dreaming@echonyc.com

last night paul and i went to see michael moore's fahrenheit 9/11. it's not a movie that'll change anyone's mind; if you're already foaming at the mouth about boy george, you'll emerge nodding so hard your head will almost fly off its stalk, and if you're not, you'll instantly dismiss it as propaganda.

and it is propaganda, but in the same way that virtually every mass-media narrative (shout out to my good friends at fox news) is nowadays. moore pushes a very specific agenda, and he pushes it hard. like all of the best propaganda, it's audacious, manipulative, unapologetic, and effective.

you can dismiss moore as a sensationalistic blowhard if you like (and you might be shocked to hear that most of the time i do), but behind the cheap gimmicks of fahrenheit 9/11 are some deeply troubling truths. if you follow politics on the web with any tenacity, much of what moore asserts isn't a surprise. what is surprising, though, is the full-body impact of seeing real footage to illuminate what i'd already read.

some of the parts that disturbed me the most:

• the montage of black congresspeople protesting the florida 2000 results in front of the senate, when not a single senator would sign their complaints. the congresspeople's frustration and anger was palpable.
  
• the marine recruiters staking out the mall in flint, michigan, behaving for all the world like the sleaziest of snake-oil salesmen. "want to be a musician? the marine corps will help you become a musician!" "oh, you want to go to college and play basketball! did you know you can play basketball in the marines?" "not interested? fine! now i just want your name and address so we can cross you off our list..."
  
• the shocking youth of many of the soldiers in iraq. just like every other soldier in every other war, these people are babies. moore shows them in several phases: new arrivals eager to wreak some mayhem; more seasoned soldiers who wonder why they're there; sad young men who've realized that killing anyone "kills a part of your soul"; and amputees in a veterans' hospital.
  
• the seven minutes bush spent sitting idly in a florida classroom after learning that a second plane had hit the world trade center, that america was under attack. now, we all know he sat there listening to a story about a goat, but to see it happen, to watch his expression, vacant and bewildered by turns, to experience exactly how long an interval it was, was excruciating.

it's just not going to change any minds that are already firmly made up. what it might do, though — and what might be moore's intent — is mobilize those who didn't vote in 2000, galvanize the apathetic, and outrage those who haven't been paying attention. if it succeeds on any of those counts, it doesn't need to be a great movie. if it contributes in even the smallest way to unseating bush in the 2004 election, that's accomplishment enough for any career.

Posted by dreaming at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (59)

a million little pieces
by james frey

five word review:

i'll pass on the crack.

frey's memoir of his time in a drug rehab center is harrowing. the descriptions of his vomit alone are enough to convince me that sniffing glue and freebasing cocaine aren't quite as much fun as they're cracked up to be.

"cracked." ahahahahaha.

frey enters the center at age 23 after a decade of addiction. after blacking out and seriously injuring himself, he finds himself on an airplane bound for rehab with no memory of how he got there, no idea of where he's going. according to the doctors, he's been saved just in time: his body couldn't take any further abuse. another drug experience would probably kill him, they say.

so no drugs for james as he heads off to the dentist to have two root canals. two root canals without anaesthetic of any kind, with only a babar book to steady him.

scared straight yet?

during the months he spends at the center, james meets the requisite crew of colorful characters, vomits blood daily and lovingly describes it, reconciles with his parents, and makes a firm promise to himself never to use again.

with the recidivism rate topping 85%, we know that james faces a difficult future. with his refusal to embrace the principles of twelve-stepping, we learn how slim his chances of recovery are. but with his trip into the rankest of crack houses to save the girl he loves, we begin to believe that he just might make it after all.

i'd write more but i have to go upstairs and tip all the tylenol 3s directly into the toilet. just say no, baby. just say no.

Posted by dreaming at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (46)

nevil shute's a town like alice, strenuously recommended and then finally purchased for me by mom, was good enough that i stayed up until 2 last night reading it, even after being up very early for a long day of travel. (my seatmate on the plane was a jackass who wanted to talk, even though i kept conspicuously opening my book every time he paused to draw breath.)

it's a romance, but not a trashy one. jean paget is a young englishwoman taken prisoner by the japanese in malaysia during world war ii. as the story unfolds, she meets an australian soldier who makes an extraordinary sacrifice for her.

back in england after the war, she inherits a sizable legacy and decides to return to malaysia. there she repays the kindness of the villagers who saved her life — and learns by chance what's become of the australian soldier.

it's simple, slow, and satisfying. it's beautifully told, and it ends exactly as it should. i wish i could read this book again for the first time. (happily, in a few years i will have forgotten the details entirely, so will revisit it then.)

Posted by dreaming at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (48)

...or, as i insist on referring to it, that boat movie:

i have changed my mind once and for all about joining the british navy.

Posted by dreaming at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (49)

enough about fagen's unfortunate jaw problem. now for the music. becker and fagen are known for their insane perfectionism in the studio, which some critics complain results in a certain musical coldness. i, however, am just a musical doofus and not a rock critic, so in my ignorance i can afford to be glad they're so exacting. their live show, featuring 13 musicians onstage, faithfully recreated many of my favorite moments in steely dan history.

some highlights:

• "aja" i was buying paul a beer as the song began, so i hustled in quickly, spilling sam adams all over the guy in the seat in front of me. ah, but he was so hopped up on goodwill and budweiser he practically thanked me for it. anyway, the song is so full of tricky twists and turns that i would never have expected them to play it live, but the band was more than equal to the task.

• "home at last" this is a song that takes full advantage of a robust horn section — luckily, becker and fagen happened to have two saxes, a trumpet, and a trombone on hand for just such emergencies.

• "josie" you know, come to think of it, this isn't one of my favorite songs as recorded; the live version was a great improvement. the drummer touring with them is, oh, about fifteen years old, but managed a really rousing three-minute solo at the end of the song.

• "my old school" this was the first song of their two-tune encore. worth the price of admission to hear the little flourish of glee from the horns after, "california...tumbles into the sea." we were all wishing california ill at that moment, i am sure.

• the goofballs in the audience let's get this out of the way right now: i mean no disrespect. but i have to point out that the crowd was almost homogeneously composed of 45-year-old white guys in golf shirts, whose idea of rocking out involved staying comfortably seated and genially nodding, in a very tight way, to the funky driving beat. at intermission the two guys in front of us engaged in a very amicable battle to the death to determine, once and for all, who was the bigger fan: "i saw them just last week!" "oh. yeah. well, i'm using my frequent flyer miles to go see them in hawaii!" ad infinitum.

• the goofballs in the audience. although they were cute individually, the crowd as a whole was a disappointment. there was no energy in the arena to speak of — polite applause followed every song, but the only time the crowd showed even a spark of life was at the beginning of the encore as "my old school" began.

• walt and don phone it in. maybe it's because the crowd's response to their music was so lackluster, but those two couldn't get off the stage fast enough at the end of the encore (slipping out before "fm" truly ended). paul saw the taillights of a car zooming into the darkness at the side stage exit long before the band wound it up.

• general-purpose melancholy. it was sorta sad to see steely dan, known as masters of wit and irony, playing at this godawful indian casino in the middle of nowhere, connecticut. ("a legendary gaming experience," indeed, boasting tasteful features like "the casino of the lost tribes" for example.) what was even sadder, though, was hearing walter becker vow that they'd be back. guys. guys! i trust you to be smarter than that.

Posted by dreaming at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (31)

boy, oh, boy, does steely dan's donald fagen look like a muppet.

part of it has to do with the way his jaw hinges when he opens his mouth wide to sing — it's not that his mandible drops; it stays stationary while the rest of his head moves up and back.

another part of it was the giant dark-rimmed elvis costello-style glasses he was wearing. now, no one would ever accuse donald fagen of having a delicate nose, but the giant glasses didn't help.

i couldn't find a photo of fagen from the latest tour, but here's one from the last go-round. note that he now has longer hair, and it's silver. the lenses of his glasses are clear, and the frames are heavy and dark.

in fact, this picture looks a lot more like him now:

(the muppet pictured above is named don music. he was a composer who couldn't remember the words to his own pieces — he'd falter on a rhyme, get frustrated, then violently bang his head on the keys of his piano. don was a popular fixture on sesame street when i was a moppet, but apparently he was fired from the show: parents complained about his self-flagellation when kids started imitating don at home.)

you may be wondering how the group sounded. you may also be wondering how i could be so petty as to carp about one of my favorite singers' looks, rather than raving about his live performance. i will leave the full review for tomorrow. but it was good. very good!

Posted by dreaming at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (59)

i capture the castle
by dodie smith

if you took francie nolan from a tree grows in brooklyn, aged her a bit, read her the entire works of jane austen, and plunked her down in the middle of a crumbling castle in the english countryside, she'd be cassandra mortmain, the narrator of i capture the castle.

at seventeen, cassandra is an aspiring novelist whose journals tell the story of her family's relationship with the cottons, a wealthy family of americans who've inherited the manor up the road. the mortmains, who've been living in quiet poverty, are delighted and energized by the arrival of the cottons. in their own way, each member of the household is drawn into the cottons' magical circle, and cassandra documents it all with wit and sharpness.

i capture the castle is a fairly conventional love story, but it's also a beautiful sketch of an eccentric family. i loved every word. i even liked the mortmains' dog, and that's really saying something.

update: i just learned from a casual web search that a movie version has just been released. the american cotton brothers are played by the kid from e.t. and riley from buffy the vampire slayer (shown here in double-shooty-finger stance). cringe with me, won't you?

Posted by dreaming at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (43)

the crimson petal and the white
by michel faber

see, the thing is, i didn't like charles dickens when i had to read him in tenth grade, and i certainly don't like him now.

the crimson petal and the white is a long, long chronicle of the rise of sugar, an ambitious young prostitute in victorian england. pushed by her mother into whoredom at the tender age of 13, sugar nurses a fiery grudge against men. when she meets william rackham, perfume magnate-to-be, she sinks her scaly claws into him as a means to take her out of the london ghetto.

rackham feels such a desire for her that he's spurred to new heights of industry. a heretofore reluctant heir, he finally takes the reins of his father's business and becomes a man of wealth so that he can afford sugar's favors. as sugar resolves not to be cast back into the gutter, she inveigles herself more and more deeply into rackham's life.

oh, and did i mention that rackham has a wife who's going quite insane, la la la? a bedwetting daughter, a religious fanatic brother, a horse-faced reformer, and a raft of annoying friends and servants make up the rest of the cast.

how does it end? well you might ask. i am on page eleven million, yet still several thousand pages from the final scene. will i make it there? let's put it this way: time liked it. the new york times liked it. julie, on the other hand, does not. i meant what i said about dickens; the filth of london during the industrial revolution and the stinking misery of the poor are described with a little too much relish for my delicate sensibilities. i tend to like my reality a little less gritty, thankyouverymuch — i halfway expect my hands to be gummy with soot and semen when i put the book down.

in fact, i'm racing off to wash right now.

Posted by dreaming at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (57)

i like to believe there are very few issues on which i am dogmatic. issues on which i am excessively evangelical. issues which, when i discuss them, make people want to yodel, "julie! shut up already!"

but i know i get positively fundie about some things. here are a few.

• tivo. i swear to god it'll change your life. i don't know how anyone who watches tv gets by without one...particularly people with small children. it is absolutely worth the cost, and once you have one you'll wonder how you ever drew a contented breath without one. really. if you feel it's too expensive, go without new lip gloss for a couple of months and figure out a way to afford it. amen.

• the freezer. at the risk of appearing every bit the crackpot that i am, i will tell you that if we had to live off only what's in my freezer right now, we'd eat like kings for two, three months. freezing things is one of my newest hobbies, and one of the most profitable. i double every recipe of anything even remotely freezable, and i haven't bought chicken breasts at regular price in the last year. having a birthday? i have cake. want some pasta? would you prefer lasagna, stuffed shells, or meatballs? soup sound good? i have onion soup, squash soup, chicken stock, and something that looks vaguely barleyish.

• a good bra. in my case, it's the wacoal body suede, but, in a break from my usual fanaticism, i will allow that others might have a different preference. whatever the case, you should buy the best bra you can afford, and you should have it fitted by a professional. i walked into nordstrom in seattle a 36b, and, after an hour with the bra lady, walked out a...well, i won't say because the shock might actually kill you. suffice it to say that i was a couple of hundred bucks poorer, and a million dollars better looking. often the cost of my bra exceeds the cost of the rest of my entire outfit. and that has made all the difference.

the gospel according to julie. thanks be to god.

Posted by dreaming at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (41)

wideacre
by philippa gregory

okay, the first thing you should know about this book is that i bought it at the toledo airport when i realized i had nothing to read for the flight back to burlington.

the second thing you should know about this book is that if i ever hear you've read it, i will hunt you down and make you account for your poor judgment. i have suffered through it; there's no reason you should have to, as well.

do not read this book.

i picked it up noticing a) that it was thick; and b) that it said, "new york times bestseller" on the cover. "how bad could a new york times bestseller be?" i thought.

stop laughing.

the story starts off innocuously enough in the gone with the wind mold. beatrice lacey is a young english girl who passionately loves her home but can never inherit it. then several hundred pages of treachery ensue. beatrice causes the death of her father, maims her lover in an iron-jawed bear trap, seduces her brother (by whom she bears two children), rapes the land and starves the villagers, drives her husband to drunken ruin, and murders her mother. among other gay, light-hearted capers.

i've never encountered a less likable heroine than beatrice. by the time she finally gets hers, you want to attack her with a tire iron yourself. and, in my case, the author, who foisted such scurrilous crap on an indiscriminate reader in my time of desperation.

Posted by dreaming at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (1)

five-word review of bend it like beckham:

because i'm discreet, paul has been heretofore unaware of my vast collection of bhangra cds. tomorrow begins the forcible bhangrafication.

Posted by dreaming at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (23)

paul and i caught the last episode of masterpiece theater's version of white teeth. we both enjoyed it quite a bit, and wished we'd seen the whole series — maybe we should actually read the book, eh?

as we were discussing this while the credits rolled, the announcer was telling us, "visit our web site to learn more about masterpiece theater or to order the companion book..."

that's right. it's no longer a book that stands on its own, or even source material, it's an adjunct to a television show. we live in grim times.

Posted by dreaming at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (43)

okay. let's review.

within the matrix you have nice food, sharp-looking clothes, and soap.

outside of the matrix, you have runny gruel to eat, grimy rags to wear, and mechanical squid hell-bent on frying you to a crisp.

well, gosh, morpheus, i'll take the blue pill.

back here on earth, here is my review of the movie:

they simply wouldn't stop talking. when they did stop talking for two minutes at a time, there would be hitting. now normally i like the hitting, but this hitting was...well, boring. and then there would be more talking.

and the whole thing was shot in bad-skin-o-vision.

i demand a refund and three apologies.

Posted by dreaming at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

the other day i realized with a shock that my jeans were so ill-fitting that the crotch was riding down around my knees. so today i went in search of new jeans. now, this is usually a very painful process. but today i was guided by a guardian angel named...

and they are. they're a dream. they're from the gap, a style called long and lean. the rise is kind of low, which works well for me and my regrettable pot belly. the fit is slim through the legs. they flare at the , enough to look fashionable but not enough to make me feel like i belong in saturday night fever. and the fabric includes a hint of lycra, so they fit smoothly but not tightly.

love my new jeans. of course, the best part is that i left with a pair two sizes smaller than the pair i walked in wearing.

Posted by dreaming at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

so good i had to hustle them into the freezer, lest i eat every one. chocolate chunk and toffee bits, mmmm.

Posted by dreaming at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

patricia cornwell. robert b. parker. and now carl hiaasen. seems like every prolific author eventually wears me down into disillusionment with his schtick when i read more than, say, three of his books. this time it's carl hiaasen, whom i've always liked. i am sorry he's disappointed me like the others.

i guess basket case's jack tagger is just the washed-up-middle-aged-hero-in-search-of-redemption who broke the camel's back. this book isn't wildly different from any of hiaasen's other books, but it's neither as irreverent nor as bizarre as i'd come to expect. basket case feels tired to me. sorry, carl, i doubt i'll be back.

Posted by dreaming at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

last night, in need of a diversion, paul and i combed the papers in search of a movie that would suck. it would have to suck in a very particular way: afterward, there must be no question that it blowed up real good.

the core sufficed nicely.

according to the times,

according to me, "it blowed up real good. and stupidly."

it's just like any sci fi exploration movie you've ever seen: the carefully diverse crew takes on an impossible mission from which they surely cannot return alive. only...you know someone will: the plucky heroine and the tousled, stubbly hero.

the only suspense comes in trying to guess which order the supporting players will get picked off in, and the entertaining manner in which they'll meet their cheesy doom -- in this case, impaled by a mineral spike and dipped in nacho cheese (excuse me: lava); crushed inside a jettisoned compartment, garbage-compactor style; fried to a crisp in a space suit that's apparently not rated for 9,000 degrees; and, well, blowed up real good in a nuke-you-lar explosion. (our protagonist, a low-rent harrison ford type if ever there was one, can't pronounce "nuclear" correctly. but if the guy in charge of destroying the world can't, why should we care if the guy in charge of saving the world can't?)

as if all this weren't bad enough, throw in hollywood's idea of a teenage hacker, the gratuitous trashing of the antiquities of rome, and the rescue of our intrepid crew by a pod of friendly orca whales. mix well. and knock it all back with an audible shudder.

ahhhh. the rich taste of sucking.

Posted by dreaming at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

do you like action movies that set your heart racing with adrenaline?

...fight scenes that take your breath away with their balletic grace?

...characters who seem real, people you can identify with and root for?

...an engrossing story that makes two hours pass in the blink of an eye?

then avoid cradle 2 the grave like a smallpox-tainted blanket.

it wasn't jet li's wooden acting or ridiculous nouveau bruce li haircut. it wasn't the eye-rolling implausibility of the plot (if you could actually call it that). it wasn't the butchered editing job that robbed the fight scenes of every last nanoparticle of excitement.

okay, okay, it was all those things. but it was also the sappy save-the-big-eyed-child angle. it was the super-suave gang of international scumbags, all with healthy white american teeth and good tailors. it was the soundtrack that featured as its stirring love theme a moving little ditty called "nigga please."

but wait! there's more! two words: tom arnold.

how could i pick just one reason to hate it?

update: i forgot to mention the part where jet li picks up a midget and uses him as a cudgel.

yes, really.

Posted by dreaming at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i just ate an entire cow.

Posted by dreaming at 02:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

paul and i saw chicago last night. boy, is that catherine zeta-jones gorgeous. i'm fairly sure i look a lot like her. you just need to remember that every time you look at me, the camera adds twenty pounds.

Posted by dreaming at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

worth the ticket price for jackie chan's singin' in the rain bit alone. worth twice that for owen wilson's evil orphan spiel. i might have enjoyed it even more if i'd been a thirteen-year-old boy, but i kind of doubt it.

Posted by dreaming at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

aunt betty writes:

If you need to go see a movie that you will have no understanding of, go to Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers.

Vivian and I went to see it this afternoon, as she had seen everything else I wanted to see, and she wanted to see something called How to Lose Your Lover in Ten Days, or something like that, so we thought since The Lord of the Rings was up for best picture, we should see it.

Well, think again.

Not only is it about Hobbits, that I have no idea about, not having read the books, but it is also Part II. We had no idea about anything or anyone, there was quite a bit of war stuff between some dog/otter things and another group, and some trees carried 2 Hobbits around with the tree and boys all talking. Amazing.

Now here's the funny part. I'll probably have to go the Part III to see how it all turns out.

Posted by dreaming at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

if paul ever dumps me i'm going to washington to stalk will bailey.

Posted by dreaming at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

five-word review of jet li's first movie, shaolin temple:

shoulda destroyed the negatives, jet.

(see some dissenting opinions here.)

Posted by dreaming at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

last night we watched jeff corwin. he had some frogs on his face, a monkey on his head, and a gigantic cockroach on the back of his neck. that man will touch anything.

all i could think as he stood there waxing eloquent about the monkey on his head was, "that's an excellent way to get lice, my friend."

i kept waiting for him to point excitedly to his ankle and extol the plump rare beauty of a leech clinging to his skin.

Posted by dreaming at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

five-word review of the sotu address:

missed it; intentionally, blessedly incommunicado.

Posted by dreaming at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

five-word review of peace like a river:

plainsong plus cowboys plus miracles.

Posted by dreaming at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

unless you live in the tundra like we do, and get eight million television channels, seven million of which are about sports or god, you probably don't even receive cbc. and even if you do, you probably don't watch da vinci's inquest. and that is really too bad. (we won't even talk about all the curling you're missing.)

here's a synopsis:

Vancouver coroners, pathologists and homicide detectives inhabit a murky world as they attempt to solve the mysteries behind the unnatural, accidental or suspicious deaths committed in the city's back alleys and bedrooms. At times selfless, at times grudging, they all have agendas and history, passion for their work and ambition for their futures. Charismatic, controversial and mercurial Vancouver Coroner Dominic Da Vinci (NICHOLAS CAMPBELL) is the pivot around which this complex world spins.

now it sounds just like any other cop drama. but what sets it apart from shows like nypd blue or law and order: spinoff is how humane its cops are, how ordinary and low-key. you're never going to see mick leary in some junkie's face, spraying spit on his face as he tells him what a disgusting piece of excrement he is. what you will see is the cops treating the people in their world -- the hookers, the drug dealers, and the victims' families alike -- with compassion and recognition that they are, in fact, people, not perps and skels and vics.

if you're not already watching it, you really should start. 9 pm sunday, cbc.

Posted by dreaming at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

five-word review of anne lamott's operating instructions:

sure likes her jesus, huh?

Posted by dreaming at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

five word review of lord of the rings: the two towers:

they simply never stopped talking.

Posted by dreaming at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

tonight paul and i went to burlington and saw a dance performance by momix. props they used included, but were not limited to: