Not a “best of 2006” list (barely even a list)

Really just a few movies I’ve seen in the past few weeks. Forgive me, Justin-- films.

Now, Voyager (1942)
Every so often I get on a Bette Davis kick where I first indulge in a little self-pity that I can’t be Bette and then content myself with watching her sly, soft-filter face and grand, emotional monologues. I especially love 1950’s All About Eve, but this movie’s also a good place to start. Davis plays Charlotte, a young woman who evolves from a frumpy daughter to a svelte woman of the world. In one characteristic scene that is definitely not meant be funny, Charlotte’s new beau, unaware that she was once an ugly duckling, studies her family photograph. “Say!” he frowns. “Who's the fat lady with the heavy brow?” “That lady,” gasps Charlotte, spinning away tearfully, "is me!”


The old Charlotte, apparently hideous

Volver, Pedro Almodóvar (2006)
Speaking of drama, nobody does more to whip the passions of women’s lives into such moving, operatic proportions. If the emotions passing across his characters’ faces could be harnessed, they could power a small continent-- and everyone on the continent would be weeping, laughing, and wearing vivid, low-cut blouses.

Little Children, Todd Field (2006)
I almost hesitate to recommend this film, because I don't much like some of the plot, but it’s an improvement on Tom Perrota’s decent novel (how often can you say this about a film?), and the acting and cinematography are extraordinary. Kate Winslet brings her usual, believable beauty, and when the camera pans quietly over a packed community pool and an empty suburban backyard you feel like you're looking through the eyes of a single riveted observer, rather than a cool, omniscient lens. A few minutes in, it was clear that the subject of the story (suburban malaise) would be treated without irony. A big relief.

More generally: We just got a subscription to Wolphin. The first DVD to arrive is, well, a mixed bag: A few excellent shorts, a couple of oddballs and more than one genuine dud. But if you’re interested in checking out short films (oh, these most definitely are films) that nobody one else has seen, I'd say it's well worth subscribing. Either way, be sure to watch the short clip on the website from A Stranger in Her Own City, an excellent documentary about a seventh-grade girl from Yemen who refuses to wear a veil.

So... I still have a little time before the new semester descends, avalanche-style. I want to squeaze in a few more Netflix and theatre trips, so pass along your recommendations! Then it's back to books.

Casper & Ferdinand

Alas, this is not the name of a recent Merchant Ivory release, nor of a storybook ghost and his Portuguese explorer friend. No, these are the names of two small boys who happened to be attending the “Story Hour” at a café on the Upper East Side recently. Coincidentally, it was the same day and the same café where I happened to be enjoying a cup of coffee. I had arrived at the café around 9:45, having put in a long walk looking for the place, and had just sat down with my steaming coffee and opened my laptop. Cold Play was crooning inoffensively on the speakers, and all around gentle students and freelancers were softly clicking away, savoring the free wi-fi.

Little did I know that in mere minutes Story Hour would begin (apparently announced to the entire Metropolitan area at a frequency that only parents and small children can pick up), and New York’s Most Fertile (NYMF) and their bundled offspring would be charging the door. Around 10:15, the café staff went into gear, moving furniture, tossing down colorful blankets, and pouring apple juice into what looked like hundreds of plastic medicine cups. Around 10:30 the front door jangled: an imposing woman with curly hair and an ear-popping voice (The Story-teller, I would learn) strode in, issuing commands: “Let’s have that sofa a little to the left! Where’s my marionette?” Ten minutes later the place was brimming with mothers, nannies, massive strollers and fat toddlers barreling around like drunken sailors. I debated whether to stick it out or run (factors: my coffee was still hot and served in such a nice glass mug, and I had overheard someone said the whole thing would be over in an hour).

Amid my indecision, café employees were shepherding the children and their caretakers into a line, so that the lucky pre-schoolers could receive juice and nametags, and enjoy pointless conversation with the employee distributing said provisions (“And how was your New Year’s Eve, Olaf?” Shuffle, shuffle of snowboots. “I don't know!!”) The front of the line was, of course, inches from where I sat, ruefully staring at my computer screen. And if you’re wondering if I’ve forgotten about the two boys in the title of this post, well here they are: smartly dressed in corduroys, the identical twins of a tall woman in a fur coat. They stepped to the front of the line, and pen poised, the employee asked their names. Their mother placed a bejeweled, proprietary hand atop one of their heads, and trilled--so loudly that I’m sure people in New Jersey could hear-- “Casper and Ferdinand!”

I keep mentally reliving this moment (my brain has important work to do, I tell you), and each time her response is more embellished. Now I’m seeing her in a tiara, tossing back her head and replying, “Why, these lads?! They are none other than Caspah and Fah-dinand!” By tomorrow, she'll probably have some guys with horns on hand to toot as she says their names. And soon red carpets and waving flags will fill the café and all of us humble café patrons will be barred from the free wi-fi and the tempting baked goods until we pay our homage to the young princes... Casper and Ferdinand.

“Alrighty,” says the employee, pen in hand. “Is that Casper with a “K”?

"No," she sniffed. "A 'C'."

Carmelized Endive & Swordfish

Dinner's made, eaten, and now I just have to say that this recipe is delicious. The fish is tasty enough, but the carmelized endive is buttery, sweet, and melts in your mouth. I can't believe it's taken me all these years to discover it.

Kind of Blue


This method of photo processing may look otherwordly, but Steph claims that cyanotypes are actually easy to make. In fact, you could whip one up right now, if only you had a few vials of green ferric ammonium citrate (insert evil scientist laugh) and some other goodies lying around. What you’re looking at is an "excerpted" version of one of Steph's very lovely pieces (Sorry, Ste. One day I'll learn how to fit large pages into my scanner. Baby steps, baby steps).

Chair Love

Voila a Christmas gift—an old chair reupholstered!


This reading chair originally belonged to my great grandmother and was a wedding gift from my parents. It came to us in tattered blue fabric with bits of foam popping out here and there, and spent the last five years stored in a Michigan attic, lodged between boxes of Christmas ornaments and old cans of paint. A few months ago, hushed negotiations started behind my back: Justin contacted his friend Tim (who runs a textile design company with his wife) about selecting a new fabric. Then Just’s dad took the chair in to a Michigan reupholsterer, who—I found out later—was thrilled to work with Tim's merry fabric, since his usual orders involve variations on beige and tan.

This pattern is called “Feasting at the Berry Bush,” and reminds me of modern Swedish cave markings + the Garden of Eden (i.e. Sweden-Eden). If you go here and click on the new stuff for spring, you'll see a whole lot of products made with the same fabric.

With the new upholstery in place, the chair awaited Christmas morning (Justin’s whole family was in on the secret). After the blanket that covered it was whisked away, and I had exclaimed my happiness forty or fifty times, Just’s dad helped him carefully crate and pack it for the trip to NYC. Then we hauled the box into a Kinkos/Fed Ex store, where we heaved it high up into the air and down onto a comically miniscule scale better suited to weighing tea cups than 90 lb crates. Miraculously, it made it to our door in the Bronx two days later.

Ever since it arrived, I’ve been standing back and gazing at it, testing it out: it looks cute with cats on it and without. It doesn’t match the rug but that’s okay. Can I read Dostoevsky in a chair like this?

I also keep thinking about one of the papers I wrote last semester. It dealt with a couple of 19th century women writers, who, I pointed out, tend to fetishize the domestic space. By fetishize, I meant something akin to Marx's definition, that to fetishize an object is to value it beyond its utility. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for instance, Stowe spends a breathless passage describing a character’s beloved old rocking chair, and how it is so wise that, my oh my, if it could talk, the stories it would tell!

While laying out my little critique of this kind of unhealthy chair-loving, I had no idea I'd soon be the owner of a wonderful old chair of my own. I was aware, however, of how much I (my unacademic side) love household objects, how much I obsess over them. I remember my great grandmother’s sugar bowl into which we dipped fresh rhubarb from her garden (she was the chair’s original owner!). I forget events and conversations but I have a good memory for trinkets and collections: glass frogs, china figurines, the sorts of things that clutter shelves and make dusting pointless. And bigger things, too: a wooden table whose sharp edges grew rounded by multiple coats of paint, a gold quilt I found at a garage sale when I was in college that I finally had to throw out after the cat peed on it one too many times.

These things sometimes seem more real to me than anything else, and I don't think I'm alone in this feeling. Even the weird popularity of chotzche and kitsch a few years ago—all those snow globes, religious candles and similar clutter—seems less a critique of sentimentalism than an embarrassed confirmation of our need to understand ourselves through accumulated stuff.

I say we need a new vocabulary to talk about our relationship to things. If I were ten and announced that I loved my chair, another kid my age would instantly holler, “Well, why don’t you marry it!” See? Back then we were already trying to figure out what it means to be attached to stuff.

Anyway, I am smitten with this chair, and hope that's not the sign of a character flaw or a frail constitution.

It's officially my new most favorite thing. What's yours?