The Wrestler?

I just watched The Wrestler.  Eh.  I was a bit under whelmed.  Depressing (and not in a good way), decent performances but I wasn’t blown away.  There was a lot of hype, an Oscar nomination for Rourke, but I was disappointed.   It happens a lot these days.  I put a big Hollywood hit on my Netflix queue thinking “Well, all the critics liked it so it must be good” only to be left unmoved.  My mother used to steal my Netflix DVDs when they came in the mail.  It was really irritating because once something goes in her room there’s a good chance it will never come out again, not this decade.  I was trying to figure out how to make sure to get the mail before she got to it but then after a few weeks she just stopped.  Turned out it was my preference for obscure indie and foreign films, quirky little movies or British television crime dramas she had never heard of that got her to quit hijacking my movies. 

Here’s a sampling of recently viewed choices:

I’ve Loved You So Long

The Intended

The Reader

The Wire- Season Five

Frozen River

Tell No One

Dark City

Rachel Getting Married

Journey to Kafiristan

In The City

Dexter-Season Two

The Mayor Of Casterbridge

Meantime

Nothing

 

Not all great but all kind of interesting.  Has anybody seen any of those?  Well, some of them are somewhat mainstream.  I like stuff that’s character driven and less homogenized and pasteurized than the usual big studio project.  I go by actors or directors I like, or an interesting description.  If I had to only see what’s in the McMall Movieplexes I’d never see anything.  I have absolutely no interest in the new Star Trek movie or Wolverine.  I haven’t seen Spiderman (how many are there now?) or anything Fast or Furious.  I don’t care about Jennifer Aniston or Matthew McConaughey’s new romantic comedy.  ZZZZZZZ.  Damn, I still haven’t seen Jaws just on principle!  To me all this stuff is the high fructose of culture, empty calories and the same old formulas.  Ugh.  

Do I feel superior for my rarefied movie tastes?  You bet!  Luckily my lack of self-esteem in most other areas of my life keeps me level headed and down to earth.  I’m very accessible!  And if nothing else I don’t have to go searching for my DVD’s in Mom’s bottomless pit of crap!

Physiognomy-(Gk. physis, nature and gnomon, interpreter) is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance...

... especially the face.

A few weeks ago I was leaving the Mac store on west 14th Street and a guy rode passed me on a bicycle and yelled “You look so sad I’m going to say a prayer for you!”.

How miserable do you have to look for random strangers to comment on your apparent mood? In New York? I could see it happening in a happy city like Minneapolis or LA or Branson. But this is New York, a city known for it’s crappy attitude. Good to know that even in a city filled with curmudgeons I stand out.

"You look so sad I'm going to say a prayer for you!"

The irony is that I was feeling pretty good at that moment. I’m like “Things are looking up! I don’t have to get my Macbook fixed! And I have a bunch of gigs booked! And I just lost ten pounds! And I’m listening to my Eckhart Tolle and living in the now! Sweet!”

“Not so fast sister!” says the universe. “First you gotta turn that frown upside down!”

So, that’s me on a good day, getting heckled in the street for looking sad. Back to the face gym to work on those smile muscles.

Office space for the price of a tall latte

The last few months I’ve been spending a lot more time in Starbucks. I’m a stand-up comic and, in theory, a writer. But I finally accepted that no writing was getting done at home. I ventured forth with my laptop to my neighborhood funky cupcake bakery on Rivington Street and camped out for a couple of hours. I thought I had found my home. But they have no public bathroom, the temperature was often too warm for my over-insulated physique and their hours were limited and erratic. One evening the bakery closed early and I was forced to make do with the Starbucks nearby.

I have avoided Starbucks ever since they erupted onto the coffee scene. In my mind they were the colonizing invaders, a pseudo funky cool in a cookie cutter way conglomerate, and I didn’t want to encourage with my patronage. In retrospect and with further consideration I’m sure their employee treatment and Corporate citizenry is no worse and probably much better than Duncan Donuts my former favorite coffee source. It wasn’t a well thought out prejudice. But what prejudice is, huh?! Am I right people!?

My neighborhood Starbucks is on Delancey and Allen Streets and I reluctantly entered that evening to find that it was actually quite nice. Big and airy, large windows on two of the four walls, some comfy chairs, a couch and a number of wall outlets for us laptoppers. A great place to people watch with a cross section of patrons including local teenagers, European tourists, downtown hipsters, the high functioning homeless/mentally ill and various students and freelancers needing cheap office space.

I can’t say I’ve remained unchanged by my time sitting among all the blond wood and boutique coffees. I’ve given in to the ostentatious sizing jargon. I used to want to insist on saying small instead of tall, medium instead of Grande. But I don’t even feel the impulse anymore. I’m choosing my battles and giving low paid baristas a hard time with my order is low on my list. I’ve noticed too that the baristas are also less rigid then in the old days about using the correct nomenclature. Other patrons less in the know or still harboring a taste for rebellion will ask for the medium or large and Ms. or Mr. barista won’t even blink. I’m guessing we both have grown out of our adolescent insistence on image, more comfortable in our matured identities. There’s also the fact that Starbucks, the once ever expanding can-do-no-wrong golden boy of America’s retail landscape has seen it’s mortality, needed to scale back a bit, close some stores. Not quite so full of itself I’m guessing the SB execs and QC people are a little less demanding of the counter people to stand on ceremony and be a little more customer friendly. Change really has come to America.