I Hate Continental

Now with the devastation that is going on in Southeast Asia, I really should shut my damned mouth. Any complaints I have are minor compared to that. But nonetheless...I do feel the need to vent just a wee bit.

Of course what happened probably wasn't their fault, but I am not a patient person. The flight from LA to Newark was scheduled to leave LAX at 9:50 pm. By 9:45 we were still not on the plane, the plane have arrived only minutes earlier. They had to deplane the passengers, clean and cater the plane and then they'd let us on. Eventually they got around to doing all that.

And then they let us get on the plane. By now I'm used to people being completely incapable of finding their seat and putting their luggage in the overhead bins without holding up the line for a solid 10 minutes. I finally got to my seat and though I always fly coach and don't expect much, these seats had about three inches of legroom. I think this was exacerbated by the man in front of me who insisted on lowering his chair till his head was basically in my lap. Three warning from the stewardess did nothing to make him raise it. But finally, we were all boarded and ready to go.

But nothing happened.

And 15 minutes passed.

The captain, a man who sounded like he had to think heavily between each word, came on the PA and announced, rather haltingly, that the mechanics missed something in their crosscheck and the onboard computers seemed to have a glitch. He'd tell us more when he heard something.

Another 15 minutes passes.

Mr. Public Speaking got back on to let us know that they were going to power down the plane, hoping that maybe that would fix the problem. Is a plane like a computer? Do you just restart it when it's not working properly? I guess I learn new things everyday.

A little while after this annoucement, everything goes dark and quiet. Stays that way for 10 minutes. Then, they turned the plane back on.

20 minutes pass before we hear anything from the cockpit. Why is it when you want to sleep they wake you up with idiot commentary on the route the plane will take and the outside temperature (who is going out on the wing to take a walk??) but when the plane won't start, they tell you nothing.

It was only after 2 hours of sitting on the tarmac were we finally cleared for take off.

And I was thrilled. I expected either free headsets or maybe some free booze or something as a thanks for our limited patience.

Know what we got? NOTHING. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. In fact not only did we get nothing, we didn't get a thank you from the cockpit and the flight personnel were all rather nasty and sarcastic. I actually heard someone ask for a pillow and be told "Yeah, whatever."

I made it to NY in one piece, tired and out of sorts.
I am not looking forward to my flight back Monday morning.

To Decide or Not to Decide - That is the Question

I hate making decisions. About everything.

I think I’ve always been more comfortable with what I don’t want than what I do want. I find it easier to hear suggestions and negate them than make those suggestions myself.

I’m not terribly proud of this. In fact I think it’s one of the less charming aspects of my personality. Though I don’t think it’s as awful as being indecisive. I know if I’m going to like something or not. I’m not wishy-washy. I just don’t like to be the one making decisions.

Maybe I just don’t trust myself to make the right choice? Maybe I’m afraid that if I make that choice, five seconds later I’m going to regret it? If I pick this, doesn’t that automatically mean I can’t have that too? No, that’s not right. I’m usually not worried about missing out on something. There are very few choices in this world that once made, keep you from ever going back and trying out what you decided against. But no matter why, I have a hard time with those darned decisions.

Needless to say, this makes my life a bit difficult at times, as this inability reaches every aspect of my life. It rears its ugly head when I’m out with friends, trying to figure out what or where to eat. It stops me dead in my tracks when trying to pick between several books to purchase – I want to read all of them, not just one! And of late, it’s created a big problem with my emotions.
Of course this also has something to do with my very well-known destructive streak – if something or someone is bad for me, lemme at ‘em! Take both of these personality traits and it makes getting out of bad situations as tough as climbing out of quicksand. If a friend hasn’t been much of a friend to me or has been particularly and continuously nasty, you can put money on the fact that I will sit on the fence for months trying to decide if it’s worth it to me to keep up contact. I’ll think of a million reasons not to and then think of just a few good reasons why I should. If those few good ones outweigh the million bad ones, I’ll keep on that fence for a while longer. If there is a guy that I just can’t get no matter what, rather than cutting loose the ties and moving on, I’ll wait on making that decision. Some people call that procrastination; some call it just incredibly stupid. But I just can’t act.

Sometimes I just feel like Hamlet, though I’m not really contemplating the death of my regicidal uncle. Like Hamlet, I find myself caught between two outcomes and unsure which outcome is right. And while I don’t plan to die of a poisoned epee wound, the hurt I end up causing myself because of this inaction feel deadly.

And so I sit here now trying to decide what to do. I know what the “right” choice is, or what everyone else is calling the “right” choice. And I know what I want. Somewhere between what is right and what I want there must be an answer. But I haven’t found it yet, and so I’m still deciding.

My Christmas Miracle

Since I'm Jewish I really didn't get a Christmas miracle...though I did pray for one.

What I wanted for Christmas was so small, so simple you'd think it wouldn't even be a special request at all. I wanted a slice of pizza. A good slice, not crap you'd get from Domino's or Pizza Hut. The good thin crust pizza with just the right amount of sauce and cheese and crunch. No toppings required, though maybe I'd put on a bit of oregano and a dash of hot red pepper flakes.
A simple slice of pizza on a cold Los Angeles night.

However, little did I know this would be impossible to find on December 25th.

My friend and I set out at 7 pm. We had the food we wanted in mind, a rarity since we usually don't figure that until we've been driving around for a half hour. But last night we knew we wanted pizza. We even knew our destination - a tiny pizza shop on 3rd street. We'd been there before and they'd made really good pizza. But as we drove by, it became apparent that they were closed. We quickly thought of another pizza place that we liked, sure it was a bit of a drive, but who wants to settle for tasteless doughy pizza? We drove out to Century City and navigated the many roadblocks that the city had decided to put up. They were widening the lanes and all but one lane in each direction was closed off. After a series of right turns we found ourselves in front of the restaurant, but alas they were closed as well. Was there no where that would serve us? We thought that maybe Westwood, the college area of LA, should definitely have someplace open. College kids like pizza, right? Now in retrospect I realize that all those hungry college kids must be home, negating the necessity of an open pizza parlor in Westwood. Frantically we tried to think of other popular places in LA, places with a lot of pedestrian traffic (meaning more than 5 people walk by an hour). Santa Monica! And the Promenade! Surely a place that was built to be walked upon will have people and those people will want to eat, and everyone loves pizza! However, I'm sure you've guessed that no one was on the Promenade, or at least not enough people to warrant any open restaurants.

We drove up and down small side streets, looking for bistros, cafes, at this point any sort of food would do. It was an hour and a half into our journey and we had not come across one open restaurant, only Coffee Bean and Tea Leafs who were relishing the crowds they got on a night when Starbucks remained closed. But I wanted more than a latte and a muffin. We drove around for another 30 minutes before deciding we might as well try Jerry's. Jerry's is the only place in LA that is open 24 hours a day. At 1o pm when you want a quick bite or maybe just some chicken soup, Jerry's is the only place open and willing to oblige. Surely they would be serving. And they were. They were the only restaurant open in Los Angeles on Christmas Night. And everyone knew it. The line was out the door and almost around the corner. Couples, families, groups of friends all huddled together for warmth to wait out the "fifteen to twenty minutes" we were told we'd have to wait. Of course it turned into a half hour but we were determined.

Finally we were seated at a booth. On one side a couple with a young child, on the other a bunch of rowdy teenagers. I didn't care, I was starving. I opened the multipaneled menu. They serve everything at Jerry's: Mexican, Italian, deli. You can get waffles at midnight on a Tuesday if you so wish. I scanned the menu and found the section marked "PIZZA". I looked carefully over the topping choices, maybe I did want toppings after all. Was I in a pineapple or an eggplant mood? The waitress made her way over to the booth. My friend ordered his usual veggie burger and I wasn't' surprised. He wasn't the one who really wanted pizza anyway. Finally, after 2 hours of driving and waiting, I got my turn to order. Suddenly the fatigue of the search hit me and the last thing I wanted was a slice of pizza. I turned the waitress and said "I'll have a diet coke with lemon..." I paused, making a split second decision. "And anything to eat?" "Yes. I'll have a cheeseburger." She nodded, took our menus and walked away. My friend looked at me and said "But I thought you wanted pizza?" I replied "After all that, pizza is the last thing I could eat right now."

The cheeseburger was good, but I wouldn't say it hit the spot.

I'm ready for next Saturday night. It won't be Christmas and I'll be in New York, the City of Pizza. Maybe there they'll have something open...

Happy Birthday Ludwig

I spent most of my college career listening to classical music. I took around 10 music classes in college, though I can't read a note. I once memorized an entire opera in Italian. So I should have remembered that today was the 234th birthday of one of my favorite composers, Ludwig van Beethoven. Of course I didn't but luckily NPR was there to remind me.

My real introduction to classical music was the 1984 movie "Amadeus", easily one of my top 4 favorite films. I've seen the movie over 50 times and can recite the lines along with actors, mimicking facial expressions and hand gestures. I didn't see the movie till I was 10 but I remember being dumbstruck by the music I heard. And soon after I received the soundtrack as a Chanukah present, cementing my love of this heavenly music.

It wasn't until I was older that I really appreciated anyone else apart from Mozart. Sure I had dabbled in Baroque, because really, who wouldn't love Bach? But my first and only true love was the tragic figure of Wolfgang M., who died young but left such a dazzling legacy. It took my first boyfriend to open my eyes to the world of Beethoven. I remember we were once sitting in the lobby of some hotel, waiting for the rain to stop, and debating our favorite songs. He asked me which piece of music I would never grow tired of hearing. Being all sorts of young and naive at that point I thought and answered "Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes". A good song but not one of infinite value. His response was a quick "Beethoven's 9th". Oddly, I knew the basic tune that everyone knows but not much more. At his urging I slowly started listening to the piece. It was soon after the I fell head over heels for the boy and for the music.

One of my goals in entering college was to take a class purely on Mozart and just my luck, one was offered second semester of my freshman year. Though I was well versed in Mozart's concerti, symphonies and operas, the man wrote over 600 pieces of music and I learned a lot that semester. However it was not until the next semester when I took a class purely on Beethoven that I learned more than just how to interpret the pieces. Over the course of that semester I learned about Beethoven's less than perfect life, his struggle against...pretty much everything including his famous deafness. And along with this life history, I heard pieces to complement it. He wrote symphonies that pushed the boundaries of what a symphony should be, breaking the bonds of the classical format. The first movement of his 3rd symphony was longer than most other composer's entire 4 movement works. In the 5th, he took a basic rhythm and made it one of the most recognizable beats in the world. His singular opera, "Fidelio", while the story itself was heavily flawed and endearingly naive, featured the most beautiful quartet I have ever heard. The ideals of brotherhood and love that he treats so reverently in the 9th have it roots even there. His late piano sonatas and concerti show a depth and a sadness almost unbearable. But we all know it was in his 9th and final symphony that his true genius was revealed.

Wagner once wrote that all of German music was clearly leading up to him, from Bach through Beethoven. He cited the fact that in the 9th, Beethoven had to eventually use words to express the desired emotions. A bit egotistic if you ask me. However he was right and Beethoven did seem to need that poem by Friedrich Schiller to articulate his feelings. The beginning of the fourth movement quotes a bit from each of the previous 3 and one commentator has said that when the Bass said "O Freunde nicht diese Tone" (Oh friends not these tunes) it's as though he is rejecting the motives from the 3 prior movement because they do not properly proclaim his beliefs. He is successful with the simple folk tune of An Die Freude, which builds and builds till it becomes the truly triumphant ode to joy that transfixes all who hear it. The rest of the movement when played correctly makes one believe that maybe there is such a thing a bliss, no matter how fleeting.

Mozart had "Amadeus" but poor Beethoven had only the exceedingly poor film, "Immortal Beloved". They tried so very hard to give the man his due, but achieved only a visually stunning movie with a soaring soundtrack and a script that should have been burned. The maestro, as he was repeatedly referred to, deserved better. My boyfriend at the time, the same one who had introduced me to the joys of Beethoven, insisted we see the film. I had forced him to watch "Amadeus" and though he did agree that it was remarkable, he believed that a biopic about his musical idol would clearly be superior. Alas, the movie was awful, even he could see that. But I will never forget sitting in the balcony of a theatre on 68th and Broadway, hearing the second movement from Beethoven's 7th fill the cavernous auditorium and my usually stoic significant other taking my hand as slow tears trickled down his face. Things didn't end well for us but I can never forget the man who cried at Beethoven. And I'll always thank Beethoven for giving me such a moment.

Pretty People and the Pretty People They Betray

Mike Nichols' new movie "Closer" one of the more brutal experiences you can have in the theatre in 2004. And in a year that gave us "Troy", "Alexander", and every other movie containing violence and blood and gore, that is saying quite a lot. But this movie's brutality doesn't involve physical injury. The bruises and scars that are inflicted in "Closer" are all on the inside, in the mind and in the heart and are all that much more difficult to get over.

The plot start simple but convolutes easily. Jude Law's Dan and Natalie Portman's Alice meet cute. Then a little while later, Dan meets Julia Roberts' Anna. After a terribly amusing online chat involving a mistaken identity, Anna ends up meeting Clive Owen's Larry. And then it all goes to hell. With betrayal upon betrayal, all in the name of love and happiness, the four of them hurt each other in ways that seem unimaginable during those first few moments of relationship bliss.

None of the characters are particularly or distinctly drawn. Here and there a bit of past, a hint of history is dropped to further the plot and possibly give a peek at motivation. But none of that is more than a fleeting glance and for the most part we are dealt the here and now with flashbacks only to the immediately pertinent. Battling for everyone's soul are the forces of truth and lies, each showing itself to be a vehicle capable of slamming down another person with precise and deadly intent. It is never clear which is more harmful, the truth or the lie and when Larry is given the truth he cannot comprehend that he has heard anything but the lies he is used to. Dan tries to lie out of guilt and then tells the truth out of guilt, both failing to provide him with the solace he seeks. Anna lies mostly to herself, everyone else is just collateral damage. Alice praises truth and her inability to deceive, but she might be the grandmaster of it all. In their own ways, each of these people is loved, hated and pitied--though not necessarily in that order. It is a credit to each of these actors that they are all fully believable at every stage. Using their beauty like weapons, all four actors shed the gleam of Hollywood and come across as fully fledged and fallible human beings.

At the heart of movie is the great question of love and how easily we as humans fall in and out of this overpowering emotion. It is never clear if the damage we can inflict on ourselves is more devastating than what we can do to the ones we love or loved. We often find ourselves questioning the very existence of love at the end of a relationship: Did he ever love me? Does he love me still? Did I ever really love him? But we tend to ask these questions only after the damage has been done and we are sitting amidst the smoking wreckage of what might have once been something beautiful. Dan and Alice and Anna and Larry play with each other's emotions out of the fear that admitting the depth and seriousness of how they feel. When they question each other and themselves as their relationships unravel, it is only out of self preservation.

The quite obvious and frequent betrayals go hand in hand with that question of love. Larry feels so betrayed by Anna he forces to her to recount for him moment by moment the sexual nature of her affair. Though she betrayed him with her body, he uses his love as his weapon and betrays her with his cruelty. And there is no lack of cruelty in this movie either. The pain and anguish that linger in the aftermath of these broken relationships has far reaching results, most of which we never even get to see.

This is not an easy movie. There are scenes of great levity, scenes of great and soft feeling, but one does not walk out of the theatre longing for their own next romantic encounter. We might be able to forgive - it elevates us above the rest of Nature - but forgetting is always something else.

My Best Friend's Baby's Momma, Part Deux

At 12:23 am on 12/9/04, my best friend gave birth to baby boy.

I was very good and didn't cry over the phone.

My Best Friend's Baby's Momma

Who, in retrospect, is my best friend I suppose...

Just got a call from my friend Lynn, who is just around 9 months pregnant.
She called me from the hospital to let me know that most likely either today or tomorrow she'll be giving birth.

She has been my best friend since I was 10. I was the maid of honor at her wedding.
We have been through too many squabbles, crying jags, and moments of pure joy to even count.
But I think this one is taking the cake.

While this isn't my kid or even a baby I will be related to, I feel more excitement about this birth than I have for any of my little cousins. Not sure if that makes me an excellent friend or a shitty cousin... Either way, I could not be happier if my own sister was having a baby.

Till I hear from her, I'll sit here, fingers crossed, silent prayers to whomever listens to them and hope that she and the baby are both fine.

Alexander the Sub-Par

Three hours. Three hours of over the top acting, melodramatic homosexual innuendo, and a hero who spent more time crying than he did accomplishing great deeds. Three hours of sitting in a darkened movie theatre wondering how anyone could have allowed Oliver Stone to make such an epic disaster. Three hours of thinking of all the other things I could have been doing with my time. But I spent those three hours watching “Alexander”.

It’s difficult to discuss this movie without resorting to extremes such as “the worst movie of the year” or “most horrible accent done by Angelina Jolie” or even “greatest misuse of Anthony Hopkins since ‘Instinct’”. However none of these statements properly convey the abysmal state of “Alexander”, Oliver Stone’s latest blockbuster indulgence.

Thankfully Stone has not called his movie “Alexander the Great” because the irony would have been too much to stand. His Alexander is not so much the great general and world conqueror that history has studied and worshipped, as much as he is a Momma’s boy who spends his entire life in a Freudian struggle to out do his father and escape the viperous grasp of his mother. Val Kilmer, fresh from his turn as a musical Moses, plays Phillip, Alexander’s one-eyed, lustful father. His wife and Alexander’s mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie channeling a cross between Bela Lugosi and Ninotchka) despises him and prefers the company of snakes and her young child to the rough manhandling of her husband. The two of them battle over the future and soul of their offspring. Stone spends a good portion of the beginning of the movie setting up this parental dichotomy, laying the ground for what he must have thought was deep insight into a man who eventually took over most of the known world. However, much like Rosebud, such things only give us part of the man.

Alexander grows up to be Colin Farrell in a hideous dye job. His coloring makes it hard to believe that at any point in his life he had a naturally blonde head of hair. Alexander spends his youth hearing how he will be King and spends his short adulthood trying desperately to life up to those expectations. He constantly pushes his army further and further than his father ever did, constantly answering to the criticism of his closest friends and advisors for doing just that. And through it all, he cries. He cries when he sees his hurt soldiers, he cries when he thinks about his mother, he cries when he has to say a final good bye to Hephastion his partner in approved man-man Greek love, he cries when he is questioned harshly by his friends, and he cries when he feels at his wits end. We may not be living in the days of emotionless Sparta but even during the heyday of the 90’s when all men were encouraged to get in touch with their feminine sides, no manly men cried as much as this epic hero. Everything else paled in comparison to ill-equipped Alexander seemed to be to take on the mantle of King from his murdered father. One wonders if he had truly been this sensitive if he would have made it as far as Babylon.

Throughout the movies there are long speeches which are next to impossible to follow. Poor Anthony Hopkins is given the sorry task of having to recite most of these speeches which even he cannot make remotely interesting. When Alexander takes a “barbarian” princess to wife, their subsequent mating scenes are more like scenes from Wild Kingdom than the erotically charged pieces Stone aimed for. The much trumpeted gay scenes involved little more than long desirous gazes between Alexander and various men. And in yet another heavy-handed visual metaphor, Alexander is followed throughout his journeys by an eagle, which is so omnipresent he is even featured in the credits. All this provokes more eye-rolling in disappointed disbelief than eye-rolling in wondrous amazement.

It took Stone many years to get this movie made. Sometimes there are reasons that scripts spend so long on the table…Stone might do well to put aside any of his conspiracy theories on such things and give that idea a good long thought before committing to another epic film