Funeral in Berlin

I love the book Funeral in Berlin even though the first time I read it, I was completely baffled as to what had actually happened. It's Cold War Noir at its very best, with a smart-ass (and smart) protagonist. It was written in 1966 and I think I read it first when I was 12. When I first read it, I wasn't sure of the plot. I knew there was an Russian scientist who wanted to defect to the West and a Russian Colonel who wanted to help him defect and get a nice house for himself as a bonus and a nameless British hero who goes to Berlin to check out the situation and somehow there were Nazis involved-and then I was lost. I think I read it three times before I finally understood what had actually happened-but no one reads Funeral in Berlin for the plot, interesting though it may be. Just remember, while you think it's about the defection, that isn't the point.
There are four quotes at the beginning of Funeral in Berlin and I love this quote in particular because it seems to tell you the main point of the book-and it isn't until the end that you realize that the quote is a trick-that all of the quotes are tricks. You're looking in one direction while the book is really going somewhere else. This particular quote is an exchange between Allen Dulles, then Director of the CIA and Nikita Krushchev:

Dulles: "You, Mr Chairman, may have seen some of my intelligence reports from time to time".
Mr Krushchev: I believe we get the same reports-and probably from the same people".
Mr Dulles: "Maybe we should pool our efforts".
Mr Krushchev: "Yes. We should buy our intelligence data together and save money. We'd have to pay the people only once".

Is that what the book is about-a man who gathers information and sells it to both sides in the Cold War? It's part of it...


The thing is, don't read it for the plot-the plot is is secondary compared to Deighton's description of meeting the men who will help him with the East German scientist...
" I need something moved", I said.
"Very well", said Steel Spectacles. He produced a small tape machine.
"Place of consigment's origin?"
"I'll try to arrange that to your convenience" I said.
"Excellent". He clicked the switch on the mike. "Origin nul" he said.
"To?" he asked me"
"Channel ports", I said.
"Which one?"
"Any", I said. He nodded again and repeated my answer into the tape recorder. We were getting on fine together.
"Size?"
"One human" I said. he didn't bat an eyelid; he immediately said, "Willing or unwilling?"

Read it for the dialogue between the hero and the first time he meets Colonel Stok about helping the scientist to defect and he asks to see the Colonel's identity card...

"It says here you are Colonel Maylev", I protested as I laboriously pronounced the Cyrillic script.
"And yours says you are Edmond Dorf", said Stok, "but we are both victims of circumstance."

Read it for his description of Cold War Berlin, which was "the only city in which you were safer in the dark" and everyone is willing to do whatever they have to do to achieve what they want (but what is that they want? Does the scientist want to defect? Does Stok want to come with him? Is the Brit going to help both of them? Does he believe them? What is Vulkan's part in this? ) and no one is ever sure who their friends are.

Deighton has written other great books-The Ipcress File, Spy Story, the Game, Set, Match trilogy are all very good, but for me, none of them have the magic of Funeral in Berlin.

Target Audience?

So I read an article in the New York Times on 8/29/06 about a publisher (Hyperion?) starting a new imprint designed specifically for women in their 30's and 40's. Seeing as how I am I am part of this target demographic, I should be looking forward to this, right? Instead, I was offended by it and I've been thinking about why. Part of it is that I think no matter who you are, you can find a book that suits you (unless you just don't like to read, in which case you're hopeless. What are you doing here?). I have never read what I was "supposed to". When I was a child, I did read Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden-but I liked that they were both fairly strong characters who were not waiting for some guy to help them-they got themselves into jams and they got themselves out of them as well. And I read the Hardy Boys too-I read whatever was in the house, and as I have an older brother and sister and my parents, all of whom liked to read as much as I did...well, there was always plenty of reading material. But my point is that I NEVER read what practically every other girl my age was reading. I read a romance novel once and was bored silly by it-I admit to reading two other romance-style books when I was 13 and while they were somewhat interesting (but certainly not for the plot), they were not my usual choice of reading material. This pretty much set me apart from the people with whom I went to middle school and high school. while the girls were reading Harlequin romances and Seventeen, I was reading John D. MacDonald, Alastair MacLean and Vogue. Needless to say, they thought I was a little strange-but my friends knew my taste in books and they really didn't care. My point is that from a young age, I never read what people "thought" I should be reading. My parents didn't care as long as I was reading what they thought was "appropriate" and to this day I'm not sure what that meant to them. Being the youngest meant that they were too tired to police my reading material and as long as I did well in class and didn't seem to have abnormal tendencies, it was okay with them-although Mom was less than thrilled to find me reading Klute when I was 11-I didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

I think college was really where I let myself read science fiction and horror. These are two genres that really have not been that welcoming to women (and I don't want to hear anything about fantasy. Yes, fantasy has been welcoming to women, especially if they write about fairies and dragons and such. I mean hard science fiction which is a world away from fantasy). College was where I could read about vampires in historical settings (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro), Space Opera (C.S Friedman, who I would like to point out is the rare woman writing this stuff and In Conquest Born was great but The Wilding, as a friend of mine said was good up until the last part when it turned into a train wreck of epic proportions. But I would still recommend the Coldfire Trilogy-I loved it) and a book that is still dear to me-Neuromancer. When I first read Neuromancer, I thought it was the coolest book I had ever read. William Gibson's vision of the internet in 1986 is prescient, fascinating, noir-cool and slightly depressing-things that have my name all over them. And imagine today's internet as a cyberspace you could jack your mind into-how cool is that? Gibson has written some (to me) not very good books since, although I really liked Pattern Recognition, but I will always love him and cut him all sorts of slack for Neuromancer and the X-Files episode he wrote. (as an aside, Gawker has had two X-Files references in the past two days. What's up with that?). College is also when I started reading horror-and for me, horror has to have a supernatural element, otherwise it's just a creepy story. Yes, I read Steven King, and I wasn't impressed. His plots are interesting (and I admit The Shining scared the bejeezus out of me so much that I had to give the book away to my sister because I wanted it out of the house and I did find Gerald's Game very scary) but on the whole his writing is pedestria-so much so that I have hard time overlooking it.
But F. Paul Wilson-there's a storyteller who can really write. The Keep is masterpiece of supernatural horror and is just incredibly, amazingly scary. The Repairman Jack series just gets better and better as it started off as more a thriller and now heads off into the supernatural-great tight writing, strong characterization and a heck of a story.
I do read other books besides science fiction and horror, really! Mysteries and thrillers and memoirs and history-it's all fair game as far as I'm concerned.
The new imprint's target audience for women in their 30's and 40's? It's probably not me.
And I hate chick lit unless there's a vampire or something supernatural in it, in case you can't tell.
More to come about Cold War Noir-if you haven't read Funeral in Berlin you should go do it right now.

Books...

Okay, the people who REALLY know me are laughing at the posts about clothes and fashion because they know, no matter how much I love to shop and look at clothes, that books were and always will be my first love. It's just the way it is. I don't remember when I learned to read-I do remember the first book I loved. It was One Fish Two Fish by Dr Seuss and I made my sister read it to me incessantly. This practice has continued today-if I read a book I love, I have to re-read it again and again. Some books cheer me up (Wise Children by Angela Carter), some reassure me with their wonderful writing (Possession by A.S. Byatt) , some have me on the edge of my seat yelling "come on, come on!!" (A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge) and some for not-great writing but for great storytelling (anything by Jack McDevitt or F.Paul Wilson). I don't know how many times I read Gone With the Wind-I do know it was the only thing I read for three months and I sobbed at the end. My only defense is that I was 12 and it was the saddest thing I'd ever read. No, it did NOT take me three months to read it, I read it in two days and did nothing else. I stayed up all night to finish it.
I'll read just about anything if I think it's well written, but have to admit that I don't like long sagas where not many bad things happen to the characters and they don't really learn anything and life pretty much goes on in a long and somewhat involved story-so that pretty much rules out any of today's modern fiction, most of which bores me to tears.
I've said that I love science fiction and I really believe that if you like good writing, there is a science fiction book out there for everyone. I read my first science fiction book when I was probaly 11 or 12-my older brother, being a typical teenage guy had all sorts of science fiction hanging around. They all had odd titles-Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? What was THAT? Imagine my surprise when it got turned into Bladerunner-after we had spent years making fun of him. But I had read all the Agatha Christie and other stuff lying around the house-so I picked up a book by Ursula K. LeGuin. No, I didn't get all the nuance in it. No, I didn't understand some of it. What I did understand was that this story took place on different world than my own (Rocannon's World was the title) and even though it was a strange place with odd customs and fantastic happenings, there were recognizable characters in it with their own storyit may have been differnt from what I knew but it was real. And to me, that it what still makes the best science fiction. The characters may be from a world a billion miles away and two million years in the future but if you can relate to them on some level, or care about what happens to them, the writer has done his or her job-witness a Deepness in the Sky, where some of the lead characters are spider-like creatures, but they have intelligence and humor and while they are not human, you can understand them and the changes happening in their culture. If you can't get past the trapping of science fiction-the future, non-human cultures, etc..well, you're missing a great story about how people can treat each other badly and mistreat other cultures. There's revenge and redemption and a fair bit of action-it's great.
But some people can't get past that. I've had people tell me that they think I have awful taste in books but I don't really care-I like what I like and I usually don't like historical fiction which puts the author's thoughts into the mind of a real person and I don't have any real fondness for chick lit-unless it has supernatural stuff going on-Undead and Unwed is hilarious and Dead as a Doornail (both of which deal with vampires are both very entertaining.
So, this has turned into Why I Love Science Fictioninstead Why I like to Read but that's okay. There will be more later on my love of mysteries and memoirs and the guilty pleasure called supernatural horror.

Books, or what I'm reading now

This is called the reading room, so what I'm reading will always be a topic. Grant's memoirs are kind of long, so it may take me awhile-and I don't feel like starting something else in the meantime (which I have been wont to do in the past). But I wanted to share this great part of the Memoirs-Grant has taken Fort Donelson from the Confederates-a heartening win in a cold February of 1861. Brigadier General Buckner (who was not in charge of the fort when Grant took it) sent him a letter asking to meet to discuss the terms of capitulation. To which Grant responded via his own letter "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works". And that was what happened, Buckner capitulated to Grant's "ungenerous and unchivalrous terms" but the backstory is that Grant and Buckner had spent three years together at West Point and fought together in the Mexican War. When they did meet after the exchange of letters, Buckner told Grant that he wouldn't have taken the fort if he (Buckner) had been in charge to which Grant said that if Buckner had been in charge, he would not have tried taking the fort the he did, with the implication being that he would still have taken it. It was great.
Also, until I moved to Washington, I thought the Civil War was over and the good guys had won, as I said in another post. But when I discussed this with a friend of mine and we talked about why there was a need to keep re-fighting the war, he pointed out all Southern authors who felt the need to revise why they thought the South fought the war-and he thought it was up to each generation to keep up the battle and promote the truth, using hard facts to do it. So, these posts on the Civil War are just my small part of that.

The book I read before Memoirs was Three Days to Never by Tim Powers. If you like a writer who can take two completely diverse topics and weave them together in a spellbinding story and tremendous writing, he's your man. Be warned that his books have science fiction elements-if you can't deal with time-travel (Three Days to Never), genies and the Cold War (Declare) or pirates and voodoo (which he did long before Pirates of the Caribbean in On Stranger Tides), then he's not your man. But if you like good writing and great stories, give him a try.

One More Thing

I've had a few people ask me how I can reconcile loving clothes and being a science fiction geek. The answer is that I can't-I love them both and I don't know why. They both have complexity and beauty and are really fun-isn't that enough? Science fiction geeks do NOT have to be badly dressed-and while many of them don't care what they wear, some do. I DO, and that's enough.

PR

Project Runway is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week! Go Tim Gunn-he's the best-dressed man on TV right now...

Heidi's okay, but she can annoy me sometimes...but I love Nina and Michael (and I was very impressed when they Vera Wang on).

On Fashion

Anyone who knows me know that I love clothes. If I had to make a choice between clothes and books, books would win, but it would be a long and painful decision. I blame the whole thing on my mother for taking me to Marshall Fields State Street store when I was nine or ten-she bought me two dresses-one was dark blue with white cuffs and the other had white flowers on a pale blue background (until I washed it and the background turned pale gray-still pretty though) with a matching white silk scarf that had long fringes. I wore those dresses for years and kept the scarf until high school and it may still be in my parent's basement. That was the beginning of my love affair with clothes and it's just gotten worse-but the thing is, clothes were an escape. Michigan while I was growing up was cold and dreary with pedestrian clothes-and we were lucky if they were just pedestrian and not outright ugly. My mother likes nice clothes and she wears them well (hence the trips to Chicago to go shopping) but it was the 70's-the decade of bad taste. But Vogue of the 70's showed glamorous people wearing outrageously beautiful clothes and I was captivated. It showed there was a world out there of great clothes, not just the jeans and sweathshirts that people wore to high school (Not me, though. I wore jeans to high school and had a teacher say to me that she didn't know that I OWNED a pair of jeans) How I started reading Vogue in high school is another story, but let's just say I fell under the influence of a person who loved fashion as much as I did. She turned out not to be a nice person, but she did have great style.

There are so many things I like about fashion that's it's difficult to know where to start-but let's start with the runway. Many people don't like the runway shows or think the clothes on it are bizarre and expensive-and that's true. But the best runway show both tells a story and sells you a fantasy-the same is true for good print ad or an editorial (these are the pictures shown in a spread in a magazine). You may have no need for jeans with a crystal fringe at the bottom and sequins on the butt and embroidery up the side but if it's done properly, you're sitting there looking at it thinking "yes, I could wear those for the apres-ski party in Switzerland, even though I hate snow wouldn't go to Switzerland for free and would much rather go to Greece-where I could wear that beautiful white columnar dress that I saw in Vogue with the model standing on a portico with the warm blue Agean in the background". Or how about that Ralph Lauren dress that would be perfect or afternoon tea, even if my afternoon tea is usually taken at my desk and not in front of a roaring fire in my Connecticut country home with my imaginary horses playing outside?" I may not be able to afford the trip, the hotel or the country house-but I can have a pair of jeans with embroidery on them from Target or Emporio Armani-I can afford that. That's the beauty of fashion-it can sell the fantasy and give me a small piece of it.
And make no mistake, the items on the runway, whether it's a color, a shape or an idea do filter down to something affordable-whether it's a Missoni knockoff skirt at Banana Republic (which drew stares in New York-I wanted to tell them all that it wasn't the real thing) or a knockoff pair of jeans at Target for $10.99. One of my favorite parts of the Devil Wears Prada was Meryl Streep looking at Anne Hathaway's shapeless, baggy blue sweater and telling her how Yves St Laurent showed that color on the runway two years before and how it had filtered down through time and other designers until it ended up in the bin from which she had fished it out. Practically everything everyone wears was shown on a runway someplace, sometime in some way, shape or form.
What you wear sends a message as well. In Washington, the message is usually that the person wants to be taken seriously-because if you care too much about how you look in Washington, then you can't be considered a smart, serious person (this is not true in many other cities, but it's true here). But clothes also offer a form of protection-either armor against the world (an Armani suit), passport into a certain social class (Laboutin heels) or merely to say to the people around you-"I belong here", no matter where you happen to be. Unless you want to say that you really don't want to be there-that's the message being sent when someone wears a t-shirt to a formal function, unless you're really important, in which case the message being sent is one of being so important that one doesn't have to care about about looking formal-that's the what's happening when top Hollywood executives wear flip-flops to a meeting. And I am endlessly fascinated by what people try to say with their clothes and how they try fit in or don't. The tourist family in Washington who all wear matching yellow and white outfits-are they trying not to lose each other or do they want to say that they all belong together? The obnoxious rich kid who wears the message t-shirt to his Mother's society ball-is just trying to tell her to fuck off personally or is directed at the world in general? If people dress to show the importance of the occasion then what does it mean when the Secretary of State wears high-heeled, pointy-toed boots to a high level meeting? Does she want them to fall in line with her way of thinking, or does she want to kick their collective asses? Trying to puzzle out the message is always interesting-and I have to give credit to Robin Givhan, the Washington Post's fashion editor, because she is a master at this-and a Pulitzer Prize winner because of it.

Tom Cruise

I just have to say that anyone who believes that Viacom axed Tom Cruise because of his strange behavior and the whole Scientology thing doesn't know how how Hollywood works-if Mission Impossible III had made the boatload of money it was expected to make, he woulkd still have his production deal with them and he could have set up a Scientology booth at every Viacom office in the United States. Instead, it came in at below expectations and did not have much staying power and his deal with them was extremely expensive-that's why they axed him-not because of the "wacky antics".

I'm more curious about what this will do to the "5 million for 5 years and he gets the baby" deal I heard he had with Katie (sorry, "Kate") Holmes.

The Civil War

I'm reading the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant right now, so my thoughts lately have been on the Civil War, Grant and Lee. I used to wonder about the people who fought in the war-did they know what it was going to mean? And I've hear the revisionist thinking on the war-that the South wasn't fighting for slavery but for States Rights. I read a book called For Cause and Comrades by James McPherson and it was enlightening, to say the least. The men of South knew full well they were fighting for slavery and their way of life-they came right out and said it in their letters back home. And the men of the North knew full well that the Union was still a fragile thing that they were fighting to preserve-and they were tenacious in doing so. My father has done some genealogical work on his side of the family-and he told me the story of my great great grandfather who fought in the Civil War (I'm from Michigan, so it was the Union Army). He was wounded in battle and sent home to recover-he recovered and went back into battle. This time he was wounded so badly that he was sent home and mustered out of the Army. He recovered on the farm back in Grand Rapids-and once he had recovered enough, he joined the Navy and finished out the war there. And I used to wonder "why?" Was Michigan that bad? Did he need to get away from it? Was war so glorious that he needed it, like a drug? These things may have been true for him (my Dad still hasn't given me an explanation) but for other men serving in the War, the Union cause was enough. This was as true (if not more so) for the South-but the South fought to preserve its way of life and it seems many historians don't seem to believe the Union had the same zeal in fighting for its ideals, but I've come to believe that isn't true-read For Cause and Comrades and see what you think. Also, I've been doing a little bit of reading about Robert E Lee and I'm tired of this "Hero of the South" stuff. Yes, he was a great general-if he'd had more men, better supplies and factories, he probably would have won. But where I come from, he was a traitor of the worst sort. He was second in his class at West Point andhe was Commandant of West Point for two years. Lee said he did not want to fight against the United States-and yet, when the State of Virginia asked, he resigned his commission in the Army in which he had served for 36 years and took over command of the Army of Northern Virginia. When full hostilities broke out and he became one of only five full generals on the Confederate Army, he refused the wear the insignia of a Confederate general, in deference, he said, to his rank as a Colonel in the United States Army. This strikes me as a way for him to salve his conscience and not say that he had actually taken up arms against his country-and is really quite hypocritical. I mean, he was fighting against the Union Army-he might as well have worn the insignia-as it represented exactly what he was doing. I'm just tired of people defending him as a hero-he was no hero. He was a traitor to the United States and his his proven loyalty was to the State of Virginia and the Confederacy. Grant, on the other hand, fought and fought and fought to preserve the Union. "I cannot get rid of this man, Lincoln said. He fights". And he and his men fought against slavery and for the Union-which side had a more noble cause?

Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers is a classic from 1966, filmed documentary-style about the beginning of the war that kicked the French out of Algeria-a country they invaded (on a pretext) in 1830. This movie really speaks to what is happening today-it gave me a shiver when the French Colonel said that that "it's necessary to find an excuse to legitimize our intervention and make it possible. It's necessary to create this for ourselves, this excuse". Considering what is happening in Iraq-this seems extremely prescient, along with that same Colonel being forced to torture the few Algerian guerillas that they managed to capture. Another quote from the Colonel-The word "torture" doesn't appear in our orders. We've always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies. As for the NLF, they request that their members, in the event of capture, should maintain silence for twenty-four hours, and then they may talk. So, the organization has already had the time it needs to render any information useless. What type of interrogation should we choose, the one the courts use for a murder case, that drags on for months? " This could have come from the Bush government in defending torture used at Abu Ghraib-it sounds very much like the briefing written by Alberto Gonzales when he was White House Counsel-the one that defended torture (which, according to the briefing, unless the person being "questioned" dies, is not torture).

I'll close this by giving a quote (sorry, I don't remember who said it) that the Army's duty was to fight the enemy and the police's duty was to protect and serve the people-and when the Army became the police, the enemy started to look an awful lot like the people. This has more and more meaning to me as I look at various situations around the world.

Denis Leary and Mel Gibson

This is a link to transcript of Denis Leary commentating on a baseball game and linking the Jewish players to Mel Gibson-and it's hilarious...

http://www.sethmnookin.com/blog/2006/08/15/man-am-i-happy-denis-learys-on-our-side/

Pop Culture links

Time listed its Top 50 web sites and 25 we can't live without...here are the links and these sites are pretty cool..

Top 10 Entertainment/Arts and Media

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1219395,00.html#drawn

Check out Pandora-you can type in the name of a singer or band and it will stream a radio station playing that music.

Top 10 Shoppping/Lifestyles and Hobbies

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222531,00.html

Top 10 News and Information

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222574,00.html

Top 10 for Staying Connected

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222589,00.html

Top 10 Time Wasters

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222591,00.html

Top 10 Travel/Food/Real Estate

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222598,00.html

Top 10 web Search and Services


http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222614,00.html

And the top 25 they can't live without-it looks like my cache-if they had just put in Go Fug Yourself and EOnLine (okay and the New York Daily News and the New York Post) it would look just like me...

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222769,00.html

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia was an epic movie. No CGI or digital additions, just the real thing on a truly grand scale. I really don't want to get into how historically accurate it was-because it wasn't very historically accurate-but I'd like to quote a friend of mine who said "Lean, like most artists, tells a truth that has little to do with historical reality." Not because it's not accurate doesn't mean it's not a great movie, although I did think the line about Lawrence being one of the greatest self-promoters of all time was actually pretty true. O'Toole's performance was amazing he did brought you along on the journey and got you to make that jump into the reality of the movie-and that isn't an easy thing to accomplish. Alec Guinness plays his part so quietly and yet, I couldn't take my eyes off of him-I think he stole every scene he was in. As for Omar Sharif-he played his part well and was nominated for the Academy Award, but I wonder why Guinness wasn't even nominated-I would have picked him over Omar Sharif any day. I also wondered why O'Toole didn't win the Academy Award that year-and looking at who DID win told me all I needed to know. The winner was Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird but also nominated were Burt Lancaster for Birdman of Alcatraz (one of my favorites), Jack Lemmon for Days of Wine and Roses (a great but depressing movie), and Marcello Mastroianni for Divorce, Italian Style (sorry, haven't seen it). The competition was pretty tough that year and it's hard for me to make a judgment call-to me, O'Toole, Lancaster and Peck...it could have gone to any of them and each would have deserved it. O'Toole went on to seven more nominations without a win, a feat duplicated only by Richard Burton. And it's too bad-have you seen Becket? Or The Stuntman? The Lion in Winter? Those are wonderful movies and he could have won for any of them...

For those of you interested in interviews, this is a great interview with Steven Soderbergh. His line about feeling sad for people who are enjoying something that is not as good as it could be really struck home.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200608/?read=interview_soderbergh

Miami Vice

I hated this movie. I really, really hated this movie. Here's the story. I went to NYC a couple of weeks ago to visit M. It was his pre-birthday weekend, so I went to celebrate and see his cute dog. I drove up on Saturday morning-traffic wasn't too bad until I got to Delaware-I think I could have walked through that part of the state faster than I drove through it, but I finally made it to Jersey. It was good-we went shopping, he went to the gym, I went shopping, we went to dinner and went to the movie. Union Square Cinemas, top level, long line, sold out. We had bought the tickets on line earlier, so no problem and we got decent seats.
Okay, I loved the TV show Miami Vice-it was cool and interesting and the acting was pretty good. (I'm still a little irritated that in all the Michael Mann interviews, he never mentions the late Brandon Tartikoff, whose phrase "MTV Cops" launched MV, but that's okay). This movie makes Don Johnson look like an Oscar caliber actor. Colin Farrell said his lines like English was NOT his first language and didn't know what the words meant. (He went into rehab right actor it finished shooting, so that may be an explanation). I couldn't buy a partnership between he and Jamie Foxx (who has lost A LOT of credibilty with me for doing this movie-he said his lines like he was being paid and just wanted to get out of there). I don't have a problem with violent movies-in fact, I prefer action movies to chick-movies, but the acting in this movie was not good enough to bring me along for the ride. There was clearly an intelligent mind behind it-it's just too bad that nobody lived up to it. And for Jamie to say this wasn't a violent movie...M (who hates violent movies) left. Twice. We met up after the show-but he missed the best part, which was the girl saying as we walked out "Worst movie ever! Am I right?" It wasn't, but it was pretty close. I would have forgiven them the whole thing if Edward James Olmos had been in it, but he wouldn't give up Battlestar Galactica for this piece of crap and who can blame him? I will say that Gong Li was beautiful and could really act, so I wasn't sure what she was doing in this movie-maybe trying to tell Hollywood that they should give her more and better parts?
We had a great time that weekend-most of it was really fun (we ignored the really awful movie except to insult it). And even though it was M's birthday, he gave me an EZ Pass and bought me a great pair of jeans, so that was fine with me.

What I Like to Watch on TV

I'd like to start this off by noting that both Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn's people deny they are engaged-like I said, I keep hearing that they aren't a real couple.

1) Battlestar Galactica. This is the best show on TV right now (okay, it isn't on right now, not even in reruns, but you can watch all of last season on iTunes. And it starts again in October). I feel about Battlestar the way I felt about the X-Files during season two-that was a great show that no one else knew about. Battlestar takes on practically every major issue going on in the world right now and deals with it and subverts it, usually in the same episode and usually with more than one issue. The evil Cylon robots all believe in one God, one purpose. The humans are polytheistic-and squabble amongst themselves over who is who is truly religious and holy. The humans torture the robots-are they doing the right thing? The ARE robots, but they look human and act like humans-do they still deserve to be tortured? And what happens when it's the supposed good guys doing the torturing? Is it an action show? There is plenty of action, but each pilot has their own issues,from Apollo betraying his father the Commander by helping the President to escape (and thereby committing treason), to Starbuck the claiming she doesn't remember the name of anyone who has been killed under her command and ten minutes later naming all of the them while saluting the new ace who has displaced her.
I can't say enough about this show and all the things it does in each episode-it's amazing. And just when you think they can't do anything new-they do it. Just watch the season finale of the 2nd season and tell me I'm wrong. Also, I'd like to give kudos to Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos-two actors who can show their emotions with the most subtle change of expression-they are amazing.

2) The Closer-the show sings because of Kyra Sedgewick. Without her, it would just be another somewhat better than average cop show, but due to her intelligent acting and the chemistry between the rest of the cast, it goes far above your average show. Now let's see if it can better...

3) Fine. I love Project Runway. I don't know why I have to keep arguing that you can be a total science fiction nerd and still love clothes-but that argument never ends for me. Regardless, Project Runway is awesome. The catty, cutthroat contestants, the catty cutthroat judges, the fabulous (and less than fabulous) clothes...And Tim Gunn saying "I don't know what I'm looking at here" and "Make it work"...it's great. It's also the only reality show I watch, so I don't want any comments about American Idol or any other show, because I just don't care.

4) Veronica Mars. This is a great show-why aren't you watching it? Kristen Bell's delivery can't be beat-she can go from humor to pathos and back in the same scene and take you along for the ride. And Enrico Colantoni and Jason Dohring as her father and ex-boyfriend (is he the boyfriend again?) are both wonderful smartasses. Actually, they all are and I can appreciate that in fictional characters.


5) Supernatural. I used to watch CSI religiously when it first came on TV. I loved the Grissom opening wittiscms, Catherine's ongoing Daddy issues and how her daughter only showed up when it convenient, how Warrick and Nick would banter while Sara was off drinking...it was great (although I think it still hasn't quite lived up to the promise of the premiere, which was a truly great show). But somewhere after the Quentin Tarantino funfest that was the season finale awhile ago...I just couldn't do it anymore. I have a high tolerance for freaks and weirdos-I love freaks and weirdos-but it left a bad taste every time I watched. And so-Supernatural. It replaced the Night Stalker (not even 25% as good as the original but I still kind of liked it). But Supernatural has two guys working against the powers of Darkness (and one power in particular that's really bad) while trying find their father (and they found him and fought the bad guy-but are they dead? ) The season finale was killer and they got renewed-so I guess that means that they really aren't dead...Mulder died in so many episodes I can't keep count (actually I can but we won't go into that) so I guess other characters are allowed to do it too.

6) Eureka. This show is on the verge of greatness. If, as Entertainment Weekly says, it acknowleges its X-File roots (I was heartened by its use of the word Consortium in the episode that aired on Agust 8th) then it will become a great. The premiere and one subsequent episode had a very jokey, ha-ha, isn't this funny and cute tone, with an underlying layer of darkness. The two levels did not work together very well-but thenext two episodes managed to a satisfying level of darkness. The episode where the brilliant female scientist had her ideas, thoughts and memories stolen from her by her not-so-brilliant huband and you don't know if she's going to let him be killed or not-it was very good. And the most recent one where a group had paranoid and violent tendencies put into the brainwaves when they accidentally got into the wrong weapons satellite was very well done. I have high hopes for this show-they may be dashed upon the rocks of mediocrity but the Sci-fi channel doesn't have much to lose so we'll see what happens.

7) Bones-I have a soft spot for Bones even though it is coasting on the charisma of its leads. The leads are Emily DeSchanel and David Boreaneaz and they are good looking and not entirely painful to watch. It's clear that Fox wants them to be Mulder and Scully (who they referenced in the first episode) and they never will be. If you want a show where nothing really bad will happen to any of the main characters (they may end up in the hospital but that's about it), this is your show. But they have nice chemistry together and the supporting cast is pretty good.

8) I feel I must put House in here just because I think any cranky and sarcastic character on TV (and not in a cute way) is somehow a shout-out to me. "Yes, we know you're out there watching this show" it seems to say to me. He's not likeable (okay, I don't think anyone has said I'm not likeable. There are people who don't like me but that's different. It just is.) but he is both smart and a smartass and he doesn't care what other people think. My sister once told me that cranky, mean and sarcastic was no way to go through life (I was 17 at the time and it was clear she didn't know me very well) and I think both I and Dr House prove her wrong. I don't know if that's good or bad and one of us isn't fictional but it's too late now.

9&10) The Daily Show and The Colbert Report-two of the funniest and sharpest shows on TV. You can't beat Jon Stewart for a clever insult or Stephen Colbert for playing the pompous idiot (The Word segment of Colbert is the best part of the show-when the show itself mocks him, it does so in a really smart way). You like politics viewed through the lens of snark, these are your shows.

And a few words about Lost...
I loved the first season of Lost. It was spooky and confusing and always interesting. Even the characters I didn't like, I liked because you can't like every character on a show-TV doesn't work that way. The acting was usually really good, even when the characters were annoying (I'm looking at you, Kate). I don't know quite how to read the second season. It had its moments-and when you call someone Anna Lucia (this didn't happen in MY office) because she's bitchy, then you know the show has entered into the collective unconscious. And this show actually made me tear up (not admitting if I actually cried or not) when Bernard and Rose found each other. And yet, it wasn't the same. Too many episodes repeated information we already had without adding any new nuances (although the episodes about the Tailies were masterful). There were too many episodes where the discussions didn't lead anywhere and did not give any new insight into the characters-was this to show they could have pointless discussions like real people? It confused and irritated me and not in a good way. We'll see what happens next season-I really liked the season two season finale so I'm still hoping they can redeem themselves.

Coming up...my essay on why I hated Miami Vice..in which a friend plays a prominent role!

Some gossip I heard...

This is for people who claim I never tell them what I've heard on the street (or the Internet gossip sites, as the case may be). So, Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn are engaged-we'll see how long that lasts. I keep hearing rumors that this is not a real relationship but now they're engaged. Hmmmm. Also, I heard the reason we haven't seen Tom Cruise's baby is because she has a port wine stain that can't be treated until she is three months old-I don't know how true that is either, bit the Scietologists can't be very ahppy about it if it's true.

I'm still going to do the TV post-but Project Runway is on tonight! Be there to watch Tim Gunn say " make it work"....

Some political thoughts

I have never claimed to be a deep political thinker. I have some friends who are really smart and have spent their lives thinking about politics, nation-building and economics, among other things-and that's not me. But I'm still baffled and horrified by what's happened to the Republican Party. I've been a Democrat all my life and I always knew where I stood with the Republicans-I spent a lot of time during the Reagan years arguing with Republicans. They wanted smaller government and for everyone to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. I always believed that people less fortunate than myself could use some help and it should come from the government because it was clear the private sector just wanted to make money, not pay taxes on it and certainly not help the poor. They didn't care what you did and with whom-especially if you were rich-that gave you a pass to do whatever you wanted (that's still true today-and it always will be). They didn't care about other countries (unless they were Communists, in which case they needed to be destroyed). So I don't know who is more horrified over what's happened to the Republican Party-the old guard Republicans or me. These people in office, as Stephen Colbert said "Don't want to tell you how to live your lives, except who you can marry and who you can have sex with". The religious right has taken over the party and it's frightening. On the other hand, the Democrats have just rolled over and shown their collective bellies to the Republicans and I can't figure out if it's because they don't have a strong leader (which they don't, although Hillary Clinton could do it-and I hope she stays in Congress and does not run for President-as a friend said "She's got the makings of a great Parliamentarian" and we both hope she stays in Congress) or they just don't know what they're doing. They don't want to take a stand against the war, they don't want to take a stand against the President, they don't want to take a stand on anything and in the meantime have compromised all the things for which I thought Democrats stood. It's very disenheartening, except that Lamont beat Lieberman last night-I hope that sends a message out to the party about what (at least some of us) Democrats want from their elected representatives.

The next post will be about what I like to watch on TV.

More in Pop Culture

I love pop culture-not to the extent of some people I know, but I love it. That said, I am so not up on today's music, it's ridiculous (me not being up on it, not the music). But the Washington Post recommended some old music the other day (in the In Appreciation column because the guy who created the group just died) and it's great. The group is Love and the title of the album (yes, it was an album then) is Forever Changes. It's late Sixties, Early Seventies Pop music with some hard edges and too many influences for me to name. It's really cool and I recommend it to everyone. Rolling Stone named it #40 on their list of the top most influential albums of all time and I can see why. I also listened to the new Scritti Politti last night and thought that was great as well-I'm a sucker for great 80's music and this was really good.
And I think that's the extent of my music knowledge, at least for now.

The X-Files

I'm concerned about the X-Files movie-David Duchovny said in a recent interview that everyone was signed on and they were good to go. But Gillian is pregnant and due to give birth in December-are they going to wait? If they are going to set the movie during the show, writing in a pregnancy would be a problem (you know, because she was supposed to be infertile until she wasn't). But if it's set AFTER the show ended its run on Fox, it would be okay, except that it's more fun to watch them running around-and that would hard for her to do while she's pregant. I haven't checked out alt.tv.x-files lately (the people on there are even more focused on the show than I am and that's a little scary) but somebody probably knows, so I may have to take a look.

Hip...

The best the definition I heard lately was that hip was of the moment while cool lasted forever. I think the writer was talking about Miles Davis (who will always be cool to me). So, in that vein, sometimes I'm hip (the occasional movie and knowing a pop-culture trend), sometimes I'm cool (I like to think I dress well) and sometimes I am a total nerd-for my love of sci-fi and gadgets. Aren't we all some combination of the three?

It begins...

Yes, I finally created my own Blog. I know...I've been threatening to do it for awhile now and here it is. I'll be sharing what I'm reading, what I'm listening to and I've watched on TV and at the movies. I'll also share things I've learned, mundane though they may be.