City kids suck

It’s been a crazy couple of days, I saw the new MoMA, went to an incredibly extravagant premiere party for the ideologically unsound “Christmas with the Kranks,” wandered in on a HEEB release party that left me entirely unbalanced, and spotted a Hasidic Jew having a cocktail. Not at the Heeb party. Pondering the inner-life of Hasidic Jews and their feelings about the dominant culture takes up the plurality of my subway thoughts, so he sent me into a tailspin.
MoMA was gorgeous and they gave me a free bag.
Later that night I went to see “The Kranks” (for work, obvs) at Radio City. The Rockettes opened the show in reindeer antlers, which was kind of fun except they weren’t 100% in sync. The difference between high-school dance performances and professional dance performances has been explained to me as being the difference between having to accept the poor state of sync and the right to expect a better one, plus, Hello, you’re the Rockettes, move your feet at the same time.
There were little party favors on the seats which included popcorn, two bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies (sponser) and a copy of the book “Skipping Christmas” written by John Grisham. Yes, that John Grisham. This party bag was the best ploy to rack up beverage sales ever and trying to fight the thirst I consumed seven Gingerbread cookies, which are truly, truly outstanding.
As for the movie, well I’m not shocking anyone when I say it’s crap. But it’s kind of interesting anyway, because the emotions the film evokes are entirely unintentional. Basically, Tim Allen decides he wants to skip Christmas this year and go on a cruise. But instead of being normal about it, he decides to get militantly anti-Christmas (no tree, no carolers, no donations), so his neighbors turn weirdly fascist on him and insist he participate through totally inappropriate and intimidating means. All of a sudden, Tim Allen’s daughter announces she’s coming home for the holidays, and wham, bam, the neighbors were right all along, they pitch in to pull off a great holiday and Tim Allen was such a Scrooge for wanting to go to the Caribbean. But, wait, why can’t he have Christmas Eve and go on the cruise? What’s wrong with a cruise? The message of the film is basically, NEVER EVER FORSAKE CHRISTMAS, THE ULTIMATE HOLIDAY, OR YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.
I felt very Jewish.
After the movie there were shuttle buses to the after party in Central Park, which was the most obscene use of money I’ve ever witnessed. After walking past snow machines into two huge tents, you were confronted by enormous tables of Christmas food, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, Waldorf Salad, jello molds, baked beans, carving stations of turkey, ham, salmon and roast beef, mini-hamburgers, hotdogs, mac and cheese, tables of desserts like chocolate covered strawberries, figgy pudding, crème brule, ice cream, pumpkin pudding, rum cake, two huge open bars with top shelf liquor and tables of apple martinis, egg nogg, hot cocoa, a Santa Claus taking requests, carolers decked out in costume, caterers dressed as elves, a DJ elf, two go-go Santa’s helper dancers, stilt walkers, a decorate your own gingerbread man station, and sno-cones. Also, the floor of the second tent was a white rug about ’70 by ‘100 feet that was all One Piece.
I dragged Amy along and as we sat down to decorate gingerbread men at the same table as this little girl in braces, we said something like, “This is fucking crazy.” Amy looks over at the girl and her mom and says, “Ooh, sorry.” The girl says, “It’s okay, I’m in the eighth grade.

For Felicity fans

There's a new spot on Stanton and Allen called Epstein's Bar.

I've said all this on the phone. My B.

In studying for the GRE I've come across lots of words I don't know and lots of words I only thought I knew:
Peruse: to examine with care.
Cleave: 1) to split 2) to adhere, cling, or stick fast.
How can a word mean one thing and that thing's opposite? (There's probably a word that means just that). Or really, how can such a word appear in an analogy? Since you would then be able to make two opposite analogies.
And, 20 bucks to the first person who can explain how Vapid is the antonym of Effervescent.

Movies

EW's Holiday Movie guide came out this past week and there are 15 movies coming out between now and New Years that I want to see (there are now 18 movies on the list, but I won't see Alexander or The Sea Inside, for which I've subbed The Woodsman, Spanglish, and Million Dollar Baby. And Life Aquatic. How did I skip Life Aquatic?). 15 movies is $153.75. That's more than I've spent on groceries for the past two months, because as I've mentioned, I eat like a scavenger and I'm wily, wily I tell you, about the free meals. They should call me Willa E. Coyote. No. No, really, they shouldn't.
So here's the plan, I'm going to make a list right now of all these films, and then come back when I've seen them and fill in the blank with up to three sentences about each. I will break this rule at will, but for now, it seems like a good amount. Because you can sum up everything in three sentences, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong, but 3 sentences are what I got, kids, and about all I can ask you to stomach.
Alfie: Jude Law's girlfriend is really hot. Watching this movie I was like, "Ohhhhh, that's how hot you have to be to snag Jude Law. That makes a lot of sense. It probably helps she's turning 23 in December" and that's all I thought.
Sideways: Keeping with the beauty theme, all due respect to Mr. Giamatti, but I'm pretty certain Virginia Madsen wouldn't sleep with your character anywhere but movieland: on top of being uga you're a depressed, know it all, sad sack. But, this movie surprised me. Going in with low expectations (because the reviewers loved it too much) I ended up liking it a bunch.
The Incredibles: omigod, so good. Soooo good. Holly Hunter has the best voice ever. Also, Mr. Incredible reminded me of the husband who was just on Wife-swap, who you thought was a misogynistic ass monkey for making his wife work 16 hour days, but was really the world's biggest sweetheart. Sigh.
Bridget Jones: This movie goes bad when Bridget ends up in a Thai prison staging an extravagant rendition of "Like A Virgin" with 50 Thai prisoners. It makes me laugh to think about Helen Fielding's state of mind when she came up with that plot twist [And then.... Bridget goes to jail in Thailand for drug smuggling! How great is that? How Funny is that? Well, not in an immediately obvious way. Just go with it for a little.]
Finding Neverland: I saw this at a free preview the Thursday night before it opened and they confiscated everyone's camera phones so they wouldn't, uh, videotape the entire movie? On their phone?
Kinsey: Chris O'Donnell calls his wife a "Prick Nibbler." A+.
Bad Education: Almovodar uses such pretty colors. And, supporting my theory that a place with palm trees can't suck, Spain has palm tress. But mostly with this one we're back to the beauty theme: Gael is pretty. This makes movie number four (Alfie, Closer, Ocean's 12) that's all about beautiful women.
Alexander (I don't want to see this, but inevitably I will): No, actually, I won't.
A Very Long Engagement: Made the mistake of reading the book the day before I saw the movie. Lost all ability to make judgments as I spent the entire moving thinking, "where's the snow? Where's the snowman? Why a lighthouse? Where'd all the letters go? Why isn't Celestin blond? Polio? Dead parents? huh?"
Closer: David Edelstein's is pretty dead-on in saying the film's exclusive focus on get-togethers and break-ups leaves you indifferent to any of the couplings. And he's probably right about Julia Roberts, who reigns herself in pretty magisterially. She may top Portman in terms of acting, but, strangely, Portman tops her in terms of being a goddamn, gen-u-ine movie star. The last shot of the movie, Portman parading down 42nd Street, turning heads left and right, was like the anointing of the future queen of celluloid
Ocean's 12: Slippery goodness. But everyone's getting old. Brad's got wrinkles and a mini-mullet in flashback scenes, Julia looks like a Picasso early on in the film, and Matt Damon was never really cute, but now you can tell. George looks good because he's always been old (or just 43, which surprised me). And of course the Zeta-Jones looks dope, rounding out the all-about-beauty films of the season.
The Woodsman: At first I had nothing to say about this movie. Then I realized that's because I got cowed by "taste" and "earnestness," who'd teamed up to produce a serious film I couldn't figure out how to criticize. It's the same thing that happened when I saw Spider: serious issue + intention to produce art + thoughtful direction + excellent acting = gaping hole in my critical faculties. Even though I can't critique it properly, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that good.
The Life Aquatic: I’m in the minority because I don’t really care all that much about The Royal Tenenbaums. And I kind of don’t understand Rushmore. Maybe if I watched them both about 20 more times I’d get it. Oh well. I liked Aquatic, more than the others, though it’s an inferior movie. An, I recognized Harold right away and it freaked me out, because he's so old. And short. Even though I've always thought of him as really lanky.
Million Dollar Baby: This movie has been haunting me. I'm on the brink of hating it, but only because I feel so manipulated and upset by it, which I think is probably a testament to how good it is. It is, like the haters say, both cliched and out of nowhere tragic. But I'm a big believer in the power of cliche and it pretty much nails tragedy, which is exactly the reason I'll never bring myself to watch it again it.
The Aviator: Was fine. I dunno why all the greens were blue (blue peas anyone?) and I dunno why critics were hating on Leo and his scungy-ass beard. I thought he held his own. But, the mom= craziness= citizen kane= lame, lame, lame unbelievable explanation for complex phenomenon.
Lemony Snicket:
The Sea Inside :I hate the trailer for this movie. Fucking HATE it. There needs to be a moratorium on the use of magic realism to promote anything slightly Latin America.
Spanglish: It's always fun to go to movies that critics in general have decided are either really great or really horrible. For some reason this movie rubbed people all the wrong way, coming off as an icy, misogynistic film masquerading as a feel good piece, but I don't know why. I totally enjoyed it. I found Tea Leoni to be kind of sympathetic even though she's a huge bitch and Adam Sandler to be 100% insufferable even though he's a nice guy.
Meet the Fockers:
Phantom of The Opera :
In Good Company:
The Assassination of Richard Nixon:

Fat bunny

fatbunny2, originally uploaded by willabeast.

No joke, but not funny

At this point I am really, profoundly, bodily, and spiritually in need of The O.C (which spellchecker just suggested was a broken attempt at Ohio. If only).