Don't Cry For Me, Patti LuPone

The truth is, I didn't see you.

But a minor blip in a wonderful holiday weekend in the Big Apple with Connie, Alex, and Christelle. Even though I had work today, I pretended break had already begun. The Rockefeller Center tree was up, surrounded in scaffolding. Saks Fifth Avenue hung unlit snowflakes. Homeless people asked for change on four of my subways. It's beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving.

I probably spent more than I should on food, but how can you say no to a three-course pre-theater dinner that begins with warm soup and ends with chocolate mousse? It's okay, though, because we hit up the MoMA for free on Friday night, and I paid for my "suggested $10 admission" to the Met (the museum) with $5. Considering I saw about one-tenth of the place, I think that's fair. And who knew there was a temple inside? With a moat surrounding it. It makes you wish you were entombed like a mummy. There's also a very cool European sculpture court, with four statues representing the four elements (earth, fire, air, water). Captain Planet must have been hiding in another gallery that we didn't get to.

The Van Gogh exhibition was sold out at the MoMA, but Joan Miró made up for it. Go look at Still Life with Old Shoe online; it's way psychedelic. There's a sculpture there by Marcel Duchamp called To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour. So I listened to directions and, once I figured out which was the other side, closed one eye and stared away. The almost-hour was interrupted by a museum guard who chastised me for being too close. It was okay, though; we went into the interactive art room where a film played around us called Pour Your Body Out. The museum allowed us to lie on a round couch, roll about in the midst of a film about women and grass and strawberries, and take our shoes off. Total zen.

Christelle signed us up for her RA event, a walking tour of gargoyles in Gramercy/Flatiron. It was actually really informative; around 1900 the Statue of Liberty's hand was displayed in the middle of Madison Square Park. It was almost the coldest I've ever been, but that honor actually went to the 1.5 hours I spent in line for Gypsy student rush. My toes froze off, but for a good reason: front row center that night.

After our dinner next to a waterfall (true story), Connie and Alex giddily ran into Equus and I dashed across the street to the St. James. I'm handed a piece of paper - Ms. LuPone is indisposed - and greeted with a lengthy box office line. But they tell me I can get a refund at a later time, so at 7:55, I run down the street, wondering what I could possibly get tickets to. Three blocks away, I see Speed-the-Plow with an enormous line outside. It's 8:01, but they're holding the curtain. Finally my turn; I ask if they possibly have rush left. Success! But wait! I only have $10 in cash, and you cannot pay with credit card. With the clock ticking, I race across the street to a hotel, collide into the ATM, and (after waiting for the newest herd of latecomers) acquire my rush ticket. Up the stairs two at a time, into my seat (thankfully on the aisle), and the show begins at 8:15.

Afterwards, I got to donate money to Raul Esparza (well, really to Broadway Cares, but he was holding the basket) and then stagedoored Daniel Radcliffe, who is very short and wore a baseball cap so that nobody could see his face. Thankfully, he appeared within 20 minutes, cause it was, you know, really cold. My lips are now chapped (very rare for me), and I think my forehead got hat burn. You know what rocks, though? The New York subway. Even though all express trains were shut down this weekend, it still took me eight minutes to get from 96th to 42nd. Take that, Boston.

A Maverick for All Seasons

Review: Quantum of Solace

Roger Ebert isn't fond of Quantum of Solace. James Bond shouldn't be an action hero, he says. And true, James Bond in 2008 is practically the brother of Jason Bourne. With the initials, you'd think James Bond was aping him, if there weren't 40 years of Bond celluloid on record.

But Bond movies have always blown up tankers and warehouses and submarines. Car chases stretch back to Dr. No. Blood, sweat, and tears didn't pour out of Sean Connery or Roger Moore, but ever since the eighties, hyper-violence has been in vogue. The difference with Quantum, like the Bourne sequels, is that the camera gets progressively shakier. I couldn't figure out who got shot or drove off a cliff in the first scene, though I was pretty sure Bond would survive. He has since 1963.

Unlike the Brosnans, the Craigs intend to be films instead of popcorn flicks, with angst and relevance and chiaroscuro. Daniel Craig is a lethal killer, with piercing blue eyes and humor drier than his martinis (which, in keeping with tradition, are still shaken). He's still the protagonist, but now the film questions, is he a good guy? As his personal body count grows, it becomes harder to explain it all away with a lover's betrayal and demise. Malice motivates him more than anything; instead of charming quips, he prefers to whip out his gun. That's not an entendre; Quantum offers the most single-minded, least sexual Bond of the series. M at once respects and distrusts him, though she never fears him. Judi Dench is too formidable to ignore, and her performance trumps that of the Bond girls.

The girls, really, are what has changed the most. Pussy Galore from Goldfinger relished the sound of her name, as did James. The newest ingenue is named Strawberry Fields, but her first name can only be found in the credits. In a tempestuous political climate, entertainment can't help but offer social commentary and avoid empty glamour. Quantum goes for substance over style, and if it's not as impressive as Casino Royale, it's not so radically different from the last 20 years of Bond. The vistas are lush, the plotting is sleek, the pace is relentless. It's not afraid of self-plagiarism, as in a Goldfinger-inspired death, or of borrowing the main political thrust of the film from Chinatown.

Craig, Dench, and Mathieu Amalric (a departure from the cultured villain of the Connery era) create characters of flesh and desperation who convince, ultimately, that Bond cannot be a mere retread. But Quantum isn't a reinvention, either. It culls from the past and refuses to be an island, as all events expand upon the ending of Casino Royale. Hopefully next time, though, Bond won't have his license revoked again. Sometimes it's best, as Quantum often does, to stir the martini around.

Live Long, Prosper, and Collect 200 Dollars

The problem with America: free enterprise. In theory it's great, but not when we're enterprising off other people's enterprise. We've lost our originality.

May I present Exhibit A? (It's really Exhibit 'u'.)

Floris Schonfeld, who speaks four languages including Klingon, will appease Trekkies across the world - no, universe! - with an opera. Surely fans of Star Trek and fans of opera overlap. It will be called 'u'. The punctuation represents merging worlds or something, surrounding a lowercase universe. Beam me up the scale, Scotty.

On to Exhibit B.

We've run out of New York Times bestsellers and Pulitzer-winning plays to adapt. Where do we turn next? Ridley Scott sees a surefire moneymaker: Monopoly. The board game. A film about the development of the Atlantic City boardwalk? That's about as exciting as landing on "Income Tax." Instead, it will be a futuristic movie like Blade Runner, with a dash of Corpse Bride thrown in. A true saga of American capitalism, greed, corruption, and space aliens: move aside, There Will Be Blood. I anticipate a tearjerker; bring your tissues for the Water Works.

Exhibit C. (These are all true stories.)

Battleship and Ouija will follow. I can't wait for cinemas next Christmas: shall I spend my $8.75 on Battleship Galactica, The Ouijas of Eastwick, or A Fistful of 200 Dollars? Better yet, let's hire Sarah Michelle Gellar for It Knows What You Did Last Summer. Maybe the Monopoly film could become a slacker comedy, a sequel to Dude, Where's My Car? I'd shell out for Free Parking.

It Was A Very Good Week

Top Ten Things That President-Elect Obama Has Done For Me:

10. Turned the Boston Common into a terrific rainbow of color Wednesday afternoon. Even the red trees looked as proud as vermilion peacocks.
9. Boosted the economy through trendy consumerism: as a responsible voting citizen, I got me a free cup o' Starbucks joe.
8. Brought the battleground back to Virginia, just like the good ol' days (PS. My mom voted for him).
7. Caused Massachusetts to rejoice that an ounce of reefer has been decriminalized.
6. Dismayed Massachusetts that the Maui wowie is still illegal.
5. Sent Annie Oakley back to Seward's Folly.
4. Opened an unfortunate can of worms: why do people still say "an historic," as if that were correct or logical?
3. Granted me a free cup of chicken tortilla soup at Panera tonight. So much cooler than Bush's "get thee to a shopping mall" handouts.
2. Conferred an internship upon me for the spring. I think he's really Santa Claus.
1. Convinced me that I deserve to reward myself. He's buying a puppy; I splurged on a double-chocolate donut.

Seth and Liz Make a Faux Apatow

Review: Zach and Miri Make a Porno

Many highbrow Bostonians attended the Good Vibrations amateur erotic film fest tonight, at the Coolidge Corner arthouse theater. Those of us who wanted an extra layer of meta watched a film about making amateur erotic film. Zach and Miri Make a Porno needs no plot summary beyond its title. A porno they make, and not a very good one. (This is where every newspaper in America writes, oh gee, we just can't print that title.) Along the way, we are desensitized to every offensive word and image that an R-rated movie can pull off. But beneath it all, they really love each other, asserts Judd Apatow. Sorry, Freudian slip - that guy who directed lots of other mildly offensive cult movies.

In this bizarrely vulgar teddy-bear universe of Judd - I mean that Dogma guy - Man Without Prospects bags Hot Girl, then realizes that they share more than just friction. Burned-out losers churn out more four-letter words in coffee shops than cappuccinos. Their circle of outcast friends helps out through thick and thin (skin in this case). It's probably the only movie about porn where Seth Rogen is the one to watch. A self-professed "Beluga whale," he makes a leading man of his earnest schlub who carpes the diem. Zach and Miri knows that there's more to meta-porn than Zach's editing method of money shot, credits, out. If it doesn't plow any deeper, at least we get some instant gratification.

The Seven Last Words on the Gloss

This isn't a rant against bad writing, but more against unnecessary words that pop up in professional writing. Academia can mold -isms galore and transform nouns into verbs willy-nilly, but those of us writing for the educated common man have a responsibility to not insult him. Here are my votes for words that need a cooldown:

1. Pretentious. Guys, Eternal Sunshine was so pretentious, I just couldn't get into it. You would like opera; it's so pretentious. He painted a black canvas and hung it pretentiously in the MoMA. We've all bantered this word about, but rarely with meaning. I didn't get it, so obviously it was pretentious. The term actually means "assuming dignity or importance," or "making an exaggerated outward show." I'd wager that Cher and Madonna on an off-day, with concert tours of flashing lights and 30 costume changes, are much more outwardly exaggerated and self-important than anything showing at the MoMA. But nobody ever calls them pretentious, because they're mainstream. Maybe we're really searching for "esoteric" (or just wishing we understood it in the first place).

2. Ironically. More often than not, we mean "appropriately" or "fittingly." I dressed up as a Kit Kat bar for Halloween, and ironically I got more Kit Kats than any other candy in my bag. Nope, try again. Better yet, just don't say it's ironic at all. Most people are smart enough to get that on their own (unless it's overwhelmingly pretentious!).

3. Respectively. I'm really hating on the adverbs. But when you list three people and then three subsequent descriptions, isn't it obvious that they correspond in order? A parkway and a driveway, ironically, are where you drive and park respectively. All the subtlety of a Mack truck.

4. Ever. From NYTimes.com: "Who ever knew the second president could be so appealing? The DVD set of "John Adams" ... has quickly become one of the company's fastest-selling series ever." It sounds so Seventeen, doesn't it? It's conceivable that someone in the history of existence knew that Adams was a charming fellow, Abigail for starters. As for the second "ever," thank goodness it clarifies. DVDs have been out for a whopping ten years. Nothing like writers helping you parse through the eons of DVD sales to provide some context.

5. Utilize/ironical/desiderated/instantaneously. Examples of the "more is less" phenomenon. If I slip in use/ironic/desired/at once, respectively of course, wouldn't they suffice? 

6. Archaic usage. Check out newyorker.com for the "Red Sex, Blue Sex" article. Margaret Talbot, the ultimate prescriptivist, will not let her language be sullied. And so she utilizes spellings like "teen-ager," "per cent," and "debut" with an acute accent over it, perhaps to give the French some credit after the whole freedom fries debacle. I'd hate for her desiderated superiority to give way in the age of the World Wide Web, electronic messaging, and cellular telephones. 

7. What the [heck]? The Washington Post has this twee habit of replacing expletives with precious kindergarden euphemisms. What a load of [cow manure], no? Is this to guard against teen-age eyes learning words they haven't seen? Somewhat ironical, though, when the Post writes "a sex spoof called (I think we can print this) 'Star Whores'" in its review of "Zack and Miri." Aw, golly gee, it's a dirty word! Seems pretty self-important of these [sillyheads] to sneer at base language usage. Can we say most pretentious newspaper ever?

Grim Grinning Ghosts

We took the ferry to Salem early on All Saints' Day. I credit myself with holding up the boat so that Alexis and John, who were running late, could board. The ferry had started moving and everything. It was very cinematic as I spotted them from afar: the rush of the water, the roar of the engine, the unfurling of the bridge onto the dock. And then we pushed off and noticed something about New England sailing: bloody cold it is.

These chills prepared us for the real horrors to come in Salem. First horror: The pumpkin festival, boasting a 1,000-pound pumpkin, was cleared out in the morning. In its wake were carnival midway stands serving fried dough. The advertised free hot cocoa also went the way of the witches. And we don't believe we got to meet any real witches, at least not in any back alley.

Salem remains mysterious partially because it's not. It remains a quaint New England town with shuttered inns and cobblestone streets upon which outdoor markets sell their wares. The rocky coast, as you approach over the water, is lined with gleaming white sailboats and houses on the hill. Halloween brings out the occult fairs and the psychic expos.

But the town rakes in commerce year-round on its ten variations on the Animatronic burn-the-witches museum. Visit the witches' dungeon or the witches' cottage. Both will thrill you with the same untold tales of that little-known date 1692. (Yes, to celebrate Columbus' subjugation of Caribbean culture two hundred years before, Salem decided to cart Tituba and her witch brethren off to the stake.)

The museum owners could take a trick from the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. The town proper, though, has this otherworldly feel to it, disconnected enough to satisfy those whom urban life has, yes, burned out. Town Hall hosts dark art shows and the mall sells booths to witch school acolytes. Contrast this with about five stands in the square vending sausage and college a capella groups, and you realize that Salem caters to alternative tastes. Where else would the second oldest cemetery in America attract such a crowd?