cityblog

The internet has been in and out and in and out at home, which is infuriating and more than annoying, but seriously, what can you do?

Last night we had artichokes and ginger chicken and watched The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I’d never seen and Tom hadn’t seen in about nine years, I guess. (What? Freshman year of high school was that long ago?) Great movie. What a cast. I want to read the book now.

Filed at 1:54 pm under Life, Film
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I’d just like to link to Josh’s most recent article on Relevant (which, yes, I published) because I think it’s so good, and it deals with a subject close to my heart - what if you didn’t recognize or conceive of your calling to the arts/creative life until life had already started?

Filed at 4:50 pm under Life, Art
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I am, in fact, alive. I had a blog post written up but yesterday was the day of the Internet Access from Hell and it never made it up. Verizon needs a kick in the pants.

To make a long story short, we bought a lot of furniture this weekend - a lot of it discounted. We assembled it last night and now we are awaiting the (cloudlike pillowtop) mattress delivery on Friday. I will be happy when I can sleep on a bed again. Our couch is a little . . . short (though otherwise surprisingly cushy). It’s great to have at least half the apartment in semi-order, and a DVD player and a TV and a couch. I feel like a grownup, albeit a grownup inhabiting a cute shoebox.

We also saw Little Miss Sunshine, which was brilliant and hilarious and off-kilter and the best movie I’ve seen all year, and Half Nelson, which was brilliantly acted but not as good as I wanted and expected it to be.

Dad update: he is doing outpatient therapy (which means if he’s feeling ok, he may even be able to make the wedding!), and he’s in good spirits when I talk to him but he’s uncomfortable physically and not really able to sleep. Pumping arsenic into your body isn’t the most energy-giving activity in the world.

I was out yesterday, working from home and awaiting the furniture delivery, so when I got in this morning I was thrilled to discover that our Bialetti Cappuccino maker (in silver, not spotted) was delivered, as well as our VillaWare Uno Belgian Waffle Maker (big pockets!). Wooha! As I told Laura, we are highfalutin’ peeps now.

Filed at 12:04 pm under Film, Wedding, Dad Update
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Excellent article - “What On Earth is Christian Film Criticism?“.

Filed at 12:55 pm under Links, Writing, Film
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I am beginning to write my life story
On blank sheets of paper
The one that I write everyday
Whether or not I pick up a pen
The days: pages
The nights: illustrations
My mouth: dialogue
The years: chapters

Characters come and go
The protagonist which is me
The antagonist which is me

Somedays I lose the plot
And flounder
I can’t remember why I dreamed of what I now have
Joyless hours lay about
Like fish on the bank of a river
Gills no longer even heaving
And these are the pages I wish I could leave out
Pages where nothing much happens
Pages where I sabotage myself
With muddled thinking
And lack of will
And the pale pasty flowers of malaise
I paint all over my walls
With the paintbrush called
What if
If only
Instead of
What is

But every writer knows we have to write to find out
We have to write to discover what wants to happen
We have to write to know where the story needs to go
We have to write to learn why we are here
We have to write to find we are not alone

And a few days back I had an epiphany
I am not going to talk about my epiphany with anyone
Because I have a long list of failed epiphanies
That I talked about too soon

But in the meanwhile
Here are a few reasons why I might bother to get out of bed
I can work to serve my future children
If I should ever have any
Give them the gift of passion and persistence
In my own life’s work
I can write to bring some heart and warmth to others
However few
I can strum music to make the world a little wider for my friends
I can fling handfuls of muddy joy at a whitewashed church
That all too often misses the point
And missed the point again
A church that would rather be white than alive
I can give back what I was given and let it be multiplied

I want to put on this threadbare tuxedo and serve
Is this not what any good film does
That makes us want to watch our own lives
And take care not to miss the good parts
Any song that makes us want to pull the car over to the side of the road
Any book that someone labored and poured over
That makes us weep and smile together
A painting that makes us breathe deeply
The air sweeter because of its existence
(Close your eyes and still see it)

These are all gifts that were ultimately the work of servants
Whether or not they knew what they were doing
They served a thirsty world a glass of water
The best they could offer
Surprising Jesus and even themselves

There is at times much dogged effort that goes into creating good things
But by mopping our brows with the backs of our hands
And continuing to run after something that we sometimes cannot name
We hope to see our love made physical
Find our feet have left the ground
And hello, we are suddenly being skyjacked by joy (are we not)
And it is fleeting

And by doing the least we could do
We occasionally find ourselves doing more than we knew how
Last first
Lost found
Unbound

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
Roll your eyes:
Now it’s your turn

Linford Detweiler (from here)

Filed at 10:05 am under Life, Poetry
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I want this book.

Filed at 1:47 pm under Film, Books
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Starting September 1 - download Mockingbird for free, and legal!

Filed at 1:06 pm under Music
2 Comments

Some of you know that I’m an editor (here’s my section). And I’ve been an editor off and on for a long time. With my mom, I edited our homeschool group’s monthly 16-page newsletter throughout all four years of high school. And, I’ve often confided to Tom that I (not-so-secretly) think I’m a much better editor than writer. And I’m a big fan of The Elements of Style, the classic book that’s been updated and whimsically illustrated (go buy it!).

I don’t claim to be a brilliant writer - or even a completely grammatical one, which should be abundantly obvious from this humble blog - but I do a fair amount of editing, and I’m admittedly rougher on other people’s work than my own. And here are my top ten stylistic tips for aspiring writers that I’ve been compiling for a while, many of which are scavenged from Strunk & White but keep popping up.

This list could also be called “how to not let your editor know you’re an amateur”.

1. Don’t ever say “the fact that”. It weakens your sentence. You don’t need to point out that it’s a fact if it is a fact, because facts, by nature, are self-evident.

2. Same with “very”. Please, use very very sparingly, and only when it’s very necessary to prove your point.

3. Cut, cut, cut. And then cut some more. Everyone is too long-winded in their first draft, so please, cut it down by one-third. Say what you mean, and be done with it.

4. Stop using adjectives and adverbs, in general, unless they’re key to the phrase and your readers’ understanding. You may think it sounds nice, but it’s just too dang wordy.

5. Find out what the passive voice is, and then don’t use it.

6. Please learn your/you’re, its/it’s, and there/their/they’re. This was something we learned in the third grade.

7. Don’t ever use all-caps, and refrain from using italics unless you have a compelling reason. Your phrasing should provide the emphasis for the word. If it doesn’t, revise.

8. Please use paragraph breaks. And remember, there’s rarely a reason to have more than five sentences in a paragraph. I’d rather have a too-choppy essay that I can paste together than a huge block of text that I just can’t read.

9. Do not use cliched metaphors - “big as a house”, “tired as a dog”, . They make no impact on the reader because they’re commonplace. Find a new description, something that will prompt a doubletake in your reader and make them smile.

10. Learn to punctuate.

</steps off soapbox>

And please, ignore my grammar mistakes in this entry. :)

P.S. Little-known fact about me: I think one of my life ambitions is to edit a literary journal, like Image.

Filed at 11:25 am under Writing
8 Comments

Worth reading: Come and See: Leonardo da Vinci’s Philip in The Last Supper. Mako Fujimura weighs in with grace on Da Vinci, the last supper, art criticism, and the church.

Filed at 9:48 am under Writing, Theology, Art, Faith
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Ok - this bears repeating, because it will be awesome:

SAVE THE DATE: Thursday afternoon, February 22, 2007 through Saturday evening, February 24, 2007 for the next IAM Conference in NYC! Topic will be “Redemptive Culture” and key note speaker will be Jeremy Begbie, Founder and director of the international research project, “Theology Through the Arts,” and author of Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts.

Other presenters include David Hegeman, author of Plowing in Hope: Toward a Biblical Theology of Culture (thenativetourist.blogspot.com); Joshua Trent, Chief of Staff of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); and possibly the Limon Dance Company (TBD.) Location will be the Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

Tom and I will be there, come hell or high water, and you should be too. You’ll be sorry if you miss it.

Filed at 9:45 am under New York City, Art
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Yes, I’m still alive.

My dad’s waiting on his doctor to get back from vacation, but he is resting at home and will likely be admitted to the hospital for treatments next week. So, I’m hoping to get home this weekend to see them beforehand.

We decided, after talking with my parents and Pastor Stan and a few other people that the best option was to keep the wedding and reception on September 2, but to have a small private ceremony early in the morning at the hospital on Saturday. This way, Dad can be there for the “real” wedding, but our community of friends and family can be involved as well. We’ve toned it down a bit at the reception (no dancing!) but we thought this was for the best.

Other than that, life plods gently along. Tom’s sister Jessica (hi!!) was in the area last week and we spent Sunday with her, culminating in a Jars of Clay concert. Judd & Maggie and Christopher Williams were the opening acts, and both were excellent. I’m always a bit skeptical about the quality of opening acts, and I’m usually bored when listening to songs I haven’t heard before, but this was great.

And Jars . . . well, they were awesome. It’s long been one of my life goals to see them in concert. They were rocking out, which appears to match their upcoming album (intriguingly titled “Good Monsters” and dropping on September 5). But they also played a ton of old songs, including “Flood” and “Love Song for a Savior”, and even inserted a bit of “Worlds Apart” into another tune. Dan Haseltine’s voice has been one of my favorite voices in music, so it was just awesome to see them live.

Filed at 10:03 am under Daily Goings-On, Music, Dad Update
2 Comments

Y’all, I’m ashamed to say that I did not finish a single book in July. I read a bunch of great essays in the New Yorker and Image Journal, but wedding planning has a way of eating your free time and keeping you from being able to read.

I know I’ll finish the premarital counseling books this month, so that will be something. But don’t count on too much else until . . . well, at least until September. :)

Filed at 11:26 am under Books
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Tom and I drove home from Albany this Sunday listening to Grey Ghost Stories, one of Linford Detweiler’s instrumental albums. We were talking about something entirely different when Tom laughed and said, “Stop. Listen.”

He reached over and backed up the CD just a hair, and we listened and heard a lovely feminine chuckle in the middle of one of the melodies. “Karin,” I said, and Tom nodded. (Karin Berquist & Linford Detweiler are the married couple that anchor Over the Rhine.)

I told him that I think someday, when we’ve done some real work, someone’s going to ask us who we took as modern-day role models, and we’re going to name people like Linford & Karin and Alfred & Alma.

Alfred, of course, being Alfred Hitchcock, and Alma being his wife of over 50 years. We saw Psycho a couple of weekends ago and watched the “Making of Psycho” documentary afterwards, and Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter, mentioned that he knew the screenplay was good when Alfred came back and said, “Alma liked it.”

In fact, a biography of Alma on an Alfred Hitchcock site says that “she was his assistant in virtually every production” from when they married onward, and that in a biography, “Hitchcock mentions several times that Alma was his harshest critic, and had a great eye for finding out inconsistencies in the rough cut.” Alma was an editor and a screenwriter. IMDB says, “She was Alfred Hitchcock’s closest collaborator . . . contributed to all of her husband’s films, usually uncredited. She would be shown stories, scripts, storyboards and all elements through the final edit.”

Tom and I, when we heard about Alma in the documentary, turned and grinned knowingly at each other. That’s us. That’s where we hope to be - Tom being the brilliant creative people-person guy, and me being the girl who makes things happen, and both of us finding scripts we like and fiddling with them till they’re perfect. Maybe we’ll write one together.

Rarely have I had real-person role models, but now I do. Alma. (Karin too.)

Filed at 4:20 pm under Daily Goings-On, Film, Love
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On Tuesday night, I went to Symphony in the Park with IAM. When Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony concluded, and the fireworks were over, the hundreds of thousands of people crammed onto the Great Lawn started filing out. (My remark: “I am so glad we’re not all driving out of here.”)

Nobody was really expecting the immediate crashing massive thunderstorm, and I personally got caught under the awning of a building for half an hour waiting for the rain to let up. It didn’t, and despite my lack of umbrella, I decided I didn’t want to be out there till midnight and have to take the late night trains. So I made a break for the subway, realizing as I left that I had no idea what street I was near or really where the edge of the park was, exactly.

I looked for buildings, finally found Central Park West (fully soaked at this point) and came out at 77th Street. Unfortunate, since there’s a subway at 81st and a subway at 72nd, but none at 77th. I trudged down to 72nd and joined the literal throng of people waiting for the downtown train - any downtown train.

But there’s where I had to smile. You may or may not have experience New York City before, and in any case, you likely know that New Yorkers have a distinct reputation for coldness and rudeness. That pretty much means that you haven’t been there during a thunderstorm.

Three guys, obviously musicians themselves, were singing at the top of their lungs, and a few others were singing along, grinning, talking to the people around them. The train got to the station and I squeezed on, sliding into the six inches between the wall of people and the door and managed to push far enough in to let the doors close. The guy who I was pressed into kept apologizing and finally offered me a bottle of wine (he had three unopened ones in his bag) - I declined, but it was sweet. Everyone was talking to people they clearly didn’t know about the music and the evening. The whole city turned out for the symphony, and they all went home together, best of friends.

Yesterday it was hot and dry again, and most people were back to reading and listening to music on the subway. But I’ll insist, over and over . . . this is a great place to live.

Filed at 10:33 am under New York City, Music
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So the authors of Emily Ever After & Consider Lily blogged about their interview, and you should read their blog, because it’s great fun.

Filed at 3:43 pm under Writing, Books
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I’m going to Philharmonic in the Park tonight with IAM, and it appears that they’re playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven’s Fifth.

Score. I miss classical music. (Well, romantic music, I guess. No, wait. What period was Prokofiev?)

Filed at 3:13 pm under New York City, Music
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. . . check it out.

Filed at 4:01 pm under Writing
5 Comments

I took Friday off, because my brother, Sean (17 years old and very tall, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of his acquaintance) came to visit for the weekend. So I dropped the wedding invitations off at the printer in the morning, then met him at Penn Station and got us on a train to New Jersey. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with the cast and crew on Tom’s set as they filmed the big fight scene from the movie. Highlight of the day - getting unexpectedly sprayed, along with the whole crew, by some very enthusiastic fake blood during a fake gunshot, and having to keep quiet because the cameras were rolling.

On Saturday, Tom came over mid-morning and we made a huge breakfast (scrambled eggs with olives and fresh mozzarella, maple sausage, biscuits from a can!!!, orange juice, and grapes). We checked out Beacon’s Closet, which is a very hipster “selective” thrift shop a block from my apartment that is awesome and has great clothes and fabulous prices. Hopefully I can offload some of my nicer cast-off clothes onto them in exchange for store credit.

We then trucked up to BAM for Psycho, which was awesome (I think Sean thought so too). I hadn’t seen it before but I adore Hitchcock movies (I wrote a paper on North by Northwest for a class once :D). And that evening we bought pizza and went to Prospect Park and listened to some experimental Northern Mexican video-based electronica (uh, yeah) and left after six songs and went to the Cocoa Bar and oversugared ourselves.

Sean and I actually made it to church early on Sunday (that is truly amazing), then went to lunch with friends at an Afghani restaurant in the East Village, followed by ice cream, followed by watching pigeons in Union Square and buying sandwiches and root beer floats until we had to send him home. And then Tom and I went back to the apartment, ate chips and very good but very hot salsa, and watched the very long documentary about the making of Psycho.

So now my apartment is a complete wreck and I have a million and one things to do this week, but very little to worry about. My one and only concern these days is that more people will be able to make the wedding than we expect, and we’ll run out of room and money simultaneously. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work out. :)

Filed at 9:45 am under Life, Film
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Yesterday was not one of my more shining moments, as I got up insanely early to make it to girls’ group and spend the rest of the day alternately chasing the electric company, Kinko’s, various people at work, and wedding-related people in an attempt to regain sanity. So, after work, I decided to be a teensy bit irresponsible and disappear for an hour and a half to see The Devil Wears Prada.

I was astounded at how much better it was than the book. I couldn’t pinpoint it till I read the review in the New Yorker this morning and realized that by removing all of Andy Sach’s internal dialogue, which is very wordy and repetitive and snotty, the story works much better. They completely streamlined the plot and Meryl Streep was brilliant and even if the fashion was bad, I loved about half of it. Particularly the shoes. I heart the shoes.

I could relate, a bit. I’ve never, ever had the proverbial Boss From Hell. Every boss I’ve ever had has been amazing and I’ve loved them and they’ve loved me and all has been peachy. But I have had a handful of high-stress jobs where I was on point all the time and where when things went wrong, it was specifically my fault. And I’ve had that experience of people close to me resenting the job. So I could sympathize with Andy and was even a bit ticked at her friends, because I know what it is to be nailed to a job and to be doing work you don’t want to do and have people think you’re being overdramatic.

It was totally bizarre to be able to pick out where, specifically, they were in every shot. The “Elias-Clark” building is actually on the same block as mine - it’s Time Warner Books, I think - and I pass it constantly. You can catch Radio City Music Hall in a few shots - I’m right on the other side of that at this exact moment. I’m actually not sure how I missed seeing them shoot the movie. Good ol’ midtown.

And as my own “Overheard in NY”, I heard this conversation as I walked out of the theater:

Man: Wow, that was pretty good.
Woman: Yeah, it reminded me of that movie with the White Witch.
Man: Oh, yeah! 101 Dalmations!
Woman: Right!

Filed at 9:34 am under New York City, Film, Facepalm
4 Comments

Not sure why, exactly, but I was looking over IMDB’s trivia for Four Weddings and a Funeral - which, by the way, is a great movie with a horrible ending. But anyhow, these two bits made me laugh:

The budget for the film was so small that the Scottish wedding wasn’t filmed in Scotland, and the extras had to bring their own suits to the weddings.

(Tom will be glad to know that.)

While making the film, Hugh Grant thought the movie was awful.

Filed at 2:53 pm under Film, Facepalm
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I haven’t had much urge to blog lately. Hmm.

Anyhow, I was able to leave early on Friday due to everyone else leaving early on Friday. So Tom came into the city and worked from his phone while I picked out bridesmaid dresses at David’s Bridal. I finally settled on this one, in Peridot (light green). It looks horrible on that model but when I tried it on, it was lovely.

We went to see Double Indemnity on Friday night, after Thai food in Astoria. ‘Twas good. Film Forum is having a Billy Wilder festival of sorts and so we were trying to hit them.

On Saturday, Tom came over in the late morning and I cooked scrambled eggs for the very first time (I don’t usually eat eggs, but I’m learning) and we had chocolate biscuits and grapes and orange juice while he tied up some loose ends. Then we headed into the city for another premarital counseling session (which was great). Then we met up with Tara Leigh and her friend Doug (who she calls Danger, for no apparent reason ;D) for dinner/coffee/lots of conversation. Twas an excellent evening. Will post pics soon. They are blurry, unfortunately, mostly because we were at this grill & bar place that’s on the end of Pier 46 in Chelsea, right on the water, and you can feel the dock floating. It was a weird sensation.

We went to church on Sunday, and then brunch with a bunch of people (including Angela, who is in town for most of the month, hurrah!). And then to see Some Like It Hot. Odd bit of trivia from IMDB about filming that movie:

Marilyn Monroe required 47 takes to get “It’s me, Sugar” correct, instead saying either “Sugar, it’s me” or “It’s Sugar, me”. After take 30, Billy Wilder had the line written on a blackboard. Another scene required Monroe to rummage through some drawers and say “Where’s the bourbon?” After 40 takes of her saying “Where’s the whiskey?”, ‘Where’s the bottle?”, or “Where’s the bonbon?”, Wilder pasted the correct line in one of the drawers. After Monroe became confused about which drawer contained the line, Wilder had it pasted in every drawer. Fifty-nine takes were required for this scene and when she finally does say it, she has her back to the camera, leading some to wonder if Wilder finally gave up and had it dubbed.

And they wonder why people make blonde jokes.

I spent Monday kicking around the apartment, checking my work email and messages (there were none; everyone apparently took the day off), doing laundry, working on some websites, buying groceries, cleaning the bathroom, etc. I tried to go see The Devil Wears Prada, and even walked all the way down to the theater at 16th St (like 20 blocks), but it was sold out. Pooey. Better luck later.

And yesterday I went to Jersey to hang out with Tom and his family. We ate Chinese food and ice cream and watched fireworks. ‘Twas a thoroughly enjoyable holiday.

Filed at 11:05 am under Daily Goings-On, Film
2 Comments

My goodness, it’s already time for June Book Roundup.

The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy
A great book that seems to go in circles but still end up somewhere. For anyone who’s ever wondered the big “what if”s of life. [8/10]

Consider Lily, Anne Dayton & May Vanderbilt
By the authors of Emily Ever After. This book is actually much more sophisticated and funny than the first. If you like chick lit, chances are you’ll like this “good girl lit” book. I really enjoyed it. It’s Christian without being corny, preachy, or overbearing, and they actually managed to integrate blogging, of all things, in the most natural way I’ve ever seen.[9/10]

Reading now . . . The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon. For pre-marital counseling, we’re working through Reforming Marriage by Doug Wilson and The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb.

I think I’ll be lucky if I finish all of those, but if I do, I want to re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Filed at 12:16 pm under Books
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Here’s an idea
Let’s grab this life and wring its neck with joy
So that when it comes time to die
When we find we have no breath left
It is because we willingly strangled ourselves
With love
Fell down dead
And mostly happy
- Linford Detweiler

Filed at 10:26 am under Life, Poetry
2 Comments

An exceptional interview with Dick Staub about Christians and art and media and consumerist marketing of all of the above.

Filed at 8:50 pm under Music, Film, Art
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SPIDEY!

(Worth the wait time.)

Filed at 6:04 pm under Geekitude, Film
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