rice krispie treat, I noticed something unusually crunchy in my bar. It was a shard from my new crown.

Can't my dentist get these things made somewhere else. Is she like, letting her cousin make them or something?

Done and Done

Whew. I finished my final documentary video project, inspite of all my doubts and dread. No, it's not a contender for a student EMMY. But is it out of my ass...sort of. I want to go back and fix a few things.

Still I turned it in on freakin' time! I wish I could take that for granted, but right now, that makes me want to give myself a big high five.

Post partum notes to self:
DO use the bird by bird philosophy.
DO remember how much I enjoy editing.
DO remember how much I enjoy interviewing people.
DO NOT look at the NYT headlines on porch as I walk out the door on your way back to the lab at 7 a.m. after getting 2 hours of sleep unless I want to mix fatigue with righteous indignation.
DO realize that the resolution of certain technical issues is just that, technical, not the results of some great lightening bolt genius.
DO check the lens for schmutz.