An apostrophe to Food, O Glorious Food

I'm about to break out my new George Foreman grill, and I started thinking how wonderful Christmas was. Not just because relatives gave me nice things like George Foreman grills; I'm saluting the food. See, you journey home for three weeks, and you don't have to cook meals (though I did make one dinner) or go grocery shopping. What's better is that my mom can cook up some culinary nirvana.

In August, I bemoaned that she only makes meatloaf in the winter; "you don't make that in the summer." But the week before we U-Hauled up to Boston, there was meatloaf waiting for me on the kitchen table. Yes, it's Only Child Syndrome with its most positive side effects. This isn't your grandmother's meatloaf, kids, unless your grandma knew how it was done; mostly turkey and oats mixed in, with stewed tomatoes dribbling down in lieu of gravy.

My metabolism doesn't think I eat enough, even though I try to stuff in heaps of food. Being home over break, I could drink four Cokes a day, scarf down leftovers for mid-afternoon snack (we'll call it tea), and finish it off with fried ice cream, which now comes in cartons of honey-cinnamon goodness. Now that I'm back in Boston, the debit card intimidates me. I have a food budget per week, and the ice cream doesn't always make the cut. The only leftovers we had was Chinese food from Saturday, but I already devoured my dish, amusingly called strange flavored chicken. Tasted like indulgence to moi.

Cooking for one -- not always so simple. The George Foreman grill and the microwave, plugged into the same surge protector, just had a battle that both lost. After resetting the power twice, it occurred to me that the grill is like a tractor trailer on the highway: don't compete, just clear the way.

Of course, even the most elaborate family meals can go awry. For Christmas this year, we went to my cousin's house as usual, opened presents as usual, and then grabbed our plates for a feast to make carnivores proud. We dined on beef tenderloin, Korean-style thin-sliced beef, turkey (because Christmas is really second Thanksgiving), and salted country ham. Our sides were scalloped potatoes, the epitome of health food; rolls, with butter provided for extra nutrition; and, the real kicker, our only vegetable of collard greens with ham chunks on top. Jesus would have been proud. We consumed all the animals in the inn. Speaking of carnivorous habits, I think my hamburger is fully cooked (and I go medium well; none of that "rare" stuff). Good eats, all!

The Road You Didn't Take, Where Would It Have Led?

Review: Revolutionary Road

Can't stay, can't leave. Revolutionary Road is almost gruesome to watch as the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler unravels, but I chose to stay rather than leave. From what I've read, audiences have been divided: either they are blown away by the craft put into the film, or they are put off. Revolutionary Road is blisteringly unconventional in that we don't follow a couple from idealization to disintegration. We see April with her fading dreams of being extraordinary, and Frank as he brusquely shatters them.

And so Sam Mendes achieves a stunning sleight of character identification. We should hate Frank (and this all happens in the first ten minutes, so not really a spoiler). He trades his wanderlust for the anonymity of the corporate world; he resigns his wife to taking out the garbage; even a girl on the side is no more than "swell." So we gravitate toward April as she proposes an act of spiritual rejuvenation: they will leave the trap of suburbia and move to Paris, where she will escape her housewife duties and earn the family's living.

Though Mendes distances us from the Wheelers, they begin to grow on us as they reconstruct their existence. We forgive Frank, for he loves April so greatly that he will gladly sacrifice almost everything so that she may be fulfilled. And when pressures mount and the future grows dimmer, April seems so vivid, so eager for transformation, that we realize flesh and blood have emerged from the cocoon of their surroundings, and the sleek direction of the film.

So yes, the film begins as sterile, because this is not a story of disillusionment, but of the next step: how to combat it when it thoroughly encases you. It's also not aiming for realism. April's dreams are grandiose and her yearning so great that her story becomes more of a fable. As good as Leonardo DiCaprio is, and he's grown impressive in his ability to emotionally carry a scene, Kate Winslet floored me. April in her hands isn't noble or entirely sympathetic, and I think her emotional progression would be unfathomable if any other actress attempted it. Winslet rips off mask after mask, with searing hurt and bewilderment mixed with resoluteness, as April refuses to succumb to lifelessness. Nor will Winslet.



I think Mendes blames suburbia too easily. While the stifling setting and rigid gender roles of the late 1950s are an apt time for this story, the problems are largely internal. Frank will compromise while April craves anything but. DiCaprio still resembles a man-child, with a Peter Pan streak that makes it hard to believe his willingness to blend in. I wish he'd had a chance to portray the uninhibited Frank, and why April found him the most interesting person she's met. But the film is refreshingly bleak and unsentimental. The fact that Mendes keeps the Wheelers on Revolutionary Road from becoming symbols or icons is alone extraordinary.

Public Enemy (Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Internet)

Lombardo warned us in class to know what's out there on the Internet about us. Then today I read an e-mail from Kate about our honors theses prominent in searches for our names; naturally distant acquaintances (fallen Facebook friends?), stalkers, and blackmailers will head straight for my fifty pages on suburban malaise and misogyny. But curiosity killed the boy allergic to cats: I decided to Google myself and see what all the fuss is about.

First up, an article from the DoG Street Journal previewing True West, in which I had a small part junior year. The author, in my Hemingway class that semester, must not have thought I'd mind if she fabricated a quote from me. With grand elocution, I said our director "experimented with lots of things." That's the pull quote that pays the rent.

Next comes a DSJ article I actually wrote, a review of the Superman musical. With the word "kitsch" in the title, I may redeem my previous vocabulary ineptitude.

Later down the page, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling elected to copy-paste my Herald Progress clip about an event for healthy children onto his own website. An Ashland rabble-rouser cites another article on the defunct Ashland Theatre as "excellent" in his blog. I'm practically a Mechanicsville celebrity.

Add to this the expected: cast lists, orchestra rosters, Redivider staff, Circle K newsletters (with an article I wrote about the nourishing power of Ukrop's cake), and I start to feel accomplished.

The word was spread past reason. I also Yahoo!ed my name as I rolled in self-adulation (Chinese proverb say: when you can't roll in money, find next best thing). At the bottom of the first page is a link to a Yahoo! group I have never joined. One message logs an unending set of names, of which mine seems to be one, unbeknownst to moi. After my name, in Terrifyingly Important Capital Letters, I see the last four digits of my credit card! Right there, under a Yahoo! search, completely public. I'll backtrack; these numbers were from my former credit card, and have changed by now. Maybe that's why Suntrust issued me a new card.

But how spooky is that? When elected officials or town leaders mention me, that's both appreciated and in response to articles I wrote for public consumption. And I'm really non-sketchy about my Internet habits. The people who steal credit card numbers do more harm than even they realize: if I have to suffer through any more of those commercials with a linebacker voiced by Shirley Temple railing about identity theft, I may have to unleash some public destruction. In which case, feel free to write about me; it's all about boundaries, people.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Review: Doubt

Be wary not to misjudge Sister Aloysius. She will come after you with the jaws of a snapping turtle, for starters. Many regard her, though, as uncompassionate and backward-thinking, when in fact her quest to upset the patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic Church was remarkable for 1964. Though she is a hornet of strong wills, she is no demon: she will gladly be damned to Hell as the price for protecting the innocent. She is obstinate but selfless.

It's easy to misread the film at first. John Patrick Shanley, the writer and director who won a Pulitzer for its stage incarnation, clouds his story in archetypes. Blustery winds thrash the nuns with hurricanes of autumn leaves when trouble is afoot. And the two nuns act as if they were thrown out of Oz: good witch Sister James (Amy Adams) finds joy in everyone, while wicked witch Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) will not let her suspicions rest.

This is why Philip Seymour Hoffman is so admirable in his role as Father Flynn. The priest lightens his sermons with humor, jokes with the boys in the school, and wishes for a secular song in the Christmas pageant. Hoffman fades into the easygoing nature of Flynn so effortlessly that he doesn't even look like he's acting. It's no leap to convince ourselves, because Hoffman is such a genuine actor, that Flynn is innocent. Aloysius decides early on, on minor bits of evidence, that Flynn has molested an altar boy.



At first I worried about Streep and Adams, so yin and yang that they verged on caricature. Adams proves she has some vigor later on, when she confesses her love for "Frosty the Snowman." And Shanley, I think intentionally, wants us to misjudge Streep initially, as if to see when the bait-and-switch happens, when our allegiances switch from Flynn to Aloysius (if they do).

No matter if Streep's accent is thicker than her habit; she summons an indomitable spirit and relentlessness that, as the film progresses, becomes more and more courageous. She's not just fighting against this priest, or even for the sake of young boys corrupted by the church: she herself feels hindered by the misogyny instilled in the rules and foundations. What she comes to realize, maybe too late, is that her own internal fortress of strict rules must come down before she and the church may both grow.

It's not a film about whether or not Flynn did or did not molest the boy. Shanley's objective, to emphasize how confining moral certainty can be, is clear. The tempestuous weather, tilted camera angles, and Streep's constantly wavering eyes are cartoonish, but Stanley has a gift for natural dialogue and debate, with occasional moments of shock. Hoffman and Streep both have their finest moments when he indirectly confesses a mortal sin (but is it that?) and she stifles back tears when thinking of sins in her past. Viola Davis stunned me as the boy's mother; her presence isn't about outacting anybody but about resilience and enduring what happens rather than probing and waging more destruction. Though her inaction is disturbing, it raises important questions: Is such a sin unforgivable? Will acting outside the rules harm more than help the child? Shanley's film does not invite easy answers and, despite distracting elements, is simple in its complexity: only through Doubt can we change.

When a Child is Born

Happy New Year, everybody! I wish I could celebrate it in Boston, but all in good time. There's this weird vibe that comes with being at home: I love having this big house of space, but then I also miss being around people. Which is a healthy viewpoint; but now that I'm home from an apartment where I actually have my own space, and not a dorm room, there's not a real big transition. The best part of home life: when your parents decide you need all sorts of new clothes/snow boots/grapefruit spoons.

College let me become more extroverted, and sometimes I wish (in that crazy city up north) there were more people around. Maybe we should rent out our walk-in closet; fifty bucks a week, no questions asked. But I do cherish my personal space. It must be that only-child syndrome. You see, people often ask me what it was like as if I'd been afflicted. No, I didn't find it detrimental to my social development or mental well-being, and though I had ample opportunities to connive my parents and become corrupted without a sibling tattling on me, I didn't take advantage.

Here's what you learn as the One and Only Child: You do expect to be Colossally Important; there's no lineage that you're born into, where you must grapple all your days to achieve your place in the ranks. You're allowed to pretty much eat whatever food you want; I refuse to eat shrimp, so my mom doesn't serve it when I'm at home. You can usually seize the remote, as long as there's no football game on TV. When you leave for college, your room has no value to your parents -- no jacuzzi or exercise equipment went in -- so it remains a shrine to the Wonders of You.

On the flip side, I didn't really learn how to argue, how to compete, how to manipulate, how to set something on fire and blame it on the younger brother. It seems only children have it rough if they want to be lawyers, or arsonists.

And back to my point, though I love people, I need my personal space. This reminds me: I was in a restroom, thankfully very clean, a few weeks ago at a Wendy's. It had one of those setups that bemuses me, where there's a urinal and a toilet in a single-person restroom with a lock on the door. If my tone is querulous, it's because you don't logically need both, unless you're trying to direct the, uh, flow of things. But this Wendy's restroom had a divider nailed between the urinal and a toilet otherwise out in the open, free of stall doors. Maybe because I'm an only child and like to keep my single-person restroom experience to myself, but do they expect people to share the room because of their sad little divider? Am I the only one who finds that strange? Are there ladies' rooms out there with no stall doors, just a vast room of pots waiting for you to park yourself?