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shadowkatYesterday was a lovely day, the sort of day you meander and wallow in. For me this involved a long meandering walk through my neighborhood and the neighborhoods branching my own. In a city this often means crossing ethnic and class boundaries.
I left my front stoop at approximately 1:30 pm and returned at approximately 5:00 pm, stopping along the way at Barnes and Noble, several DVD outlets, the grocery store, and my main target Jaques Torres chocolates.
The DVD search was unproductive as far as finding and purchasing DVD's are concerned. The ratty, smelly, crowded, cheap venues of the Fulton Mall, with their rash of 99 cent stores, Discount prices, admist larger department stores such as Macy's and Price Mark - was a bit like seeing the suburban mall experience transplanted to the inner city except instead of the pristine mop-swabbed hallways and potted plants, you have the exhaust of metro buses, trash strung sidewalks, and the smell of roasting honeyed peanuts. The other difference, which unnerved me a bit, is most, it not 90% of the mall traffic in the suburbia, (at least the ones I grew up in - around KC, Denver, West Chester, PA) was white, here, 90% of it is black. Very little mix. Hard not to notice, no matter how color blind you try to be...
As an aside, I should explain, I was raised to despise *all* prejudice and discrimination in myself and others as the root of evil. Something that should not and could not be tolerated. When I notice it in myself, I feel contaminated, uneasy, dirty. Wrong. My father has zero tolerance for it - based on experiences he has to a degree shared. I know he wandered the anti-bellum south with a black roommate in the 1950s and early 60s, which may explain some of this. And his uncle, my grandmother's twin brother, went a bit insane after WWII (he was an ambulance driver and amongst the first to go into the death camps). So my father, at a very early age, embedded in my brother and myself an intolerance for prejudice and a love for diversity. To his credit, our own experiences reinforced his views. You want to push my buttons? Just go there - attack someone based on their skin-color, creed, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, physical appearance - and I will unleash my proverbial claws. Trust me - it is the one thing I can't tolerate. That is not to say - I do not understand it. I do actually. It is my own understanding of it, even empathy at times, that unnerves me. Understanding the darkness in others is an unsettling thing - because it means I know, deep down inside, that every single person on the planet has the capacity to severely damage or hurt someone else, often unwittingly and often without remorse, justifying it in their own heads as either an act of retribution, vengeance, accident, or inadvertent. What prevents people from doing horrible things is they choose not to, assuming of course they are aware of themselves and conscious/vigilant of how their actions affect others, and the ability to choose is not removed, if it is and they are unconscious of such things, then well, it's anyone's guess.
At any rate, on I meandered towards Montague street, crossing the intersections of Jay and Court and Fulton, moving past the court houses, and the smell of the vendors, and towards the tree lined streets of Brooklyn Heights. Where people walked dogs and dressed in a hundred dollar jeans. Trust me, I know, I went jean shopping on Friday. Ugh. What a nightmare. I despise shopping. Nothing fits right. The fashions are for people who have the body of Brittany Spears or Kate Moss or some stick figure with impossible dimensions who likes to show a tad more skin than most of us would like to or feel comfortable with. Finding a pair of jeans that did not dip below my crotch whenever I sat down and showed either my underwear or the crack in my butt, was a challenge. I did, barely. Do people really think this is sexy? Are they nuts? Okay, stepping back - I honestly don't care why or who wears this stuff, to each their own and all that. But when it gets to the point that the Gap doesn't have any regular jeans for women, we have a problem. Sorry, not everyone wants to look like Brittany Spears. Also the prices they are charging? A pair of jeans, ratted up, with holes deliberately pressed into the sides, cost a whopping 148 dollars. Shopping always makes me want to kick people.
The store fronts on Montague remind me of a quaint college town. Plants hanging in the windows. Gourmet pastries. Hagen Daz. Starbucks. Used book store. Comic book store, strategically place above an optomertist and next door to an Indian food restaurant. Florists crowd the streets and the occassional lady attempting to find people to adopt a kitty.
Then the promenade - one side lined with million dollar apartment buildings and coop-s, with a pristine, well-kept garden of trees and flowers beneath them, overlooking the bay, the tail end of Manhattan with its skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty on one end and the Brooklyn Bridge on the other. The mix of people is more diverse than before, yet also more white, Asian, and European as opposed to black, Carribean, African, Indian, and Middle Eastern. I don't normally notice this - except today, after my walk through the Fulton Mall.
The atomosphere is also different, less rushed, quieter, meandering, less people on this sunny brisk day. The sky a color of a pale robin's egg. Spotted here and there with passing clouds, until it becomes a perfect flawless blue.
Down towards the Brooklyn Bridge, I hit the couples, the strollers, the elderly, packed inside the small brown chocolat shop. The shop smells musky with chocolate. That bitter semi-sweet aroma. Jacques Torres is what Lady Godiva used to be, before it went commercial and became available in every department store on the planet. Rich, dark, sweet chocolat. Melts in your mouth. Satisfies. I pamper myself and buy four pieces, a little bit of chocolat bark, a chocolat eclair, and a small hot chocolat - to warm me up inside.
Then I go sit between the bridges in the renovated small park, watching the Canadian geese flock above my head in a whoosh and the barges sail past, lazily. The sky is clear now and sun warm on my face. The chocolat scalds my tongue as I watch couples stroll past. Musing on things. I muse about my obsessions - past more than present, since I find I obsess little over things now. Having found nothing to replace the last one. I ponder removing my old media essays from that website, maybe collasping the website altogether, then discard the idea just as quickly. Wrestling with myself. We've always been a bit at war - the media/culture/geek girl and the even-keel/electic/practical/logical woman. Redefining myself every couple of years, to keep both sides satisfied. Like a snake shedding a skin and growing a new one. Or a butterfly emerging time and again from its cocoon.
Walking back, past the buildings owned by the WatchTower organization, owned by Jehova Witnesses, and down the increasingly long blocks homewards, I make a pit stop in Barnes and Noble - to read trashy magazines, but find little of interest. Thumb through TV Guide and read sparringly the article on BattleStar Galatica, avoiding the spoilers as much as possible. Thumb through old Starbursts and TV Zone and Sci-Fi Film. No new news here. Then wander upstairs to the sci-fi section to hunt Elizabeth Bear and Caitlin Kierin books - find neither. The shelves seem packed with the more commericial darlings and serials of Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler, George RR Martin, Orson Scott Card,
Terry Pratchett, and so on and so forth. The graphic novel section is no better, Superman Red Son is nowhere in sight, nor is the first of the Sin City novels. I do however locate novel 2 and novel 4 and thumb through them. The one I'm looking for is the one with the jacket - the scene Petrie and Whedon stole for Fool for Love. But I can't locate it. The movie however - or what I've seen of it, looks wicked cool and appeals to both sides of my persona, the cultural snob and the inner geek. I do however find Fables - the first of the series and purchase that along with the original soundtrack to Ray, which I liked.
Towards home now...another attempt to find DVDs. Thwarted. No one has the later seasons of Buffy or Angel or Wonderfalls. Nor do they have the Noir Series or the Musicals set that I saw advertised recently. Nor do I see The Princess Bride or Spirited Away or Kiki's Delivery Service. Instead just new releases that I have little or no interest in or Friends/Simpsons, and other similar shows that equally uninspire me.
But I'm content, my pocketbook saved more purchases than it needs. My head split between two tales, the one I'm currently writing and a fanfic that I keep suppressing. The war between the geek and practical snob continues. So far the snob is winning.
My evening is spent lazily. Relaxing on my couch, eating angel hair pasta with red clam sauce, a gourmet sauce I picked up at the store, quite tasty. A mescalin salad. A grolisch beer - imported. My only one this week. And for desert the Jacques Torres Chocolat eclair which may be the best eclair I've had in my life and I've been to Harrods, the Waldorf Astoria, and around London, not to mention Paris. I know my eclairs. Trust me this was the best.
Not too creamy. Chocolat cream. Dark semi-sweet chocolat coating. Textured, light puff pastry - not too bready. Just right.
Then at 9pm, geek girl won, I pop some popcorn, watch and tape Cool Money. How was it?
Well, I almost fell asleep during it. Marsters? Very good. (The Entertainment Weekly blurb on it last week continues to amuse:"James Marsters will star in Cool Money, a story about Bobby Comfort and his string of hotel heists in the 70s. Sigh. I lost you Buffy fans at Marsters." LOL!)
The other actors?
Equally good.
The pacing? Slow as molasses. Hence the reason I kept nodding off, although part of that could be due to my ten mile, four hour walk. Still, it was plodding. Very 70's in style though.
Evidence once again that when it comes to TV - you need the complete package - not just good actors or dialogue. Watching Marsters is an odd experience - partly because I do not consider him that attractive when I think about it and he's not my type, particularly with the buzz cut which makes his ears and nose seem a little bigger than usual. Also he's somewhat short and stocky of build, wiry. Yet - whenever he comes onscreen, he makes me melt. It's what he does with his eyes and face, his body language, that does it. Harrison Ford used to do the same thing. As did James Dean. And Monty Clift. James Spader. The reactive actor - you believe this guy loves the woman he is talking to - you see the wetness of the emotion in his eyes, the pain in the line of his jaw. You feel it. In your gut. And the rawness of that emotion, makes you love the character he plays in spite of himself. It's the weirdest thing. Hard to explain really. I keep hoping he'll get another part that really challenges him, forces him to take risks. Cool Money felt too by the numbers. But my own knowledge of the entertainment business, makes me believe it's unlikely. He's not flashy enough as an actor to get the bigger roles or hunky enough to get the series.
Sometimes looking for good performances and good tv shows is a bit like looking for jeans - you're frustrated by the market demands or majority interest, which often excludes your tastes or marginalizes you. Makes one want to kick all people who like that stuff, doesn't it? Bringing on the realization that tolerance is easy as long as one is not thwarted from one's goal or purpose in life whatever that may be. ie. I don't give a shit what you like, just as long as I get what I like too.
I left my front stoop at approximately 1:30 pm and returned at approximately 5:00 pm, stopping along the way at Barnes and Noble, several DVD outlets, the grocery store, and my main target Jaques Torres chocolates.
The DVD search was unproductive as far as finding and purchasing DVD's are concerned. The ratty, smelly, crowded, cheap venues of the Fulton Mall, with their rash of 99 cent stores, Discount prices, admist larger department stores such as Macy's and Price Mark - was a bit like seeing the suburban mall experience transplanted to the inner city except instead of the pristine mop-swabbed hallways and potted plants, you have the exhaust of metro buses, trash strung sidewalks, and the smell of roasting honeyed peanuts. The other difference, which unnerved me a bit, is most, it not 90% of the mall traffic in the suburbia, (at least the ones I grew up in - around KC, Denver, West Chester, PA) was white, here, 90% of it is black. Very little mix. Hard not to notice, no matter how color blind you try to be...
As an aside, I should explain, I was raised to despise *all* prejudice and discrimination in myself and others as the root of evil. Something that should not and could not be tolerated. When I notice it in myself, I feel contaminated, uneasy, dirty. Wrong. My father has zero tolerance for it - based on experiences he has to a degree shared. I know he wandered the anti-bellum south with a black roommate in the 1950s and early 60s, which may explain some of this. And his uncle, my grandmother's twin brother, went a bit insane after WWII (he was an ambulance driver and amongst the first to go into the death camps). So my father, at a very early age, embedded in my brother and myself an intolerance for prejudice and a love for diversity. To his credit, our own experiences reinforced his views. You want to push my buttons? Just go there - attack someone based on their skin-color, creed, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, physical appearance - and I will unleash my proverbial claws. Trust me - it is the one thing I can't tolerate. That is not to say - I do not understand it. I do actually. It is my own understanding of it, even empathy at times, that unnerves me. Understanding the darkness in others is an unsettling thing - because it means I know, deep down inside, that every single person on the planet has the capacity to severely damage or hurt someone else, often unwittingly and often without remorse, justifying it in their own heads as either an act of retribution, vengeance, accident, or inadvertent. What prevents people from doing horrible things is they choose not to, assuming of course they are aware of themselves and conscious/vigilant of how their actions affect others, and the ability to choose is not removed, if it is and they are unconscious of such things, then well, it's anyone's guess.
At any rate, on I meandered towards Montague street, crossing the intersections of Jay and Court and Fulton, moving past the court houses, and the smell of the vendors, and towards the tree lined streets of Brooklyn Heights. Where people walked dogs and dressed in a hundred dollar jeans. Trust me, I know, I went jean shopping on Friday. Ugh. What a nightmare. I despise shopping. Nothing fits right. The fashions are for people who have the body of Brittany Spears or Kate Moss or some stick figure with impossible dimensions who likes to show a tad more skin than most of us would like to or feel comfortable with. Finding a pair of jeans that did not dip below my crotch whenever I sat down and showed either my underwear or the crack in my butt, was a challenge. I did, barely. Do people really think this is sexy? Are they nuts? Okay, stepping back - I honestly don't care why or who wears this stuff, to each their own and all that. But when it gets to the point that the Gap doesn't have any regular jeans for women, we have a problem. Sorry, not everyone wants to look like Brittany Spears. Also the prices they are charging? A pair of jeans, ratted up, with holes deliberately pressed into the sides, cost a whopping 148 dollars. Shopping always makes me want to kick people.
The store fronts on Montague remind me of a quaint college town. Plants hanging in the windows. Gourmet pastries. Hagen Daz. Starbucks. Used book store. Comic book store, strategically place above an optomertist and next door to an Indian food restaurant. Florists crowd the streets and the occassional lady attempting to find people to adopt a kitty.
Then the promenade - one side lined with million dollar apartment buildings and coop-s, with a pristine, well-kept garden of trees and flowers beneath them, overlooking the bay, the tail end of Manhattan with its skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty on one end and the Brooklyn Bridge on the other. The mix of people is more diverse than before, yet also more white, Asian, and European as opposed to black, Carribean, African, Indian, and Middle Eastern. I don't normally notice this - except today, after my walk through the Fulton Mall.
The atomosphere is also different, less rushed, quieter, meandering, less people on this sunny brisk day. The sky a color of a pale robin's egg. Spotted here and there with passing clouds, until it becomes a perfect flawless blue.
Down towards the Brooklyn Bridge, I hit the couples, the strollers, the elderly, packed inside the small brown chocolat shop. The shop smells musky with chocolate. That bitter semi-sweet aroma. Jacques Torres is what Lady Godiva used to be, before it went commercial and became available in every department store on the planet. Rich, dark, sweet chocolat. Melts in your mouth. Satisfies. I pamper myself and buy four pieces, a little bit of chocolat bark, a chocolat eclair, and a small hot chocolat - to warm me up inside.
Then I go sit between the bridges in the renovated small park, watching the Canadian geese flock above my head in a whoosh and the barges sail past, lazily. The sky is clear now and sun warm on my face. The chocolat scalds my tongue as I watch couples stroll past. Musing on things. I muse about my obsessions - past more than present, since I find I obsess little over things now. Having found nothing to replace the last one. I ponder removing my old media essays from that website, maybe collasping the website altogether, then discard the idea just as quickly. Wrestling with myself. We've always been a bit at war - the media/culture/geek girl and the even-keel/electic/practical/logical woman. Redefining myself every couple of years, to keep both sides satisfied. Like a snake shedding a skin and growing a new one. Or a butterfly emerging time and again from its cocoon.
Walking back, past the buildings owned by the WatchTower organization, owned by Jehova Witnesses, and down the increasingly long blocks homewards, I make a pit stop in Barnes and Noble - to read trashy magazines, but find little of interest. Thumb through TV Guide and read sparringly the article on BattleStar Galatica, avoiding the spoilers as much as possible. Thumb through old Starbursts and TV Zone and Sci-Fi Film. No new news here. Then wander upstairs to the sci-fi section to hunt Elizabeth Bear and Caitlin Kierin books - find neither. The shelves seem packed with the more commericial darlings and serials of Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler, George RR Martin, Orson Scott Card,
Terry Pratchett, and so on and so forth. The graphic novel section is no better, Superman Red Son is nowhere in sight, nor is the first of the Sin City novels. I do however locate novel 2 and novel 4 and thumb through them. The one I'm looking for is the one with the jacket - the scene Petrie and Whedon stole for Fool for Love. But I can't locate it. The movie however - or what I've seen of it, looks wicked cool and appeals to both sides of my persona, the cultural snob and the inner geek. I do however find Fables - the first of the series and purchase that along with the original soundtrack to Ray, which I liked.
Towards home now...another attempt to find DVDs. Thwarted. No one has the later seasons of Buffy or Angel or Wonderfalls. Nor do they have the Noir Series or the Musicals set that I saw advertised recently. Nor do I see The Princess Bride or Spirited Away or Kiki's Delivery Service. Instead just new releases that I have little or no interest in or Friends/Simpsons, and other similar shows that equally uninspire me.
But I'm content, my pocketbook saved more purchases than it needs. My head split between two tales, the one I'm currently writing and a fanfic that I keep suppressing. The war between the geek and practical snob continues. So far the snob is winning.
My evening is spent lazily. Relaxing on my couch, eating angel hair pasta with red clam sauce, a gourmet sauce I picked up at the store, quite tasty. A mescalin salad. A grolisch beer - imported. My only one this week. And for desert the Jacques Torres Chocolat eclair which may be the best eclair I've had in my life and I've been to Harrods, the Waldorf Astoria, and around London, not to mention Paris. I know my eclairs. Trust me this was the best.
Not too creamy. Chocolat cream. Dark semi-sweet chocolat coating. Textured, light puff pastry - not too bready. Just right.
Then at 9pm, geek girl won, I pop some popcorn, watch and tape Cool Money. How was it?
Well, I almost fell asleep during it. Marsters? Very good. (The Entertainment Weekly blurb on it last week continues to amuse:"James Marsters will star in Cool Money, a story about Bobby Comfort and his string of hotel heists in the 70s. Sigh. I lost you Buffy fans at Marsters." LOL!)
The other actors?
Equally good.
The pacing? Slow as molasses. Hence the reason I kept nodding off, although part of that could be due to my ten mile, four hour walk. Still, it was plodding. Very 70's in style though.
Evidence once again that when it comes to TV - you need the complete package - not just good actors or dialogue. Watching Marsters is an odd experience - partly because I do not consider him that attractive when I think about it and he's not my type, particularly with the buzz cut which makes his ears and nose seem a little bigger than usual. Also he's somewhat short and stocky of build, wiry. Yet - whenever he comes onscreen, he makes me melt. It's what he does with his eyes and face, his body language, that does it. Harrison Ford used to do the same thing. As did James Dean. And Monty Clift. James Spader. The reactive actor - you believe this guy loves the woman he is talking to - you see the wetness of the emotion in his eyes, the pain in the line of his jaw. You feel it. In your gut. And the rawness of that emotion, makes you love the character he plays in spite of himself. It's the weirdest thing. Hard to explain really. I keep hoping he'll get another part that really challenges him, forces him to take risks. Cool Money felt too by the numbers. But my own knowledge of the entertainment business, makes me believe it's unlikely. He's not flashy enough as an actor to get the bigger roles or hunky enough to get the series.
Sometimes looking for good performances and good tv shows is a bit like looking for jeans - you're frustrated by the market demands or majority interest, which often excludes your tastes or marginalizes you. Makes one want to kick all people who like that stuff, doesn't it? Bringing on the realization that tolerance is easy as long as one is not thwarted from one's goal or purpose in life whatever that may be. ie. I don't give a shit what you like, just as long as I get what I like too.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-20 12:24 pm (UTC)I tend to agree. Perhaps hunky is the wrong word, although when I think of hunky - I think beefcake. Hunks don't turn me on, never have. I like lean men, toned, more runners and dancers than American Football players and swimmers - who have overly developed neck and shoulder muscels. Never liked body builders. Arnold, Syl Stalloon, that breed? Turns me off. But to the rest of America - they are considered hunks.
I'd originally written "stoic, tall, muscular..." - the David Boreanze, Kevin Zorbo, Aidan Paul, Troy Donahue look.
For me? I like a touch of character. Alexis Denisof only turned me on when he was scruffy looking and having a fling with Lilah - there was a prickiness to him. (He creeped me out with Fred, no clear idea why. And
he seemed just silly prior to the whole dark arc.) That said - I think he may have been one of the most underrated actors on the show - and I often just watched to see where they'd go with him and what he'd do next.
Also agree on JAR - of the actors on Angel, JAR is far and away the most attractive. Unfortunately they didn't really give him much to do until the end of Season 5 when he had a great mini-arc and blew me away. This is an actor I would love to see more of, but fear I may not.
Thing is, Hollywood doesn't see it that way, they want typical, they want generic, they want bland, typical looks. Which is why guys like Freddie Prinze Junior actually get successfull, because he's the average idea of what people are supposed to find attractive.
Unfortunately Marketing people control Hollywood. They look for an item that can be packaged, is risk free, and most likely to grab ratings.
Freddie Prinze Junior is actually struggling at the moment - going the way of Troy Donahue and the other teen hunks (Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Emilo Estevez) did before him. He's no Tom Cruise - one of the few to break out.
Sarah Michelle Gellar has the same problem - she's good but she's no Naomi Watts or Reese Witherspoon. But don't feel too sorry for these folks, they'll still get movies made, we may not see them, and they'll get paid alot.
It's a weird frustrating biz. I gave in once again this weekend to buying a few gossip mags on it, only to be reminded of how frustrating it is.
[As an aside - I liked your post in your live journal about Angel and Spike
(which I guess you also posted on a discussion board). ]
no subject
Date: 2005-03-20 02:29 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about Wes, though I kinda lost interest when he went dark. It felt like he lost his humanity, which was what kept the char interesting before.
Thing about Tom Cruise, as compared to other teen idols is, you can say what you want about him, but the man can act. He's not just a typical pretty face. Sure, he has the average look thing going for him, but when it came down to it, he dared to take a risk or two and that's what's keeping him on the A-list.
In my opinion, the same goes for Brad Pitt and Leonardo diCaprio. They may have started their careers as pretty boys, but they managed to grow beyond that.
I like to think that SMG has the talent to get on the A-list, but I fear she won't. And much as I think JM was the best actor on either Buffy or Angel, I fear for his further career because no matter how much talent he has, he's already getting his age against him.
Let's just hope he has the smarts to try out as a character actor, which is what he's good at Though I still hope he gets his own series. Hell I watched Buffy, cause I wanted to see who Spike interacted with and I kept watching Angel s5 because they were the people Spike had to deal with.
As far as I was concerned, both were already the Spike show (no matter that the other actors had much more screentime) so no reason they can't make it official and give us more Spike-time*g*
(either that or Harry Dresden)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-20 03:14 pm (UTC)Not compete for the pretty leading lady roles - but go for the gritty roles a la Jamie Lee Curtis or even Christina Ricci. Hard to do.
She's no Meryl Streep or Sissy Spacek.
Marsters has a similar problem, but I wouldn't worry about him too much, he has a lot of money and down the line will probably go back to the theater. (It's us who enjoy watching his work who will suffer unfortunately, since he's no James Spader or Edward Norton, who are along that same vein of actor, but were much younger and doing film. TV ages an actor faster than film does, it's a harsher medium in some respects. Longer hours, more frustration. Series are 10 months, 14 hours a day, 5-6 days a week...no sick days.)
I liked Wes a great deal in Angel. While I was enamored of the Spike character, he fascinated me, I watched Angel from its beginning just as I did BTVS and probably would have watched both if Spike hadn't been there.
That said, I doubt I would have gotten as obsessed in S6 if it weren't for Marsters raw and often painful performances - watching him act was a bit like watching a trapeze artist fly without a net. Occassionally he crashed and burned, more often than not he soared - both were riveting to me. He toned this down a bit towards the end of S7 and in S5 Angel - we rarely saw such rawness after Sleeper. Yet even restrained Marsters is better than most.