I'm Coming For You, Byron!

Word of the day : boulevardier
                                                   : a man about town ; specifically, a frequenter of the Parisian
                                                     boulevards

Thoughts this Wednesday: 

- Rutgers head basketball coach Mike Rice (and AD Tim Pernetti) should be fired immediately.  Immediately.  Throwing basketballs at players heads?  Calling them 'f----ing f---ots?"  Unreal.  The president of Rutgers should be fired immediately. 
Here is the short video of the footage (condensed from a half-hour):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbaYqcMMZ6A

- Book review: 

Justin Evans' The White Devil (2011) is set at Harrow, a real-life English boarding school that Evans himself went to - along with other famous men: Winston Churchill, Robert Peel, and Anthony Trollope.  It's a literary ghost story that follows 17-year old American Andrew Taylor, a troubled kid who has bounced around various schools, who arrives at Harrow and immediately finds himself an outcast.  It doesn't help that before long Andrew begins seeing a white-haired spirit who appears to be the ghost of alumnus Lord Byron's lover.  Andrew, you see, physically resembles Byron, who he is playing in the school play.  The ghost, John Harness, was a poor town kid who attended Harrow and fell in love with Byron and was later spurned by him.  Now it seems he is back and willing to knock off any one who is close to Andrew.  An elegant thriller, nicely written, not scary so much as stately in its moodiness.  A good throwaway read with an increasing tension, which succeeds in making you want to read more of Evans' work. 

- Book review #2

Julia Alvarez' acclaimed In the Time of the Butterflies was a huge disappointment for me.  If you're interested in the real-life characters that Alvarez follows here, the Mirabal sisters, you would be best served reading a non-fiction book or even a Wikipedia article about them.  It's set during the period of Trujillo's dictatorship of the Dominican Republic, a time that would be interesting to read about.  Alvarez does succeed in giving us enchanting yet terrifying glimpses of Trujillo's country: opulence, the silencing of enemies, paranoia, job creation.... One of my problems with the book is that Alvarez, in her telling of the story through the four sisters' point of view, doesn't make it particularly easy to chart what exactly is going on.  It's very easy to lose track of characters, forget names, remember which kid is which or which is the husband of which wife.  I often found myself not remembering events (or whom they happened to) a few pages before.  More importantly, I never found the women - extraordinarily brave in real-life - to be that courageous or inspiring; they never seemed that revolutionary or daring.  They came across more as pests to Trujillo.

- Looking forward to seeing Sarah Chalke and Elizabeth Perkins in the appealing-looking sitcom How to Live With Your Parents, which ABC has given a plum post-Modern Family slot.          

- Animal photo of the day: 

(from the Cincinnati zoo)

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/photo-of-the-day/?c=y&date=04/03/2013

March 30

Word of the day : obviate
                                          : to anticipate and prevent (as a situation) or make unnecessary (as an 
                                            action) 

What's going through my mind right now:

End of March upon us.  Hope Julia gets job at Lamar or DuPage or Salem St.  Would love to move to Beaumont, TX, Chicago, or Boston.  Want Gabriel to get over his cold.  Praying that my hemorrhoids continue to get better.  Need septic tank to keep working.  Great games last night - amazing comeback by Michigan.  Will take Daisy for a walk soon.  Probably should cut grass this weekend.  Don't know what to watch tonight but glad that HBO and Cinemax are free this weekend - got a bunch of movies recording.  Can't wait to watch the American Masters program featuring Philip Roth. 

Julia and I re-watched The Namesake last night, our first time seeing it since we saw it in an Evanston movie theater six years ago.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  It's a delicate, smartly-directed, faithful adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's first-rate novel, with two great, moving performances by the wonderful Indian actors Irrfhan Khan and Tabu as a husband and wife who move to America in the late 1970s to work and raise a family.  How much you believe or like Kal Penn in the crucial role of their son Gogol might determine the level of your appreciation of the movie, but, regardless, his understated turn is overshadowed by the tremendous work of Khan and Tabu.  Very sad and deeply felt.  Directed by Mira Nair. 

Anna Sewell was born on this date in 1820.  I've never read Black Beauty, the book she is most known for but I do own it and I will read it soon.  Her mother was a successful children's author, and, throughout her life, Anna helped her edit her manuscripts.  She herself wasn't published until she was 57!  Published about a year before her death, Black Beauty was written as a way to "induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses."  Born in Norfolk, England and raised in a family that moved around a lot, Anna found a role model in her hard-working, pious mother who taught Anna a love of animals.  Anna had chronic ankle problems and never walked normally.  She never married or had children.  She traveled as well as she could, to health spas throughout Europe, and even taught Sunday school.  She had no idea that her novel would become a best-seller and have a big impact on the burgeoning anti-animal cruelty groups popping up in England at the time.   

(Thanks: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/anna-sewell-author-of-black-beauty-is-born)

Picks for this weekend:

Ohio State over Wichita St.
Syracuse over Marquette
Louisville over Duke 
Michigan over Florida 

(So Far:  Correct - 40 ; Incorrect - 20)
                           
  




Image courtesy of: 

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/image/detail/Black-Beauty-Anna-Sewell.jpg
                          

TV SHOWS

New Movies Opening This Weekend: 

The Host    An adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's non-Twilight bestseller, this poorly-reviewed movie stars Saiorse Ronan as a teen forced to act when an unseen alien force infiltrates the bodies of her friends and town and erases their memories.  Directed by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time), who penned one of the great modern scripts for The Truman Show.  Co-stars Diane Kruger, William Hurt, and Max Irons (Jeremy's son).  Kind of a YA body-snatching sort of movie. 
(Yes)

The Place Beyond the Pines    Blue Valentine director re-teams with Ryan Gosling for this long, "epic" family crime drama.  Gosling is a stunt motorcycle racer who turns to robbing banks to support his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) and unborn child.  In the second triptych, we are introduced to Bradley Cooper's rookie cop, who finds himself on a collision course with Gosling.  In the third part of the film, we are introduced to the characters' sons, who inherit this legacy of crime and bad ends.  Ambitious, divisive, aims for the greatness of a Greek tragedy.  Ray Liotta co-stars.
(Yes)

G.I. Joe" Retaliation    You pumped for this sequel?  It's got the Rock, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum...
Yeah, me neither. 

Tyler Perry's Temptation    No idea what this one is about, but it is written and directed by Tyler Perry, it was not screened for critics, and it does co-star Kim Kardashian and Brandy Norwood.  You've been warned. 

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Going on and on as I was in yesterday's post about The Bates Motel got me realizing that I have never made a list of my favorite TV shows (of all time). 

This was a tough list to construct, and I had to winnow away the shows that were guilty pleasures as a young guy and teenager (Golden Girls, Saved by the Bell, TGIF-related stuff).  Also, I didn't include any shows that came out before I was born - although I did like an episode of All in the Family or Sanford  & Son if they were ever on).  Some of the shows only lasted a season.  And, yes, some of them I And, sorry, I can't include mini-series', but I do include reality shows.   
quit watching at some point. 

So, here goes.  Here are the 50 Shows I Can't (and Couldn't) Have Done Without:

- Alias    (ABC)
- Arrested Development    (FOX)
- Big Love  (HBO)
- Breaking Bad   (AMC)
- Castle   (ABC) 
- Cheers    (NBC)
- The Closer   (TNT)
- Covert Affairs  (USA)
- Curb Your Enthusiasm  (HBO)
- Damages  (FX)
- Dexter   (SHOW)
- Downton Abbey  (PBS) 
- Ed   (NBC)
- Entourage  (HBO)
- Everwood  (WB)
- Extras  (HBO) 
- Frasier  (NBC)
- Friday Night Lights  (NBC) 
- Friends  (NBC)
- Harper's Island  (CBS)
- Hart of Dixie  (CW)
- Homeland   (SHOW)
- In Treatment  (HBO)
- Justified   (FX)
- Mad Men   (AMC)
- Modern Family   (ABC)
- My So-Called Life   (ABC)
- The New Adventures of Old Christine  (CBS)
- Nip/Tuck   (FX)
- Nurse Jackie   (SHOW)
- The Office   (NBC)
- Once and Again   (ABC) 
- Parenthood   (NBC)
- Party of Five   (FOX)
- Project Runway   (Bravo)
- Rizzoli and Isles   (TNT)
- Scrubs   (NBC)
- Seinfeld   (NBC)
- Sex and the City   (HBO)
- Six Feet Under   (HBO)
- The Sopranos   (HBO)
- Tales From the Crypt   (HBO)
- 30 Rock   (NBC)
- Top Chef   (Bravo)
- Twin Peaks   (ABC)
- Veronica Mars   (WB)
- Weeds   (SHOW)
- Will and Grace   (NBC)
- The Wire   (HBO)
- The X-Files   (FOX)


Runners Up:  Brothers and Sisters (ABC), Californication (SHOW), Dawson's Creek (WB), Enlightened (HBO), Freaks and Geeks (NBC), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (NBC), Girls (HBO), Hot in Cleveland (TV Land), Home Improvement (ABC), How I Met Your Mother (CBS), King of Queens (CBS), Luther (BBC), The O.C. (Fox), What About Brian (ABC).

(Given time, though, and more episodes some of these runners-up - Girls and Luther - will easily make it into my list.  easily.  I love them!) 

So for the record, the breakdown of shows by network:

NBC: 11
HBO: 10
ABC: 6
Showtime: 4 
FOX: 3 
WB/CW: 3 
FX: 3 
AMC: 2
Bravo: 2  
CBS: 2  
TNT: 2
USA: 1 
PBS: 1 



No blog for tomorrow, so here are the NCAA Picks for tonight and Friday:

Arizona over Ohio State
Miami (Fl) over Marquette
Syracuse over Indiana
Wichita State over LaSalle 


Louisville over Oregon
Kansas over Michigan
Duke over Michigan State
Florida over Florida Gulf Coast

(So far: Correct - 35 ; Incorrect - 17) 

Master Bates

Sorry about the last hemorrhoid post; that couldn't have been any fun to read or visualize. 

What I wanted the last post to be about was how much I'm liking A&E's Bates Motel, the revisionist drama about teenage Norman Bates and his mother Norma.

Why do I like it?

1) I like how it's set in the present day.  The film wisely stays away from re-making the story, and instead chooses to plop Norman down in the present day, making his strange, unsettling madness and neurosis something for our generation.  He's just a teenage kid, full of insecurity. 

2) I like some of the self-aware shots, like that terrifically framed one early one with Norma sitting on the car, telling Norman to open his eyes.  He does and behind Norma, who is sitting on the car, we see the motel and, looming above it, the house.  And, of course, all those framed pictures of birds. 

3) The storylines flesh out the characters of mother and son - and pesky brother Dylan from Norma's first marriage - in intriguing, cheeky ways.  The filmmakers play on our imaginations.  We start thinking back on the events in Psycho and all the questions that we had but which were never answered.  And, maybe, just maybe, in some alternate universe, this was how it all started or could have happened...

4) Freddie Highmore is an astute, eerie choice to play young Norman.  He has the tall, gangly, shy, half-smiling, furtive thing down pat. 

5) Vera Farmiga rocks as Norma, a terrific characterization: sexy, protective, eager, vulnerable, inappropriate, steely. 

Yuck

Word of the day : gnomic
                                          : characterized by aphorism 

Well, Smithsonian published its annual list of the 20 Best U.S. Small-Towns to Visit: 
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-20-Best-Small-Towns-to-Visit-in-2013-196855051.html
Been to any of them?

Okay, this is gross, but it's my blog and I can say whatever I want:
I HATE HEMORRHOIDS! 

I have one swollen internal hemorrhoid and it's driving me crazy.  I hate going to the bathroom.  This morning, there was so much blood in the toilet that I was really unnerved.  Turns out, I think the thing just burst.  Which is good. 

But I don't think it's gone.  I'm going to go up and take a hot bath!

That is all for today! 
 

Words

Word of the day : nascent
                                          : coming or having recently come into existence

Great weekend of games.  My predictions so far: Correct - 35 , Incorrect - 17

Croods, not surprisingly, ruled the box office this weekend.  No idea what it's about, but it is a kids' movie, so you knew it would do well.  Olympus Has Fallen, a crummy-looking, White House-gets-invaded thriller, showed strongly in second, with over $30 mil.  Oz and The Call stayed steady at #3 and #4, respectively.  The Tina Fey-Paul Rudd comedy-drama Admission landed with a thud at #5, earning just over $6 million.  Spring Breakers is performing well in limited theaters, but audience scores are very low; people are curious about the movie but not liking it. 

*

The Words (2012), the debut film from the writing-directing team of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, is a fine literary mystery, a matryoshka doll of a tale - a story within a story within a story.  Bradley Cooper is the writer who can't catch a break.  In Paris on his honeymoon with wife Zoe Saldana, he finds an old writers' satchel with a novel inside of it.  Desperate for anything, he re-types the story line-for-line and submits to an agent.  Lo and behold, the book becomes a huge hit.  Along comes a raggedy, scuffling old man (Jeremy Irons, in old-age makeup) who accuses Cooper of stealing his book, which was lost on a train long ago. 

But Cooper's character is a fictional creation, you see, a character in the book written by a louche writer (Dennis Quaid).  Did what happened to Cooper happen to Quaid's character?  Did Quaid steal a story along the way?  Is that what an avid fan (Olivia Wilde, proving that you can never have too many good-looking people in one movie) is eager to find out about him? 

The ending is a bit of a letdown; I think the movie needed another five minutes to answer some of the questions it raised, but I was absorbed by all the storylines.  It's a good-looking, well-acted film. 

*

A selection today for list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:


Jeremy Irons
as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (1990)

Speaking of Irons, be sure to catch his Oscar-winning turn as the real-life Long Island socialite murderer sometime during your life.  As the spruce, timorous, eloquently shifty von Bulow, Irons uses his magnificent voice and Eurotrash mien to grand use in the controversial role of the man who fiddled with his wife's (Glenn Close) medications to make her overdose and spend the rest of her life brain-dead.  It's a wonderful part, requiring Irons to be sneaky and unreadable, silky and entertaining, with a cold heart of steel. 




Image courtesy of: 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfh84Hs1CO7AJYYEf3NHm5S1PeEsvDJVhRdJr-EtUQLTdGJBmAB_hBOlH0wJF-Rsek_uS11L6NUWDK_5Wdf7xVSpBtWqNMyILEg3xUnW-xHjrD3JX5ZKhlXMfsxjRPa3zI8KghjDju2SY/s1600/Reversal+of+Fortune.jpg

Day 2

Word of the day :
                            grift
                                    : to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game)
                                   

Picks for today's games:

Duke over Albany
Wisconsin over Ole Miss
NC State over Temple
Miami (FL) over Pacific
Creighton over Cincy
Kansas State over LaSalle
Indiana over James Madison
Colorado over Illinois
Georgetown over Florida Gulf Coast
Ohio State over Iona
North Carolina over Villanova
Florida over Northwestern State
San Diego State over Oklahoma
Iowa State over Notre Dame
Kansas over Western Kentucky
UCLA over Minnesota 

(So far: Correct - 16  Incorrect - 4)

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For travel readers out there, check out this Smithsonian link:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Top-Ten-Most-Influential-Travel-Books-199199901.html

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Get well, mom!