Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, silverware, and my love life

Two days ago, A.O. Scott wrote an article in the New York Times about the similarities between Lincoln and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Since it normally requires a gun to the head to get me into a Spielberg film, I thought that I'd create my own double feature. If I treat myself to Django Unchained, then I'd have to sit through Lincoln. Roughly the same era, two vastly different filmmakers, and a set of protagonists who could not be further apart from each other in terms of worldview, social status, and, well... we'll just call it negotiating style.

There are few things that excite me more than a new Tarantino film. My interest in film and music flourished as his star rose, and I thrilled at the transgressive nature of sitting in a theater at the local mall watching gangsters turn on, mutilate, and outwit each other. Reservoir Dogs begat my love of yakuza and the dark, comedic rage of Eastern European cinema.
I see in my mind a direct line between my maturation and the swagger of Tarantino, the balletic violence of Takeshi Kitano, the absurdity that is the hallmark of any Emir Kusterica film, and the obsession of a life spent living with your demons that Lars Von Trier and I both seem to fixate on.

Violence isn't my thing anymore, but like a suburban mom who'll head to the club and snort up a line of coke once or twice a year, I find myself loving it even more because of the infrequency of a once common thrill.

What I loved about Django Unchained has less to do with the film than with my relationship to the movie.
One of the very few things I miss about my relationship is the shorthand that couples develop: the verbal and physical cues that allow two people to slowly kill each other with over time. We're not talking eyerolls here; that's strictly Disney. I'm talking "quit scrubbing the bathtub so that we can talk about what happened two Thursdays ago" shit.
And I realized, as I watched Django, that I (and millions) have that same relationship with Tarantino's films.
There's a language we share, and unlike a relationship gone bad, the tics and sputters are well... they're like foreplay. They're a taste of what happened before and what soon will be.

Here are a few of my favorites from Django:

Ears! There was a quick, loving shot of an ear - just one film frame too long to be accidental; yet too quick to have any real significance to the plot. Perhaps the ear remained intact throughout the film; perhaps it was blown off in the end. I can't even remember whose it was; I just know that it sang to me for one brief moment.

A woman buried underground. My biggest fear, yet I almost jumped out of my seat with joy upon seeing that hot box lying in the sun. My only question: why in the hell was it in the front yard? Seems like it would be hidden out back, like most of slavery's most unsavory aspects. Granted, the shot of all those men looking at the hotbox from the front porch was a powerful one, but I'm not sure that the disconnect was worth the three seconds of film time it would have taken to show them heading to the slave quarters. I'm just sayin': I doubt that the editors of Plantation Landscaping magazine were happy with that scene.

Dicks be bickering: Stiffing servers and KKK raids are pretty low on the list of things I'd like  to participate in, but this was one of my favorite scenes in the entire film. There's a blog post popping up in my feed about when it's okay for white people to laugh while watching this movie. I haven't read it and have no intention of doing so, but I"m sure this is on the safe list.
Maybe I'm wrong, but there was some funky editing going on during this scene; the poor guy married to that crappy seamstress seemed to float throughout the crowd. Oh hell.. what do I know? All Klansmen look the same to me.

Bring out the gimp. During bondage scenes, I usually go to my safe place by picturing Natasha Fatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle tied up on some railroad tracks, and this was the only time I had to look away. Well, that and when the dude got eaten by the dogs.

Oh look! There's a hundred armed killers on the second floor looking down at you. We'll all have fun watching you fight your way out of this. And indeed we did.

So.... on to Lincoln. Fuck that film. I despise Steven Spielberg's films. They fill me with an irrational rage. 20 years ago, a boy I had a crush on took me to see Jurassic Park. I seethed throughout the entire film and broke up with him on the way back to the car.

But I gamely sucked it up, purchased my ticket, thought about asking for a refund, decided against it, walked around the block a few times to wrestle with my conscience (I should have purchased a ticket to Hitchcock, then gone in to see Lincoln).

Opening scene: battlefield. Fuck you, Steven Spielberg and your damn big-budget glorifying of war.

Next scene: Lincoln talking to some soldiers: Everyone's in awe of the white man. Look, there's a black soldier earnestly telling the President what to do. And his friend is silently pleading with him to mind his manners and know his place. After watching Django mayhem his way through the South and Samuel Jackson create the greatest Stepin Fetchit in living memory, I was in no mood to see this shit.

Oh look... two more solders tongue-tied in the preseence of greatness. Steven Spielberg is the WalMart of filming human emotion. We got it all and it's cheap and plentiful.
Hokey spiritualism. Dreams, schmeams. Dreams are lazier filmmaking devices than flashbacks and you're stacking the deck 5 minutes in. Fuck you.

Of course there's a sad little boy by the fire! Of fucking course. Now the boy's gone, and all that's left is a pair of tattered slippers by the fire. Replace that with a mangled ear or a bulging dick in a metal codpiece and I'll give this another five minutes. Otherwise I'm outta here.

Never mind... I'm gone. This is 40 is playing across the hall.

Vegan Brunch at Cake Factory

This is a post that I thought had posted waaay back a while ago.


Weekend breakfasts present a real problem for me. Not a real problem in the sense of ... well, problems... but it's still an issue every Saturday and Sunday morning.

I always eat breakfast; to not do so seems somehow uncivilized.

The thing is - I eat the same thing for breakfast during the week.

A piece of whole wheat toast with 2 cups of black coffee and a smoothie.

The smoothie might change up depending on what's rotting in the fridge, but that's pretty much my breakfast routine.

Or... I might go through an oatmeal phase and eat oatmeal every day for a few weeks. And that's always the same - 1.5 servings of oatmeal, lots of raisins, lots of cinnamon, and some maple syrup.

I woke up this morning a little pissy because I'd planned to run a 5k this morning, but didn't get home and to bed until almost 2 am, leaving me with about 4 hours sleep before I had to wake up. I could run the 5k, sure, but I'm really serious about this training I've been doing, and I didn't want show up and have a slow run when I'd been working so hard. So.. back to bed for a few more hours!

Woke up determined to make the most of the day, so set off determined to go to breakfast quickly, then come back and get started on yard work. Oh, but where to go??!!

Imagine my surprise when Leesil told me "Hey, there's a vegan brunch today".

I hustled her into the shower while I walked the dog, then we were off. On the way over there, I said "I' don't really have high hopes for this brunch" and we laughed at how we were so early.

Fast forward 30 minutes: We've got steamy plates of tofu scramble with field roast sausage, black beans, plantains, cinnamon-y apples and tortillas in front of us. And it's delish... really delish.

Had a nice chat with some folks hanging out, including the man with the plan, Jim, from Lettuce Eat Healthy, and we were on our way back home - a vegan raspberry cupcake tucked into the back seat.

Running's good, but brunch is better. That is all.

One Surefire Trick To Know If You're Old

Slate.com, the news and culture website owned by the Washington Post,  is the king of misleading headlines. They must study the art of misdirection under Matthew Weiner. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked on a link only to realize that wow... I'm wasting time on something I wouldn't normally waste my time on.
Actually, HuffPo is the ultimate king of misleading headlines, but they mislead readers in so many ways that I can't even single them out for their HEADLINES THAT INSPIRE FEAR AND PREDICT THE DEMISE OF CIVILIZATION IN THREE WORDS OR LESS.


And we're off... to another topic!
Today, it was a great day in St. Pete. Working from home ennui has set in big time. A/C is a must-have during the day, and that drives me crazy. Even though my house has about 27 windows and there are beautiful unobstructed views of the back, front, and side yards, I still feel claustrophobic when I have to close the windows and breathe in recycled air all day. I start to swim around my enclosure like a polar bear at the Bronx Zoo - and we all know what happened to him.

I woke up this morning and decided to work for the day at a coffee shop, which was a great idea. I took a shower, put on some regular people clothes and spent a productive day sending letters to members. I saw friends, checked out what the kids are wearing, ate a yummy vegan BLT and just had a pleasant experience all-around.

After work, Leesil and I took the hound down to Straub Park for a walk and some more lessons in how to behave like a civilized dog. For the most part, he passed. Except when some lady went jogging by with her little 3 lb. white dog. Those little guys are a real gateway drug for Barksdale. He got a hold of one at the dog park once and took off with it in his mouth like he'd just hit a home run.
 As soon as I saw this one coming, jogging right past us, I grabbed on to B'dale with both arms and twisted my hands in his harness. Thank god, because he and I wrestled for a few minutes as he went after the guy. Whew.
Now, things like this tend to add fuel to mine and Leesil's simmering resentment toward each other, even when we're in perfect agreement that the runner was clueless and we could never trust Barksdale at a dog park and I did exactly the right thing by body slamming him preemptively and wow what a great team we are in keeping our crazyman dog under control. Yet, somehow.. maybe the adrenaline..... we're bickering 5 minutes later.
As we were when, out of the blue, this young tourist couple asks if Leesil can take their picture. I'm standing, ready to grab B'dale if he starts to lunge at them, while Leesil takes the pic.
A lot of questions ensue: Water background or trees? Is it too dark under this tree? Let's move over here.
I'm about ready to snark that they should make sure to get the Pier in the background because it's going to be demolished soon, but something told me to shut up.
And good thing I did, because just then, the guy falls to the ground on one knee and whips out a white jewelry box. Before he can even finish his shaky "Will  you marry m...", she's jumping in his arms and screaming "YES, YES, YES!" I'm crying, Leesil's crying and snapping more pics of the hugging, kissing, weeping newly betrothed couple and it's just a pretty great moment.
We leave them to their just-engaged status and walk away looking sheepishly at each other.
And that's when I know I'm old. If I was young, I would have asked if we could take a picture of them so that we could post THEIR story to our facebook pages. I would have tweeted "Just helped very nervous guy propose to his gf. #shesaidyes"

Instead, I'm an old lady, sitting on my couch, listening to my dog fart and sharing this sweet story the old-fashioned way - by calling you up on the phone and hoping to hell that damned Ellen isn't listening in on the party line.

Of Mangoes and Andretti

I knew in my gut that I wasn't going to make it to the movies tonight.

I'd put it off and put it off and tonight might be the last night the The Separation, the great (by all accounts) Iranian film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film plays in St. Pete.

Something told me not to go, and I honestly for one fleeting moment thought "bomb scare". Which made me more determined to get off my couch and get down there.

Only to run into... the Grand Prix. Oh yes... I'd forgotten all about it. I really should read the Tampa Bay Times more often, I suppose.

Anyway... parking, when you could find it, was $10. I'd already be using a credit card since I had exactly $9.05 in my checking account, and there's no way I could justify putting a parking charge on my card. There's a recession, damnit! Or... is there? I can't remember. I'm guessing there is if I have a bank balance that I haven't had since my early 20s... so yeah... recession it is.

I hemmed and hawed, not wanting to head back home. Then genius struck - I'd make the gauava/mango bread pudding recipe I'd come across in Vida Vegan earlier this morning.

Hmmm... where to find guava paste, though. I was on 30th Ave., when I remembered the Latin market by the thrift store. Three blocks away! Closed. Never mind... I had a plan. Switching over to the Latin station, I turned right and headed toward El Maguey, up on 66th and 54th Ave. I knew they stayed open late and they were sure to have it. I could picture their wooden fruit stand out front, full of huge avocados, sunburnt plantains, mangoes and bags of cilantro. I could smell the empanadas. Oh.. this bread pudding was going to be GOOD.

No luck. They were open, and very nice about it, but they didn't have any guava paste. Nor did they have any mangoes.

I figured that the Publix by my house was big enough that it would have what I needed, but there's something... um, lacking in letting fate throw you for a loop, grabbig the sails and bobbing off to guava bread pudding land, only to have to stop at the same grocery store where you buy toilet paper. This was no adventure; it was turning into an errand.

Just then, I passed another Publix, one I'd never noticed before. Surely they would have it too, especially since they were even closer to Pinellas Park and Kenneth City - home to a sizable Latin community.

At this point, I'm holding on to my adventure by a thread. I walk into the door and my jaw does LITERALLY does a Chris Traeger drop. Right in front of me is a display for fruit pastes. Not guava, but cherry. Fig. Pear. Apricot. Quince. WTF? Are we back in the 1800s and no one has refrigeration anymore. Why is, hmmm.. Rutherford & Meyer bringing this stuff back?

I walk past; determined to stick to my plan. But.... tack, matey... there's no guava paste that I recognize on the shelf. See... I learned all I know about guava paste while working at a Cuban market all through high school. And I didn't see the Goya roundish block. Admittedly, that's ALL I know of guava paste, but that's neither here nor there.

I grabbed a mango, a container of pear paste (still doesn't even sound like food) and hightailed it out of there.

Talk about adventure... I was getting ready to cook with an ingredient straight out of Little Women! Preserved limes, be damned. I had pear paste in my bag.

I've got 40-45 minutes for this baby to cook; I'll report back after I've tasted it.

Oh, and if you've ever wondered what pear paste tastes like; it's a sophisticated version of a gummy bear. No neon-ish, gasoline taste. More like a subdued gummy bear in a tuxedo, tasting slightly of tannic wine.

Tears of a Clown

It's hard to end a relationship. It becomes even more difficult when the person whom will be going away knows you so well that they can read every downward glance, every sigh in the dark, every facial tic as easily as a toddler flipping the cardboard pages of a book about barnyard animals.

On the other hand, it makes breaking into tears at a pizza place much less awkward.

Which is where I found myself Friday night. Ten minutes before, we'd been sitting outdoors with friends from the film festival I used to work for - saying hi to people passing by from one theater to the next, drinking wine under the stars. We made plans to meet friends for drinks after our next film screening. We shared slices of an extra pizza with volunteers rushing between tasks. I picked at the salad our friend left after she hurried back to emcee a Q&A.

As it began to rain, the restaurant emptied. Festival-goers gathered up programs and rushed to get to the theater before the rain became worse. Families gathered up children, plates, and toys and poured inside.

Me, deep in the contentment of being surrounded by people I cared about and basking in the seemingly smooth shifting of relationship parameters, merely scooted my chair under the eaves and decided to wait out the rain. Which had, it seems, become my go-to strategy for dealing with my life.

Ignore the chaos pouring down and seek the easiest shelter.

As it became apparent, in all instances, that the easy shelter under the eaves wasn't going to cut it, we ran inside.

And I began to cry.

It doesn't really matter what I was crying about. Sadness. Self-awareness at a vulnerable moment. Love for the person sitting across from me; the person whose eyes were also welling up. Fear that as much as we said we'd always be in each other's lives, maybe that wouldn't be the case. The realization that our seemingly amorphous decision to "take a break" seemed to be taking on a distinct, jagged shape left me relieved and uncertain.

And I knew that there would be more tears in more restaurants and bars before this all ended. I'm a great bar crier. At times, I'm like a country song come to life. Give me a whiskey, a jukebox and a bad day, and I'm good to go for a few hours. The darker the bar, the stronger the whiskey, the sadder the song, the happier (through my tears) I am.

I'm not a gasper of air when I cry, nor do I wail "I just have to powder my nose" while making a mad dash to the restroom.

I just sit there, tears quietly falling in the dark and I contemplate all the tiny sadnesses in my life at that moment. I'm at one with the history of heartbreak in the bar - in quiet camaraderie with those who've gone before.

There are bars in China where people pay upwards of $6 an hour, plus drinks, to sob far away from the eyes of their families. If I've doubted for one moment the panic over China's superiority over the U.S., it's now apparent that I was wrong. Crying bars are clearly the sign of an advanced society.

It's going to be a while, if ever, before I find someone who can embrace this most socially unacceptable of all my socially unacceptable traits.

Yours are not easy shoes to fill, my pal.

Sybil bakes a cookie

I am two different people.

By day, I'm mild-mannered fundraiser for a pretty conservative non-profit. I'm the girl who makes cookies for sick co-workers. I rarely speak up at meetings.

By night... well, that's a different story. Let's just say that I'm the girl solemnly vowing to bake you vegan cookies for your birthday - and I WILL DAMMIT in order to make up for that time 10 years ago that I left you sitting on my porch because I'd failed to leave the key under the mat before I took off for a concert in the next town over.

I'm not an angry drunk, nor a bitter one. I'm a very well-intentioned drunk. I will careen from from new friend to new friend, vowing to collaborate on plays and books and communal living arrangements. I will discuss plans for DIY city parks and draw them up on napkins. I'll offer to put people in touch with each other so that THEY can collaborate on plays and books and communal living arrangements.

I'll promise to invite you over to a vegan brunch and drink mimosas with you underneath the orange tree. Needless to say, this is something I'm fond of promising to people at around 2 am on Sunday morning.

I love both of the people that I am and want these two to become one. One love, y'all! I want to be known as the friend who'll bake cookies if you're not feeling well. Not, as I'm well aware that I am, the friend who promises to sign up for a "sick shift", but ends up sitting on the edge of the bed hoping that I don't have to change any bandages.

And as much as I'd love to bring a bit of my rock n' roll self into my place of employment.. well, let's just that would go over about as well as me signing up for nursing classes at the local community college.

Tonight, I'm taking steps, a la Sybil, to bring these two gals together. How, you ask? By baking some Sierra Nugget cookies. They're muy delicioso and I will deliver them post-haste as a belated birthday present.

AND... as I type this, I'm sitting on the front steps, glass of Pincas Negras Malbec next to me, waiting for my neighbor to return from walking her dog. When she does, there will be a small batch of Sierra Nuggets for her as well.

Because doing something unexpectedly nice just leads to goodness all around and we need a little bit more of that right now.

One love, indeed.

Sierra Nuggets Cookie Recipe

Wet ingredients:

1 c. non-dairy butter, such as Earth Balance

1 c. brown sugar

1.5 c. granulated sugar

2 Egg Replacers or 2 T. flax mixed with 3 T. water

1 t. non-dairy milk

1.5 t. vanilla

Dry ingredients:

1.5 c. flour

1.25 t. baking soda

1.5. t. cinnamon

1/2 t. mace

1/8 t. powdered cloves

1/4 t. nutmeg

1 c. cornflakes (I used frosted flakes, and it worked out fine)

1 c. rolled oats

1/2 c. shredded coconut

2 c. vegan chocolate chips

1 c. raw walnuts chopped.

Cream together wet ingredients in medium sized bowl. I'd suggest using a beater or mixer so that it's light and fluffy. This will come in handy when you're mixing the wet and dry ingredients.

Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. You may have to use your hands for this step.

Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet and bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

They won't spread very much so you can cram a lot onto one baking sheet.

Now... I never follow this last step, but I think that it might be an important one for this recipe. I still have one more batch in the oven so I'll test it and see.

Last step: Let cool on cookie pan for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack (or the Auto section of last Sunday's paper).

You should get about 36 - 42 cookies - enjoy!

Sticks and Stones....

I have been so mad at Obama. Still am, in fact. For the past two weeks, I've written missives in my head and rehearsed the talking-to I'd give to the White House switchboard operator.

I scream into my computer about the need to call out more and more National Guard troops. I've dawdled on the walk to the Metro, hoping to run into my neighbors that work in the administration.

The BP oil spill has shaken me to the core. Hell, I've even come to admire James Cameron. His technical prowess, so often disguised as artistic achievement, seems like a godsend to me.

I've looked inward and measured my disappointment at Obama and find that I'm okay with my anger. Yes, I voted for him, but I never thought that he'd be the knight in shining armor everyone else did. I can even laugh at the main reason I voted for him over Hilary - I thought that she was simply too polarizing.

For the last 45 days, there have been two aspects of Obama's reaction that have puzzled and frustrated me the most.

The first is his insistence that BP must pay for the spill. His harangues about the government being reimbursed for all cleanup costs. His snarky "nickel-and-dime" comment from the other day. Hell yes, BP should pay. They should pay until they're bankrupt and BP is the most widely despised brand on the planet. Each and every member of the senior management team should pull on a pair of Royal shrimp boots and grab a fucking rake. They should speed up their payments to shrimpers, fishermen and anyone who has lost one dime.

We got it, O.

There's a recession going on and you've just bailed out the banks and the auto industry. You've spent 20 quadrillion dollars trying to create jobs and boost the economy - and there's very little to show for it.

And now here's something else that needs serious dollars thrown at it to go away. Unlike our previous president, he grew up actually having to pay for things.

The second thing that has puzzled me (and many others) is his detachment. Give me my Anderson Cooper moment, dammit!

I expected more genuine emotion from someone with such close emotional ties to Hawaii. For all you folks who grew up swimming in pools, let me tell you - there is a deep emotional pull instilled in you when you grow up with a beach in close proximity. As a child, you dig for shells and watch seagulls frolic. You get sunburned and have sand stuck in your ass.

At least once, you almost drown and realize how powerful the ocean is.

As a teenager, you get stoned and ponder the ocean for an eternity. You imagine that there's someone just like you sitting on a beach somewhere else in the world - asking the same questions. You slather on sunblock, get drunk on rum and cokes and think that Bob Marley is god.

As an adult, you appreciated the ecological wonder that is a vast expanse of water stretching as far as the eye can see. You make friends with people who have more money than you and go out on their boats. You vow to give to conservation causes, yet rarely do because you believe that the ocean will always be there. Because it always has and the alternative is too scary to contemplate.

You have children, and in turn, take them to the beach. Although, these days you slather on a lot more sunblock. In the 70s we didn't know about skin cancer and our mother and grandmothers used AquaNet before heading to the beach. In the 70s, OPEC was our friend and there were no oil rigs listing a few miles offshore.

And I refuse to believe that Obama doesn't feel that deep tug of family history, of sunburns and seashells, as well.

See... I've come to realize that Obama has shown some pretty serious human emotion here.

It's just not what I want to see. He is showing us, in his refusal to spend a serious chunk of the government's money on the Gulf cleanup, that he has been deeply wounded by the criticism thrown his way by the right.

He's been called a socialist, a fascist and everything in between. For someone who likes to be the coolest guy in the room, the fact that half the country disagrees with him so vehemently has to hurt. And it probably rankles that the criticism is so buffoonish. I imagine that Obama would relish a little one-on-one debate, an intellectual discourse on how the hell to solve the issue of the day. That's when he's at his best. But instead - he has to deal with an outlier of the Bush era - stupidity as politics. A cartoon sign of him as Hitler probably hurts less in the comparison than the sloppy photoshopping.

Sure, he knows that they're idiots and he's fighting an uphill battle to clean up the last decade plus of deregulation, profiteering and tax cuts for corporations. But it still has to sting that he has to deal with some pretty base opposition.

Again.. we got it.

But get the fuck over it, Obama. You're the president and you make hard decisions. Make one more. To spend the dollars to get this cleaned up. Call out every Coast Guard unit we can and train them on boom placement. Go all Venezuelan on BP and privatize the company. Pull the oil rigs out of the ocean and get James Cameron to turn them into windmills. And look ahead for alternate sources of energy. Now.

Si, se puede, indeed.