Congrats, JFC!

Sunday night, Lisa, Meghan, Zak and I all got together to watch the 97th Grey Cup. Let’s take a minute to talk about what that was like. Jeff’s team, the Montreal Alouettes, sort of made it a difficult game to watch since they trailed for 59 minutes and 59 seconds of the 60 minute game. The consensus is that it was both the best (since Jeff’s team won the Super Bowl of Canada) and worst game we have ever seen. But, what counts is that Jeff’s team won and he’s a Grey Cup winner. And how cool is it that the Grey Cup got carried out by mounties in the full red jacket outfit? Pretty cool if you ask me.

Let’s all take this opportunity to give a hearty congratulations to the Montreal Alouettes and to Jeff for their Grey Cup win!

 

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Thanksgiving morning, Zak and I went to see a movie since we didn’t have to cook this year. We decided to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is a sort of puppet/animationish movie with the voices of Meryl Streep and George Clooney that is based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl. It’s about a fox that steals stuff from three farmers and the drama that ensues. It doesn’t sound great, but was really good. Zak and I loved it. A lot. Amber, Erica, John, you would all love this movie. As for the rest of you, I’m not so sure. It looks like it was made in the 1970’s and Mr. Fox wears an orange curdoroy suit which is always awesome.

        

It was a really great way to start our Thanksgiving. Then we headed over to a bar called Gossip for a pumpkin ravioli appetizer and some drinks. After that we met Zak’s friend Roberta for an Indian food feast. Roberta had never had Indian food before, can you believe it? Life without curry is no life at all! After lunch we went to another restaurant (that makes three on the day) and had some cranberry sangria and some pumpkin pie because Roberta had also never had that. Needless to say, she loved both the Indian food and the pumpkin pie, how could she not? (In case you’re wondering, Roberta is from Brazil.)

After a break for a nap, Zak and I had our traditional viewing of Home Alone which was, as always, perfection.

Happy last day of November to you all.

 

Electronic Greetings Day

Today is electronic greetings day. What a great day! In order to celebrate, I’m going to greet you all on this blog, then send a text at some point today (to those of you who have given me your number) and I’ll send out an e-card. What a day! If I facebooked, I’d greet you there, but you all know how I feel about facebook. So no luck.

Speaking of facebook, I was reading an article in Women’s Health the other day talking about how a lot of couples are having problems with their partner staying in contact with their exes on Facebook and how it didnt’ used to be such a problem but now it’s easier to stay in contact. I found this article very funny but I’m pretty sure it was meant to be serious. So, let’s let this be a warning to you all to be careful about who you’re talking to on your pages or else it might break up your current relationship. Or something like that. Perhaps if you are communicating with exes, Electronic Greetings Day should be Electronic Non-Greetings Day and you should stop. Ponder that. With that said, the reason I found it so funny is that I think it’s silly that people get so upset about others talking to exes. Who cares? Unless the guy beat you and that’s why you broke up, why shouldn’t you talk to him? Ponder that as well.

 

An Evil Idea

The following is a really funny but evil article that was in the Wall Street Journal on Monday:

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Let’s Fix Michigan and Notre Dame

‘Irish Wolverines’ Would Fill a Solid Roster and Be a Network-TV Hit; A New Fight Song by Iggy Pop?

By JASON GAY

Surely by now you know that the greatest crisis facing this country isn’t the economy or war, but the perilous states of the Michigan and Notre Dame football teams. It’s gotten obnoxious, the overwrought attention these once-storied, now-torpid programs still command, and no one’s stepping up and offering the smoothest, wisest solution to their troubles:

Merger! The Notre Michigan Irish Wolverines.

Please don’t laugh. We’re as serious as Bill Belichick on fourth-and-two (or as Yale was on fourth-and-22 Saturday in what will forever be known as the Harvard-”Fail” game).

 

Synthesizing Michigan and Notre Dame just makes sense. Neither institution has the ammunition or patience to persevere individually. Saturday, 5-7 Michigan fell to its nettlesome rival Ohio State for the sixth time in a row, which sadly means there are 6-year-olds in Ann Arbor who have no idea what it’s like to taste Buckeye plasma. Meanwhile 6-5 Notre Dame fell in double overtime to plucky UConn and is installed as a six-point underdog next week against the Wildcats from High School Musical.

Naturally, the carnage in South Bend and Ann Arbor has led to apoplectic alumni and torch-and-pitchfork rumormongering about the fate of the head coaches. The consensus is that Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis will be evicted and Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez may cling on for one more season, in which he must beat Ohio State, win a national title, a Super Bowl, an Oscar and invent a hangover-free Scotch in order to save his job.

But why not Frankenstein these two struggling programs into one Super Team? The Notre Michigan Irish Wolverines would be an instant force in college football. Talent? Combined, they’ll have plenty. Think of Notre Dame’s quarterback Jimmy Clausen—who wouldn’t bail early for the NFL—throwing passes to Michigan’s Roy Roundtree. Exposure? Wouldn’t NBC salivate to overpay for the Irish Wolverines? Expect to see the team running windsprints on Jay Leno.

And we don’t want either Mr. Weis or Mr. Rodriguez to be dismissed. We’d have them installed as co-head coaches, and at their lavish combined salary, they’d be fools to complain. We’d even give them a new name: ChaRod. Can you imagine the excitement when ChaRod visits a recruit’s living room? Consider those ChaRod press conferences.

Naturally, there are logistical issues. Uniforms: we’d probably go maize pants, white jerseys and navy-blue helmets with gold Wolverine-style wings. Home games: they’d have to do half in Ann Arbor, the other half in South Bend. Fight song: trickier. Better to start from scratch. We’ll get James Osterberg to work on it; he spent some time at Michigan before transforming into Iggy Pop.

As for those fevered Michigan and Notre Dame alumni, we imagine this merger will feel like a demotion. But the Irish Wolverines are as close to an instant solution as you’ll get. Fire Charlie, dump Rich Rod, and you’re looking at a new coach, a new system, and several more years of listening to Jesse Palmer smoothly chronicling your ailments. And if they don’t win, we’ll simply combine them with the Cleveland Browns, piloted by the indefatigable ChaRodGini.

 

Martin Dressler

I recently finished the Pulitzer winner, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. It’s about a boy with big dreams and his attempts to make them happen in late 19th century New York City when the Upper West Side (where I live) was open land and wilderness where people didn’t live. It was so funny to hear him talk about the wilds of the Upper West Side and his new businesses that were opened up in areas no one wanted to visit (West End and Riverside-the two avenues I live between). This book was a very different book from the last two Pulitzer winners I read (Olive and Stone Diaries) in that it was written by a man and a bit more dry. This book left me with questions in a good way as the main character was also left with questions.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

1. “No, the trouble was the wife, Mrs. Louise Hamilton, a buxom bustling handsome dark-haired lady whose large black eyes were skilled in the expression of disdain, outrage, dissatisfaction, and astonished disbelief taht the simplest request had been handled with such ineptitude.”

2. “As a child he had always stopped at the park with his mother, so that the places beyond seemed to him not simply inaccessible but imaginary, like pictures of igloos or cactus flowers. Adulthood therefore was sheer magic: with a wave of the magic wand you summoned a cab and ventured into the imaginary world.”

3. “Every city dweller harbored a double desire. The desire to be in the thick of things and the equal and opposite desire to escape from the horrible thick of things to some peaceful rural place with shady paths, murmuring streams, and the hum of bumblebees over vaguely imagined forests.”

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello all and a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Since I don’t have to host a dinner for the first time since moving to New York, Zak and I have decided to have the anti-Thanksgiving. We are starting our day with a movie for $6 and then heading to an Indian buffet for curry and happy hour and then home for the only traditional part of our day, the annual viewing of Home Alone. Everyone else is out of the city and Zak and I are looking forward to our untraditional day!

I’ll let you know how our day goes. Best of luck to you all today. My fingers are crossed for no kitchen fires or deep fried turkey traumas.

 

Pulitzer’s

The following is a list of the Pulitzer prize winners for the last 20 years. I have read 13 out of the 20 and have at home 3 more that are on the list of things to read. I have just started 1997’s winner, Martin Dressler and am looking forward to it as it takes place in New York City in the late 1800’s. And, on top of that, look at what the New York Times Book Review had to say about it, “The wonderful, wonder-full bok is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” I’m not even sure what that means, it sounds so lovely.

1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

1991: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike

1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks

2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

In case you were wondering, my favorite books on this list are: The Shipping News, The Hours, Interpreter of Maladies, Olive Kitteridge and The Road. All great books. I also seriously recommend reading The Road before the movie comes out as Pulitzer winning books don’t always make for the best movies and you’ll want to read it before you see it. (Of course, I never think any movies are as good as the books, so I am a little biased). I am looking forward to reading the rest of the winners of the past two decades but, looking only at title, I’m most excited about The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. How great does that sound? The Pulitzer began awarding prizes in 1948 but didn’t award one every year, which I love. It’s like the Pulitzer is a hard-ass and isn’t just going to give you the award if you were the best of the year because it may have been a crappy year for books. I think that’s so fantastic. I’ve read a few of the much older winners such as To Kill a Mockingbird and one of my favorite books of all time, The Old Man and the Sea. Seriously, man, woman, child, whatever you are, you should read this book. It’s about 4 pages long, so you could knock it out in no time at all.

Happy Reading, friends. I only wish that the Reading Rainbow theme would play in the background everytime I talked about books. That would make this blog-reading experience perfect. (Well, as close to perfect as you can get without Levar Burton telling you about the books!)

 

The Known World

Last week I finished my third Pulitzer installment and again have to say that it was great. One common thread in a lot of the Pulitzer’s I have read in the past is that they are just pieces of a whole story and while you get enough to be satisfied with what you’ve read, you don’t get a neat little packaged ending. I like that. A lot. This book was great. For those of you who don’t remember, I’ll retype the back cover of the book and then continue with my favorite quotes from the book.

1. “He was thirty-five years old and for every moment of those years he had been someone’s slave, a white man’s slave and then another white man’s slave and now, for nearly ten years, the overseer slave for a black master.”

2. “He believed whistling inside or outside the house was bad luck, but right then, as he worked, he was tempted to whistle.”

3. “She did not know the history of eons about herself; there was only the feeling in her bones that for some time she had been venturing into a place unknown and that feeling made her hope for a road that would not cut too deeply into her feet and her soul.”

4. “He wanted to die but he really didn’t want to catch a cold to do it.”

This book was about a plantation and all of the people working in it, with it and in any way involved with it. That’s a lot of people to keep track of, but the author never mentioned anyone in passing. Someone who was mentioned in an aside in the early pages would come back with an entire story later. While I at first thought the man referenced on the back cover of the book was the main character, the further I got into this book the more I realized that there isn’t a main character. At different times you could say that the plantation owners, the owners friends, the town sherrif, the neighboring slaves were each the main character and that made for a very interesting read to be so invested in what happened to so many people. This was a very well written book and I definately recommend it to all, especially Erica. (Ever wonder what kind of book I could read that would not end in a recommendation to Erica?)

 

A Final Effort

Today was the final day of my classes for this semester. And I am nothing short of thrilled to be done with that stupid statistics class. On top of the fact that I hated the subject matter and sucked at it, the professor did not follow several of the university policies when it came to grading and weekly submission of assignments which put a real damper on my grade and may be why my class of 24 slowly made its way down to a final total of 7 students. Hmmm…surely that reflects on the teacher, no?

Moving on from that bitter tirade. Okay, no I’m not. I am going to say that I can’t wait for my course evaluation to fully express my dismay at this course and the way it was run by this professor. This reminds me of the nursing school evaluation I wrote when done with nursing school that was a full 2 pages long. How cathartic that was and I assume this one will be as well.

Now really moving on from that rant. In the ongoing battle of “what’s the lesson?” with my quiz grades, I took my final two quizzes recently and decided to employ both methods. You know, the half-assed guessing method and the full effort actual work method, even though I’ve been getting mixed results. So, on my first quiz, I went through it quickly, guessed and made a 60%. Okay, that makes sense. Then on my final quiz, I took my time, really thought things through and made a 90%. That’s right, 90%. I guess the lesson is clear after all. Guessing on quizzes and bad grades go hand in hand and that one time I made a 90% with the guess method was probably a fluke. In fact, I think we can call it a statistical anomaly. That’s right, I did learn a thing or two even though I didn’t like the class.

 

Hello

I know I often say hello to my readers, but today is a very special hello because today is World Hello Day! Today I challenge us all to say hello a little more often. For example, instead of smiling at the doormen I pass on my way to work, today I will say hello. Perhaps I will even say hello to strangers I pass on the street (well maybe, that seems like an odd thing for a New Yorker to do). So today friends, let’s put on our friendly caps and say hello. Or you can try some of my other favorites:

1. “hello-hi” : this is from the movie Never Been Kissed and Autumn says it all the time and now I say it all the time. It’s a good one.

2. “bonjour-hi”: this is a Maren favorite when talking to me and we have, as yet, to take it outside of ourselves, but today seems like the perfect time.

So, take your pick and wow someone with an unexpected Hello today!