TiVo Lady

A Great Book

I am reading Michael Chabon's new book, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and I'm at the stage where I'm dreading getting to the end.  I really love this book, for many reasons.  Here are some.  First, it's set in an alternate universe, one in which the Jews were never able to settle in Israel after the Holocaust, and were sent, instead, to Alaska.  But only temporarily, until "Reversion," sometime in the near future, when they will lose the right even to inhabit the frozen north.  As a result, the former Jews of Russia and eastern Europe develop a prolonged and deep relationship with the Tlingit (Alaskan natives).  Second, one of the main characters, Berko Shemets is a giant, black-haired Tlingit who is also an observant Jew.  Third, he's known among the Jews as an "Indianer."

"It takes very little imagination for these Verbovers to picture Berko and his hammer engaged in the wholesale spattering of paleface brainpans.  Then they catch sight of Berko's yarmulke, and a flutter of fine white fringe at his waist from his ritual four-corner, and you can feel all that giddy xenophobia drain off the crowd, leaving a residue of racist vertigo.  That's how it goes for Berko Shemets in the District of Sitka when he breaks out the hammer and goes Indian."

Fourth, the Jewish policemen are called "latkes" or "noz" here.  Fifth, most everybody speaks Yiddish, but when they make an exception, they speak "American."  Sixth, the anti-hero of the story is also a cop, Meyer Landsman, who at one point is falling down a muddy hill, right on his ass.  "He's too superstitious not to see this as a bad omen, but when you're a pessimist, all omens are bad."  Ha, true!

Seventh, a giant female bodyguard, name of Shprintzl Rudashevsky, has "a voice like an onion rolling in a bucket."

Eighth, but not last, it's just a great story, well told.  Read it.

TiVo Avalanche

Back to TiVo time:  Brothers and Sisters is back, alas.  Though I am still watching it, mostly because I like the idea of a guy who looks like Rob Lowe being a Senator from California.  (If not there, where?)  This show does have the Boomer demographic down pat, however.  Just when you think that Sally Field is playing the oldest regular character on network television, along pops up her MOTHER!  Yes, that's right, a woman who is allegedly celebrating her 60th Birthday has a living mom who shows up to torture her just one more time.  Why is it that mom's are mostly horrible on these kinds of shows?  Fields plays an overbearing, almost-unbearable mom--that is until her own mother shows up, who's even MORE overbearing and really unbearable.  Moms can't get no respect these days.

In deference to my friend, Kate, I watched Beauty Shop, a movie that starred her favorite celeb of all time:  Queen Latifah.  (Don't ask why, Kate can't explain this devotion.  It's like a love of peanut brittle or cashmere socks;  it just IS.)  She is very sweet in the movie, and there are two very fine young actors in supporting roles, including Djimon Hounsou.  As in fine:   And Kevin Bacon plays a gay hairdresser with a fake Austrian accent--he's so bad that he's good.  He seems to be having a good time here, as though he's aware of how mediocre the whole thing is, but he doesn't really care.  And that kind of lifts the whole movie up into the realm of pretty damned enjoyable. 

Then, there's my frisson of TiVo-ticipation, which I feel when I have a particularly juicy show on my Now Playing list, but I don't watch it right away so I can prolong the pleasure of anticipation.  Right now, I've got the new Masterpiece Theatre version of Jane Eyre, which I haven't yet watched, but know I will love--even if it stinks.  This was the very first book I ever loved with a passion.  I read Jane Eyre when I was about 11 years old, and it rocked my world--although I wouldn't have put it that way back then.  I really felt that I was Jane, and that I was madly in love with Mr. Rochester myself.  As I recall, I think I transposed my feelings for that wife-hider-in-the-attic onto my short-but-single 7th grade science teacher, Mr. Franceschini.  Charlotte Bronte wrote this novel in 1847, and it's as alive today as it was then.  I'm fairly certain that nothing I've ever written will be as long-lasting and fresh as Bronte's work.  But that's okay, because she's a Bronte, and I'm just me.  Also, as a Boomer, I still believe that what's written on a page in a real, physical book will outlast anything and everything written here in cyberspace.  (But that's my age showing.)

My TiVo's Good Intentions

Working very hard on my new book proposal, finally, so I've been out of the TiVo loop lately.  Mostly, my TiVo is still working very hard, trying to find shows that will please me.  Very often, it's right on target:  say, getting Coach Carter for me, which I'd never pay money to see, but was actually enjoyable for the price (i.e. 0 cents).  Still, my TiVo is, alas, fallable.  Here are just a few of the bloopers TiVo found for me, some among the all-time worst movie titles ever:  Puerta Vallarta Squeeze, Water Damage, and Her Perfect Spouse to name a few unwatched unwatchables.  My absolute favorite, though, is Baby Monitor:  Sound of Fear.  I kid you not, it's a real movie.  I deleted it, pronto, based on the title alone.

So, I finished Restless, a new novel by William Boyd that was really well-done.  It's the story of a mother and daughter, though mostly about the mother and her life as a spy during World War II (so she's not the Boomer, the daughter is).  The character is fascinating, mostly because she was never who she seemed to her daughter, since she'd lived most of her life as a lie, never telling anyone who or what she really was.  The writing is not great, but the story is gripping and the characters are amazingly real.  I would love to see this movie, and it is written almost as if it's already a screenplay, very visual and easy to imagine onscreen.  I also love the idea that the image the daughter has of her mother is complete fiction, from top to bottom, with no earthly resemblance to the woman her mother really is.  I sometimes feel this way about my own daughter, that she has no sense of who I really am.  I was never a spy, in WWII or any other war, for that matter, so my mystique and mystery is a bit more subtle.  Well, she'll never know, anyway.

As for this week, or rather last week's TiVo, I enjoying Ugly Betty a great deal.  It continues to be sweet and charming, although I was disturbed when Betty's sister, Hilda, sold 100 cupcakes for only $180.  This is New York City, for godssake, those suckers can cost up to $2.95 each.  It made her seem a bit stupider than usual, which always irks me.  Why does Betty have to be the only one who's not in part or wholly clueless???

Also, this week's episode of Scrubs was absolutely brilliant.  It was written as a musical, by the writers of Avenue Q, with the medical twist being a patient with a brain tumor that made her constantly hear music.  My favorite number was about the need to examine "poo" to figure out every and any medical mystery, though "Guy Love" was pretty swell too.

Then there was the ever-disappointing Grey's Anatomy, a show that is more boring and smug with every passing week.  This one is all weepy over George's dying and finally dead dad, and Meredith's equally silly indifference to her own father.  These docs are surely lovely to look at, but I'm beginning to lose respect for myself for watching it.  That's always a sure sign that it's time to unTiVo a show--due to Shame at Watching Syndrome.  Here's my candidate for the Most Annoying Television Character of the Week/Month (and it has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, gayish or otherwise):   Yes, George, you win! For being teary and whiney and all stuttery about dear old dad.  I really have no patience for this stuff.

Finally, just a note about a show I watched for the first time this week:  Extras, the HBO comedy starring Ricky Gervais (the guy who wrote the original British version of The Office).  The episode, called, apparently, Number Seven, has one of the most hilarious, self-ridiculing cameos by Orlando Bloom that has ever been written, acted, produced or seen on a television screen.  It was incredibly hilarious!!

TiVo Wasteland

All of this enforced family togetherness is grueling.  Plus, there's no new TiVo to be had.  This is a time for Desperation TiVo.  I've had to settle for secret viewings of trashy, third-rate movies that my ill-informed TiVo thought I'd like.  I sneaked in Transporter 2 today--really dreadful, and a viewing of The Heist, with a young and lovely Pierce Brosnan, who's on my permanent WishList.  But, still, the movie was terrible, terrible, terrible. 

Thus, several visits to real movies in real theatres.  I saw The Good Shepherd, which I recommend, especially for boomers who, like me, would like to replicate the anti-aging device that most of the characters in this movie seem to have had access to.

Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie start the movie as young-and-oh-so-lovely 20-somethings, and by the end, they are in their 50's, but look only about 3 weeks older.  That's some secret, magic gizmo they have there!!  Meanwhile, the movie misses greatness by a wide margin;  but still, it's thought-provoking and there is a nearly-great movie hidden inside, accessible if 20 or 30 minutes of it had been chopped away. 

The not-quite-so-gorgeous, but much more complex characters in The Painted Veil, played by Ed Norton and Naomi Watts don't have a chance to age much, what with the rampart cholera epidemic and all, and they just look haggard and sick-ish.  Still, this movie is fabulous--moving and gorgeously photographed in parts of China that seem as remote as the moons of Saturn.

I also saw Dreamgirls.  Because I love Broadway musicals, I thought it was wonderful, though it did make me yearn to listen to real Motown music, as opposed to the Broadway-ized version of Motown.  This movie is Made For Boomers, who will remember every bit of this story--not as plot device but as stuff that really happened. 

So that I don't sound incredibly stupid, I've also been reading up a storm.  I just finished Gob's Grief, written by Chris Adrian, who wowed me with The Children's Hospital.  This is an earlier effort, and it's not nearly as good, but you can see him working up to his latest masterpiece, so it's a pleasure to read anyway.  It's magical realism, but the writing is so magical that it almost always feels real, even though it is, ultimately, preposterous.  Also, I read an eerily magical thing called The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, by Gordon Dahlquist.  It's sort of riveting, but also confusing since there are way too many characters for my Boomer Mind to keep straight.  And there's one scene right out of Clue--as in, Colonel Mustard did it in the Billiards Room with the Wrench--that was crucial, but I had no idea who anybody was or what was supposed to be going on.  Still, I couldn't put the damn thing down!! 

Post-Apocalyptic Reading

Although my TiVo schedule is usually full, my To Do list has been noticeably scant during the past week or so.  The Lords of Television seem to have deemed the last few weeks of December as Programming Wasteland;  thus, there's nothing new to watch.  So I've increased my reading lately, to about two novels a week.  I just finished a book that I adored, called THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, by Chris Adrian.  It's set in a large children's hospital, after an apocalypse, which has covered the earth in water seven miles high.  The only thing left, it seems, is the hospital, filled with more than 1,000 children and adults, and bobbing atop what's left on the watery deep, like a giant, hermetically-sealed ark.

I love the creativity of the writing, and the intensity of the characters, and the mind-boggling twists and turns of the plot.  There are four angels in the apocalypse, and a heroine with amazing superpowers and absolutely convincing insider details about high-level pediatric medicine.  At no point in this book did I ever know what would happen next, which is really unusual.  This book is borderline preposterous, but so beautifully written that I believed every single word of it, even up to and including the mystifying, bizarre conclusion.  DON'T READ THIS NEXT BIT UNLESS YOU PLAN NOT TO READ THIS GREAT BOOK.  All of the adults die--thus the need for the punishing angel, or the avenging angel--even our heroine, Jemma, who dies after giving birth.  As her waters break, the waters finally recede, and the children parade out of the hospital/ark to begin a brand new civilization.  It is one without computers or video games, to be sure, but also without reading, as the recording angel points out early on. 

Unlike THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy, another post-apocalyptic novel, this one doesn't make you want to drive off a bridge after you finish.  After I finished McCarthy's book, I felt grateful just to see green grass and blue sky outside, instead of emaciated cannibals and starving children and a bleak, blackened landscape. 

If I could, I'd read THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL for months and months;  unfortunately, I finished it in a week.

I suspend my need to find Boomer characters when I'm reading, more so than I do while watching television, probably because age seems less relevant on the page than on the screen.  But it does seem as if, more and more often, I'm reading about life on earth after some terrible, life-altering event.  I also watch "Jericho," which includes a (so-far) mysterious nuclear attack on the United States.  It's not very well done, but I haven't given up on it, mostly because I'm waiting to find out if the Chinese are the new Global Bad Guys.