bunny killer spotted!

Joei, who I think is the only person reading this blog, has been harassing me to update. Truth me told all my blog-writin' time has been taken up lately by a new gig with Cinema Blend, writing TV news and recaps for them. It's a good time, but time-consuming. Though writing posts making fun of Donald Trump for an actual audience is not a bad deal at all.

So, yeah, this will not be a real post. But here's the best news I've heard all night-- Michael Emerson, the big bad villain on "Lost" and my most inexplicable celebrity crush in history, was spotted walking around near my office! I always swore that Bill Clinton was the only person I would freak out over if I saw him on the street, but with my recent "Lost" obsession, I think Michael Emerson would get that treatment. I mean, he's older than my mom, he plays a creepy-ass villain with a limp on TV, he won an Emmy for playing a serial killer, and for some reason I'm immediately drawn in the second he appears on my screen. I think I might be terrified more than I have a crush, but I'd like to think that if I saw him on the steet, I, unlike that other spotter, would not be too scared to ask what happened to Locke. Even though, seriously guys! What happened to Locke?!?

It's looking like "Lost" really ought to be the topic of my next post. Until then, though, I leave you with the knowledge that I have a crush on a 53-year old man who I do not know who is not even Bill Clinton.

spidey sense

Why care about Spiderman?

I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately, as the unstoppable hype machine has geared up for the first of a long, long summer of loud and astonishing sequels. It’s been a while since I got undeniably giddy about a movie—last summer was largely a waste, except for The Devil Wears Prada, which featured a serious lack of explosions. But every time I saw Tobey Maguire, or even better, red Spiderman vs. black Spiderman, on a poster, I got that little thrill, the knowledge that I would get to squeeze myself in a theater with a bunch of excitable fans and gasp at all the right parts, exactly the way Hollywood wants me to.

I remember seeing the first Spiderman in May 2002, just a few weeks before I graduated high school. Early in the film Peter and Mary Jane graduate high school, and their robes were the same color green I would be wearing later that month. There it was—I was giddy. Driving home with a handful of friends we sped through the empty streets of our hometown, feeling that secret movie elation that you really are like the main character, you really are special.

The sequel came out two summers later, when I was spending a misguided summer abroad in Germany, mostly feeling sorry for myself and trapped by the language barrier. I was visiting Berlin for the weekend with an American friend and wound up seeing Spiderman 2 in the giant Sony dome at Potsdamer Platz, a Germanized version of an American multiplex if there ever was one. I was hungry for anything American that summer, anything that reminded me of home, so I was happy to spend 10 Euros or so basking in an all-American superhero. It was one of the first movies I ever saw in IMAX, which was a jarring experience when Tobey Maguire's face is 60 feet tall and crying.

So I guess it's with nostalgia and some wistful brand attachment that I've looked forward to Spiderman 3, willfully ignoring the critics who slammed the ridiculous screenplay and planning all the bootleg candy I would sneak into the theater. I saw it on IMAX at Lincoln Center, the theater that had made the most money for Spiderman 3 so far, and barely found four seats together. In the front row. Tobey Maguire's head was 60 feet tall, and about 5 yards away from me. Talk about intense.

In the end, I don't think my feelings on the series as a whole have changed that much. Number three is blatantly not as good as the first two-- there's far too much going on, and with three villains to juggle and Spiderman's secret evil self to reckon with, no one really gets a fair shake-- but it's still undeniably fun, which is just about all you can ask for in a big summer movie these days. I hope Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst don't opt to come back from the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sequels that Sony is threatening, because there doesn't seem to be a lot left to work with here. I would have felt a lot better about the film had they let things wrap up in the end, instead of leaving things vaguely open-ended enough to bring Jake Gyllenhaal or Shia LaBeouf or whoever as the next Spiderman. When it started as a trilogy in 2002 it felt exciting, like a Lord of the Rings in latex suits. Now it feels like a money machine with no end in sight.

The details: Topher Grace is delightful, even with terrifying Venom teeth. Thomas Haden Church is frighteningly jacked, and benefits from some great special effects (including the ones that make Sandman look a whole lot like the smoke monster from "Lost"), and makes a pretty good sympathetic villain. (Grace, on the other hand, is totally unsympathetic, which is what makes him so delightful). Bryce Dallas Howard looks great as a blonde. Bruce Campbell somehow shows up in the funniest scene of the film.

That's a lot of new characters, and that's the major element that sucks the life out of the film. Sandman could have had his own film, as could Venom, as could Peter Parker's best friend Harry, who avenges his father by coming back as Green Goblin 2. Black-suited Spiderman, ostensibly the fourth villain of the film, is probably best left alone; representing Peter Parker's trip to the dark side as horrible dancing and a few crotch shots is cheap and boring, and succeeds in making Spiderman, for the first time, the most typical superhero: the least interesting person in the movie.

In the end, I can't hate Spiderman. He's meant too much to me all these years, the reigning superhero in America for my entire four years of college. In 2002 when he swooped through the canyons of Manhattan I longed to live there someday; now I do, but my ardor hasn't changed. And maybe this is just because I'm the girl who will stick up for Back to the Future III, but when you've got background material as strong as the first two films, you can't go all wrong.

This doesn't mean I'll see the fourth film (or fifth or sixth or...), though I might change my mind if some friends with some M&M's and a promise of popcorn are headed to the Lincoln Center. What can I say-- my summer movie standards are pretty low. I want to give them all the benefit of the doubt, which is why I'll put up with every single main character in Spiderman 3 crying. I'm probably exactly the example of what critics hate about audiences who ignore major flaws and accept movies with enough noise to pass, but even budding critics need their guilty pleasures. And when the summer gets hot enough and what you need is air conditioning (and the leftover energy to send you driving through empty night streets), then Spiderman fits the bill. And probably always will.

ain't no mountain high enough

Living in a city can change your perception of what it means to be bad-ass fit. I mean, yeah, people go to the gym, and the Chelsea boys obsess over their muscles, but for women the role models are generally the sticky NYU girls who can't walk to Astor Place without a break at Jamba Juice to catch their breath.

So I decide to walk to 125th street tonight, because Baskin Robbins was selling ice cream for 31 cents (I know, right?) and there is nothing to motivate me for exercise like cheap ice cream. I'm feeling all badass, in my nice spring coat and new Old Navy flip-flops (2 for $5, yes please), when I decide to call my friend Anna.

My friend Anna has been living for the last 8 months in Breckenridge, Colorado, where she has skiied 5 days a week in her job as mountain watch, and skiied the other 2 days a week because she likes it. She has also been going to the gym. She also ran 6 miles the other day. Two summers ago she biked from Minnesota to Connecticut, just because. This girl is a beast.

And I, city-dweller, am about to go visit her. We went hiking together in Nova Scotia last summer and I managed to hold my own, though this picture indicates my feelings about the occasional steep hill:
Bitch bounded up those damn hills. Anyway, I knew when I decided to visit her that she would be dragging me out to the great outdoors, which I was genuinely looking forward to, but tonight on the phone she started warning me about altitude sickness and the odds of getting struck by lightning while on a sheer rock face and of climbing over boulders and...

Oh shit. I do not fear this trip-- last time we went hiking I tried to keep up, and this time I will not even try-- but my God, what have I gotten myself into. I triumphantly reached the summit of 125th street and Amsterdam, nearly 40 blocks from my starting point, and felt the burn in my shins. I hung up with Anna and walked back via Morningside Park, admiring the view from the top.

What ice cream was I eating from the Great Morningside Peak, you ask? Rocky road, of course. Anna will train in her way, and I will train in mine.

To the Rockies!

yo ho ho and a ride on the ferris wheel

Today was a big day. It can pretty much be summed up with this image:

Unfortunately we weren't riding with Woody and the three-eyed alien monster, but you get the point. I took 6-year old Laura to the big kahuna of toy meccas: the Toys 'R Us in Times Square, the toy store so big it has a goddamn Ferris Wheel in the entrance.

I've wondered often since starting my babysitting job what it must be like to be children growing up in this city, with things like the Toys 'R Us Ferris Wheel and the Naked Cowboy (whom we saw later) within walking distance of home. Sometimes when walking around with Laura she has the same reaction I did when I first came to New York in 2nd grade-- pointing out the moving billboards in Times Square, the general appeal of the Ferris Wheel-- but other times, like when a woman completely lost her mind and began screaming at the bus driver one day, her blase attitude is totally disarming.

Happily, today wasn't really one of those days. The giant anamatronic dinosaur was a thrill, as were the Lego statues of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, complete with King Kong. I wondered occasionally if we could get confused for the tourist families who usually pack the place, but happily, to children it doesn't matter. Sometimes its nice to forget to care about fitting in once in a while.

While we were on the Ferris Wheel (the My Little Pony car, in case you were wondering), we had a bird's-eye view of the store's full line of merchandise, which I'm sure is the intention. We saw the Lego Jack Sparrow, the setup for the forthcoming Shrek section, the giant wall-o'-Spiderman that brought us there to begin with. This 6-year old has never seen Pirates of the Caribbean or Spiderman for that matter, but she recognized all the characters instantly. Her 2 1/2 year old sister, who wasn't even born when Spiderman 2 came out, also recognizes the webslinger.

In my job I think a lot about how Hollywood affects its chosen audiences-- reading the Variety box office breakdowns has become a lot of fun, actually-- and seeing it happen with these kids is sometimes jarring. Is it a problem that Laura knows who Jack Sparrow is but not Johnny Depp? The film critic in me wants to scream "No! Show her Edward Scissorhands! And possibly also photos of Johnny Depp during the Viper Room era," but the pop-culture lover in me who already has tickets to an IMAX screening of Spiderman 3 thinks, well, what's the big deal? When I was six the main characters I recognized were Peter Rabbit and maybe Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, or perhaps E.T. Trilogies and sequels and mass marketing on the scale that they exist today didn't exist then-- not that they hadn't been invented, but it was a dry spell of big-budget sequels for kids between Star Wars and, well, the next three Star Wars. I'd like to think that were I six now I'd appreciate Jack Sparrow's eyeliner, but I had to settle for the Little Mermaid's seashell bra.

I feel like there has to be some limit of inundating our kids with the desire to own whatever mass-marketed character is out there, pressuring their parents to buy more and more junk while stifling creativity. But as the weather heats up and I get pumped for eating tons of popcorn in air conditioned theaters all summer, I can't really see much wrong with it. Time to shut my brain off and ride the Ferris Wheel of trademarked characters.

"and then i found five dollars"

This morning I had one of those nice little surprises that tends to send people off in a better mood-- and it did-- but I'm almost embarassed to talk about it. Though obviously not embarassed enough not to talk about it on the internet.

I put on a jacket of mine that I haven't worn in a few months, because it's too light for winter, but dark for spring, blah blah. I put my hand in the jacket pocket... and find money! Hooray!

Usually this discovery is usually along the lines of a few dollars, or maybe a $20 from an ATM visit you forgot about. But oh no... this was 82 DOLLARS. And about 50 of those dollars was in 5-dollar bills, so it was a WAD of cash.

First reaction, of course, is "Hooray! I am awesome and have been given a bounty of cash from my old self!" And this is where most peoples' stories of finding money in old coats end. But my jubilation was immediately followed by "My God, what is WRONG with me? How did I have $82 that disappeared and I NEVER NOTICED."

I've never been the best person with money, or remembering where I put things, or being a functional human (that's another post), but come on now. I'm not exactly so rich-- $82 is about 5 hours of the blood, sweat, and occasional feces of babysitting--that I can forget about large sums of cash. I'm now wondering who is the person whom I owed $82 who never got it, or which old lady I knocked over to steal her hoarded wad of bills. It's entirely possible this lady was my mom.

I walked out of the house feeling pretty jubilant, I have to say-- "I just found cash, so I'm going to the grocery store and buying pre-washed grapes and I'm even gonna be late for work, 'cause I'm rich, bitch!" Buying a new MetroCard was pretty satisfying, as I had just serendipitously found the amount of money it costs, plus a little. But I have a feeling that discovering I'm that kind of person-- the one who forgets about major amounts of money, regardless of how it came to be in my possession (which I still don't know)-- is going to nag me for a little while.

In other news: weather.com is calling for sprinkles all afternoon. Too bad the Baskin Robbins 31 cent scoop night isn't until tomorrow, because sprinkles sound delcious right now.

everything's gone green

Spring has sprung, and I'm afraid I've lost the ability to enjoy it.

It started last fall, at the beginning of the oh-my-God-I'm-not-wearing-a-coat-and-it's-Christmas weather that may well have sparked this green-everything trend we're seeing these days (Leonardo DiCaprio has nothing to do with it either way, I assure you). Unseasonably warm weather, once a sun-kissed promise of brighter days to come, had become a harbinger of tsunamis, earthquakes, and the general death and destruction Al Gore promised us.

In New York I become especially fearful. Before moving here last fall I lived here for a summer in a 5th floor walkup, un-air conditioned Harlem apartment. It was, in every way, hellish. All I remember from that summer is sweating, sweating in my bed, sweating immediately after taking a shower, sweating the entire way to work until collapsing in the antiseptic chill of a corporate office. Ahhh... the man's air conditioning...

While I know this summer will be different-- I have air conditioning, I live on the first floor, and I'm even 50 pounds lighter now, which must make things easier somehow-- the smell of warm garbage or the feel of hot pavement still gives me eerie flashbacks to sitting on a pleather couch in a sublet with a bottle of frozen liquor strategically placed in front of a desk fan to keep me cool. And as God is my witness, I will never return to those dark days again, as much as I may paranoidly fear their return.

It's especially sick when I'm walking outside with the kids I babysit, remarking on how beautiful the day is and practically cackling "But it won't last for long!" I'm not even sure if I'm talking about imminent global warming or the fact that summer's heat will make everyone wilt, but I can't even let our youngest citizens take in a spring day filled with blooming dogwoods and tulips. I guess some environmentalists would call that responsbible-- get 'em while they're young!-- but seriously, you've got to be able to enjoy that splendor in the grass at some point, don't you?

sawed off

New Yorkers always seem boastful of "their" crazy people. In absence of smiling neighbors or kids playing stickball in the street, people on their way to work instead adopt the muttering schizophrenic by the corner store, the panhandler who works the 1 train at the same time each night, or the godawful John Mayer impersonator on the subway platform downtown. Last summer I would see the same bedraggled panhandler doing the same schtick, asking everyone on the train for money and eventually falling to his knees for effect. It was moving the first few times, obviously, but you have to figure the sincerity lets up around the fifth repetition.

I now work just south of Union Square, which features a maze of a subway stop with exits all over the damn place. Take the right turn and you wind up in front of the Virgin megastore; one bad judgment, however, and you're in the park surrounded by a farmer's market, sent through a wormhole to the Catskills.

This morning I got off the N train and stepped up into the maze, for the first time in weeks completely disoriented. At 8:55 a.m., disoriented is not a thing you want to be in a subway station-- you will get run over by kind of crazy people who wield Starbucks cups and pashminas instead of tattered flannel shirts. I turned around a few times and located myself, finally realizing the reason for my confusion: my saw player was missing. The guy who is in the Union Square station every day, after the pan flute player I think, warbling on a saw. He was gone, and without him, I was lost.

Maybe next time I should tip the guy, being my North Star and all, but that would probably ruin my cred with the other commuters. While you always fear that your local schizophrenic will fuck you up if you cross him, it's the middle managers with the spike heels I fear most.

an indecent proposal

I got propositioned this weekend. Propositioned by a boy with whom I've had a flirtation for some time, who stands no more than a foot away from me any time we speak, and I never back away. And this was all on a night when I was back visiting Wesleyan and didn't really have a reliable place to stay, as my futon was located in the room of my friend who was fresh off a breakup and quite drunk.

And what did I, the propositioned one, do? I turned him down. Why? Because I am a teenage girl.

See, said propositioner, A, had just broken up with my good friend, B. Now B happened to be in New York last weekend, apparently hobnobbing with important people, or otherwise I would have spent the night watching her flirt with a series of guys while insisting that A is the only one she wants. B isn't a whiner; she's fresh off a breakup, and a particularly confusing one, as A dumped her with little provocation. The best explanation anyone can think of is that B is attractive, funny, and smart, and A is a college-age boy who can't help but fuck these things up.

Yet somehow A is also a college-age boy to whom I am quite attracted, for reasons I have absolutely never been able to pin down. B has known this for a while, and at some point while they were dating, it was suggested that A and I would be able to make out, no strings attached. To understand how this works you need to understand the sexual dynamics of Wesleyan, which is not worth your time, so bear with me. Said makeout never happened, both because of chance and a deep sense of guilt. But the suggestion never went away.

When A offered me a place to stay this weekend, with all implied strings attached, I did a lightning-fast calculation that I have been trained in since high school: the girlfriend loyalty test. How long had they been broken up? (3 weeks) How much had B mentioned him every time we had spoken? (every 10 minutes or so) How long had A and I been blatantly flirting? (about a year) How long had it been since I had made out with someone? (a month) How upset would B be? How easily could I keep this a secret?

So I said no. It is the code of girls beginning in high school that a friend's ex is off-limits, regardless of how long it has been since the breakup. I had one casual friend approach me six months after ending my first relationship to ask if it was OK if she date my ex; they've now been dating for two years. I wasn't allowed to say no, but it was the courtesy that counted. In the code of women, this conversation must happen; at a college as small as Wesleyan, friendships have been ruined when the code was broken.

Later that night, A and I had somehow avoided post-proposition awkwardness and were holding up a third friend, the one who had promised me use of his futon. It was his 21st birthday. It was the end of the night. Between the slumped shoulders of our friend, over his mutterings that he just wanted to lay down on the sidewalk, I kept catching A's eye, and I knew that his offer still stood. And I thought about it. I could escort my friend safely home and come back for a fling that had been a good-bad idea for months. Or I could go home, see friend #3 safely to sleep and wake up there in the morning, with nothing on my conscience but letting that friend get so drunk in the first place.

So I said no, again. And I realized that the code of teenage girls isn't immature, unlike most of the things teenage girls come up with. It's the ultimate act of being an adult-- putting someone else before you, no matter how sexually frustrated you've been for how long. I'm not sure that A and I are finished, and I'm not sure that I'll ever tell B about this night. But the code is upheld. Justice is restored. The teenage girls win again.