3 For 3.

Actually, 4, if you count Revolutionary Road, which we saw a week or two ago.

J and I saw The Wrestler last night. If you're planning to see The Wrestler and you're as neurotic as I am about not hearing anything positive or negative about a film before you see it, stop reading this now.

I hate being disappointed by a movie. It's like rejection; it's hard to shake. I don't read reviews before I see movies but often will read them afterwords to check my impressions against writers whose opinions I admire (or find interesting, anyway), so I read some reviews of The Wrestler this morning and realized that all the fuss really was about Mickey Rourke and not so much the film itself. Mickey Rourke is good in it, but he's so disfigured that it's hard to look at him after a while, and a lot of the film -- steroid monsters in seriously ugly clothes beating the shit out of each other -- is hard to look at, which I'm sure is intentional. But I'm not sure what it adds up to.

The story is full of the worst eye-roll inducing cliches, which can work for me if there's something to grab onto, but this movie just hits the marks -- big sweet lug who's not very bright but his heart is in the right place, stripper with a heart of gold who falls in love with a customer, daughter who hates her father because he was never there for her -- without giving the characters' lives any of the depth and complexity that would let you believe the big sentimental moments.

On the way home, J and I were talking about the world of professional wrestling, which neither of us really understands, and J said something along the lines of "We're supposed to feel sorry for these guys?" I think that sums up my reaction to the movie. The central character was not sympathetic and the supporting characters were not credible.

If you're in love with the "resurrection of Mickey Rourke" narrative that the marketing of The Wrestler is pushing, you'll probably like this movie more than I did. For me, morbid fascination only went so far.

Revolutionary Road wasn't as bad, but it fell into all the pitfalls of a film adapted from a novel. It feels schematic and jumpy, like they went through the book and highlighted all the scenes they wanted to include in the movie. The setup of the relationship and marriage is way too quick for me to care later (not enough later is my point) when everything goes sour.

I think what I hate most about my disappointment in films like these is that they have spent a shitload of money and time and creative energy making a film yet they didn't address basic, solvable problems in the writing. They didn't do their work, and I feel cheated.

Expectations.

One of my favorite movies is an obscure film called Girl in the Cafe, which I think was made for TV. The story is simple yet full of surprises; it's a quiet film with understated performances, and genuinely moving. It was written by the guy who wrote and directed Love Actually, which I seem to remember getting a lot of attention when it came out a few years ago. Lots of friends have recommended it. So, J and M and I watched it last night.

It's dreadful. I enjoyed parts of it, the cast is a treat: Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy (great actor, who was also in Girl in the Cafe), and lots of other really fine actors. But the accumulation of syrupy-sweet triumph of love moments was just too much and in the end rang false.

What really put me over the top was one particular storyline (there are about 10 interwoven stories in the film) featuring Liam Nissan as a single father whose wife has recently died, leaving him to raise an unnaturally articulate little boy, who confesses to his father one day that he is "in love." The boy learns to play drums so he can play in a school concert where his beloved is the featured singer (of course, she has that weird, forced but very popular these days little girl voice like a cross between Andrea McCardle, Whitney Houston, and the sound of letting the air out of a balloon slowly), and after the concert he chases her to the airport where she is getting on a plane to somewhere. I don't think they ever say where she is going, but that's not important. What's important is getting the movie to the airport -- airports are very dramatic, you know.

Basically their story consists of the father pushing the boy (who is all of about 8) to pursue a sexualized relationship with the girl, which he, the father, can enjoy vicariously because his wife is dead and he regrets that he never adequately professed his love to her. Is this a normal way for fathers to interact with their prepubescent children? I found it very creepy.

Maybe my expectations were too high, since this was one of those movies that are "supposed to be good." I was also disappointed after seeing Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of The Magic Flute earlier this week. I loved his films of Frankenstein and Hamlet and Henry V. The Magic Flute was fun, sort of, but I guess I expected it to be thrilling (because the music is) and it wasn't. The biggest hindrance to my enjoyment I think was the fact that it didn't make any sense. Is the whole thing a dream? Is the story as bizarre and impenetrable in the original, or did Branagh make it that way? And what exactly is magic about the flute?

Another Scared Little Man.



There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about this Mark Driscoll character, who strikes me as an asshole of the highest order. I read the article straight through, fascinated and horrified, then looked at some youtube videos of him (the one above is especially charming -- his poor children).

It's a nice slap in the face. Just when I was feeling all sunny, after the election, about the so-called Millenials and their comfort with diversity, their so-what attitude about sexual deviance etc., this article appears to let me know that religious authoritarianism thrives in the pierced generation.

All the press on this guy refers to him as a new Calvinist, which of course he is not. (Not that Calvinism was so great the first time.) Here's some perspective on that, from one of my favorite blogs.

Pictures.




My father has taken photographs ever since he was a teenager. He's a serious hobbyist, an amateur in the most positive sense of the word. I don't know if it's true or not, but a story I tell about my dad is that he used to say, "Don't try to make money at something you love; you'll ruin it." There are many things he's done all his life and is highly skilled at -- building model airplanes and replicas of 19th century firearms, carpentry and woodworking, wine and beer making -- but never did professionally. Instead he spent his whole working life at a job that I'm pretty sure he didn't much enjoy.

Recently, he had hundreds, maybe thousands, of old slides converted into digital files. (For years, I think he took only slides, in the late 50s/early 60s when people were buying expensive projectors and screens and having friends over to look at their vacation photos. The reason people loved slides is that photographs come to life when projected with light. Computers do the same thing, now.) The history contained in the images astounds me, but, besides that, many of the photos are evocative and beautiful, funny, full of emotion. I've been poring over them and choosing my favorites, and I thought I'd share a few here. (Click to see them full size.)

I always knew he was talented, but our aesthetic sensibilities were so different when I was young (he's a formalist, loves following the rules, whereas I never met a rule I didn't want to break) that I didn't really appreciate how good he was. Or I should say, I always knew how good he was but never thought of him as an artist until I saw these photos now with more mature eyes.

Mail.

My official GRE scores arrived today. I already knew the verbal and math scores because they give them to you right after you finish the test, so the writing score was the only news. I got a very low score: 4 out of 6, which is in the 37th percentile. Which is bullshit. But still frustrating because there it is, a big "4" printed on a page that came in the mail with my name on it.

A New Year.

I just got back from a week in Indiana. I have an itch to write something long and reflective to start the new year, but it's not taking shape in my brain. Things I want to write about:

How happy I am that my mom's hair is growing back. It's funny how we focus so much energy on the hair loss associated with chemotherapy, as if that even comes close to being the worst thing about cancer. It's just so ... visible, I guess. (She wore a wig when we went out for New Year's Eve dinner. She's still self-conscious -- I guess older women with very short haircuts stand out at the Outback Steakhouse in Muncie Indiana. The wig is very pretty. She calls it "Gina" because that was on the label when she bought it, and I'm sure it looks totally natural to anyone who doesn't know, but it cracked me up because it's my mom in a wig, which is just funny for some reason.) Anyway, without the wig she looks great, like Laurie Anderson with her spiky silver halo and big wide smile.

My nephews, who are endlessly fascinating to me. The oldest (will be 13 this month), who is getting tall and just starting puberty. He listens to hip-hop and lets his pants sag when he can get away with it. He can be a little shit, and he's rude to his mom (who is of course my little sister, so I want to slap him), but he's funny and cute and that goes a long way. He's also very sensitive, cries at the drop of a hat. The tall and cute part reminds me of all the boys I wanted to be when I was 12. The crying part reminds me of me.

The middle one, who will be 9 in March. I could follow him around forever. What's in his brain? He loves musical theater and science fiction. One evening, he and I played a spontaneous game for a long time which went something like this: "I have a million dollars in gold, but it's disguised as an artichoke and hidden at the bottom of a volcano in the past." "I would design an indestructible robot and send it back in time in my time machine to find the volcano and steal the artichoke." "But I have the only time machine in existence and I'm the only one who knows how to turn the artichoke back into gold." "Then I would design a bomb that would selectively blow up the time-space continuum, then use my robot to retrieve the artichoke from the volcano." "But it's still an artichoke." "That's okay. I love artichokes." And on and on. He laughed every time either of us said artichoke. I enjoyed that a lot.

And the youngest, who is in kindergarten, adorable, and spends most of his day just trying to keep up with his brothers.

I'm putting together a list so I can send New Year's cards this year. I've fallen out of touch with so many old friends, and I don't want to let another year go by without remedying that, if I can. My first plan was to write a concise story of the last few years of my life to include with the card, but I've given that up in favor of just letting people know where I am now. I figure anyone who wants details can ask.

As Always, the Smartest Person in the Room.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What's interesting about this to me is that you see how unknowledgeable Obama is about so-called LGBT issues, which mirrors I think the American people's state of familiarity with them. It's a strange sort of half knowing that maybe (to them) feels more complete than it is because of the massive influx of gay and lesbian images in pop culture with Will & Grace, The L Word, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and other miscellaneous homosexuals on reality shows and commercials, etc. in the last 10 years. Not to mention everyone's favorite homosexual, the one who started the conversation, Ellen. I think people are much less afraid than they were 10 years ago, but they're still pretty uncomfortable with homosexuality unless it's entertainment.

This Rick Warren thing really throws it into the light. The gay community is all like "But I thought you loved us! I thought you understood," and Obama is like, "I do!" and we're like, "Apparently not."

And maybe I'm gonna be hugely wrong on this in the end, we'll see, but I still think it's the wrong approach to compare the homosexual struggle to the civil rights movement. Of course there are parallels, but I think the argument's persuasive power is too limited. Because gay rights is about sexuality rather than ethnicity, it's a different row to hoe. The conversation requires a comfort with talking about sex that most Americans just don't have. The Rick Warren-type 3rd grade schoolyard arguments against homosexual relationships -- "people aren't made that way," "the parts don't fit," etc., the so-called plumbing argument -- are impossible to refute without having a fairly graphic discussion of body parts and sexual behavior. I think most people feel such intense discomfort with the subject matter, a discomfort that I think a lot of people aren't even aware of or wouldn't acknowledge, that they are literally unable to have that conversation, to learn the stuff you need to learn in order to understand that homosexual desire is just as natural as heterosexual desire. I think what most people want to be assured of is that it's natural. It's a steeper learning curve than the race stuff, and it's unreasonable to expect Obama to be anywhere other than where he is with it.

It's so clear, when you look at a mixed race couple, to see what a simple, glaring injustice it is to deny them the right to be together in the exact same way we allow non-mixed couples to be together. The argument against mixed-race couples falls apart when you look more closely at the idea of race. The argument is based on the idea that the races shouldn't mix, but that's ridiculous because of course they already have. Each of us is already a great mixture. So you can't argue that there's some fundamental biological difference between, for example, a white man and a white woman marrying and a white man and a black woman marrying. But two men together, two women together, does present something biologically different than a heterosexual couple. Not that it's not natural or right or good, not that they necessarily shouldn't be encouraged to emulate heterosexual relationships, but it's a different argument to make.

Am I missing something?

Actually, That's Not True and You Know It. Asshole.





He's either stupendously ignorant or he's lying, and I assume this guy has read the Bible, so that leaves out ignorant. What bothers me more than the meanness or power-hunger or whatever it is that makes people want to control how other people live their lives down to its most intimate details, is the contempt for history, for knowledge, for science, for simple common sense.

It's like they're talking about Sasquatch when they repeat their "definition of marriage that has been in place in every culture and society for 5,000 years" mantra. On some level I can understand the ignorance of science and history, if these crackpots were educated in American schools, where they don't really teach that stuff to kids because it offends their parents and so after generations American science and history curricula are just a big swamp of avoidance, denial, and misinformation. So maybe Warren is a little weak on science and history. But how many wives did Moses have? I assume he knows it was more than one.

I'm still practicing patience about this one, but I have to admit it hurts. Surely there must have been a less appalling choice than Warren to participate in this historic inauguration.

Semester 3.

If you were wondering, I finished the semester on Monday with my last two finals. Here's the breakdown: all A's except one B in my geography class, and I got A's on both papers, the one about Native American homosexuality in Texas and the one about the Mike Nichols films and marriage in the late 1960's.

The geography class ("The Modern American City") was a bit frustrating. Overall, it was one of my favorite classes I've taken at UT. The lectures were fascinating, the professor is very funny and opinionated, the reading was interesting. If you gauge the value of a course by how much it illuminates your view of the world, this one would score very high.

But the exams were insane, not so much hard as loopy. They defied any notion you might have about what is important to remember and what is not. Questions were often along the lines of, "What was the pun I made in my lecture about residual spaces?" The class grade was based completely on 3 exams, and I studied hard and couldn't get much above an 85 on any of them. There just didn't seem to be any way to prepare for them, they were so unpredictable. If you didn't write down that pun and memorize it, you were out of luck. (Yes, I know this is essentially about my ego. Whatever. I'm not a B student!)

Inclusive Means Everybody.

The fact that the griping classes in both the Christianist and gay camps are in full indignation mode about this is probably a sign that Obama calibrated his choice perfectly.

My take on this, and on pretty much anything Obama does that at first doesn't sit right with me, is that Obama is a black man who was just elected president of the United States, which must make him like the smartest person in the world, politically speaking, so why don't we just relax and give him the benefit of the doubt instead of jumping all over him about which preacher he picked to say a prayer at the inauguration. Yeah, he could have picked a lesbian Unitarian, and that would have pissed off about 90% of the population. Rick Warren only pisses off about 3%.

I kind of like the notion of a Evangelical bigot being compelled to bless the presidency of Obama, whose election basically says to Warren and his people, "Your time is up."

Middling.

I've been trying to find information about GRE scores (what's good, what's average, etc.) because I got my scores right after I took the test, but I had nothing to compare them to. I should look on Wikipedia first for everything, because that's usually where I find it. According to the entry on the GRE, my verbal score is in the 99th percentile and my math score is right around the 50th percentile. To be honest, I'm surprised that 50% of people who take the GRE are worse at math than I am.

Poor Tinkerbell.

We live with a pig. Our friends -- whose house we're staying in while they're on vacation and for a few months after they return until our new container house, which they are building on their property, is ready -- have a pig named Tinkerbell, and she is turning into a bit of problem child. What does she want?

I can't cook with her in the kitchen (she's huge and unyielding and constantly begs for food or attention or whatever, butting her big wet snout against my legs), so I shoo her out. She just gripes at me and won't move until I push her, sometimes with a chair (gently) because frankly I'm a little afraid of her. The other day, she bit my big toe. She didn't do any damage, but it did hurt a little.

The last couple of mornings, she's been intense and persistent. When I go to the kitchen to make coffee or refill my cup, she scurries over to me and butts my legs . So I've taken to running from her. There's kind of a lap around an island formed by the stove and a table between the kitchen and the big main room, so I run in, fill my cup with coffee, and when she comes at me I walk around the island, she follows me, I grab the 1/2 and 1/2 as I pass by the fridge, pour some in my coffee quickly because she's coming around behind me, return the 1/2 and 1/2 to the fridge and grab my coffee, she's on my tail but I'm out the door before she catches up.

It sounds funny and it is, but I can tell she's unhappy. There are several big pillows on the floor that she sleeps with, and when she gets frustrated because I'm running from her or pushing her out of the way, she throws the pillows around, and yesterday she tore one of them up.

J put up dog gates in the doorways to our half of the house, so Tinkerbell and Bones the boxer can't come back here -- so that Timmy the cat can escape from them when he wants to, but they serve the same purpose for us. Tinkerbell smashed through one of the gates this morning. My friend A told me yesterday about a friend of hers who had a pig who, when it got too big to stay in the house and they put it in the yard, would tear right through the screen door.

The photo is not Tinkerbell, but that's just what she looks like.