(no subject)

Diana and I managed to get tickets to the Daily Show, so yesterday found us waiting in line for two and a half hours. Not necessarily recommended as a tourist experience, because frankly you have better things to do with your two and a half hours if you're just visiting New York. (Actually, we got in line at 2:30 and we left the sound stage at 7:00. You do the math.) But I live here and don't have better things to do, so it was very entertaining. The guest was Mike Huckabee, which was kinda unfortunate, because they spent most of the show arguing about (a) why we wouldn't need government if people would just not suck, and (b) gay marriage. (Data point: parks and libraries and museums do not exist because people suck.) But I do admire the way Jon Stewart can be respectful enough to convince a guy like Mike Huckabee to appear on the show multiple times, while at the same time not mincing words at all where they disagree.
So, yeah: squeeeeee!

Synecdoche, NY

Charlie Kaufman was on Colbert, and that reminded me that I wanted to write something about his latest movie, Synecdoche New York, which I saw last month. This is a thoughtful review, and while I agree with all of it I don't think it quite captures what was good and important in this movie beyond its cleverness.

I've seen most of Kaufman's movies, and I haven't regretted any of them, but I only genuinely loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I rather liked Adaptation, but Eternal Sunshine is the only one of his movies, to my mind, that transcended Kaufman's basic theme of "We're all terrible people." Kaufman has a lot of really good, really important ideas, and one of his strengths as a writer is that he's so good at not shying away from the terrible things that people do to themselves and each other, but he falters when he mistakes his own misanthropy for a good, important idea.

I honestly loved how Synechdoche explored the (often self-destructive) ways that we analyze and narrate and represent the world and our lives. There's a wonderful bit where the main character's young daughter is narrating their imaginative play, in the way that young children do - "You're going to play THIS role, and you're going to do THIS, and then THIS happens, and then..." - and that's a theme that gets repeated over and over in the movie: we're trying to build up these narratives around our lives, and force some meaning upon our lives, and the more we build up these levels of analysis and representation, we fall into this world that's solipsistic and self-centered and without any point of connection either to the real world or to other people. So -- if the movie, too, falls into these solipsistic layers, maybe that's entirely to the point. And I WANT to love a movie that talks about these themes. But ultimately my gut-level reaction is, in Meaghan's words, "Buh?"

A rock band walks into a bar -- Ouch.

Home from Rock Band Funde Razor for Child's Play.

None of us did quite as well as we would have liked -- stage fright plus unfamiliar instruments plus who knows what else. But we still managed to be silly and have fun, and isn't that what it's all about?

I got scared of the crowds and bolted before I would have liked, which is what I always do, but I am working on being pragmatic and self-accepting about it -- I have to remind myself occasionally that I am not a person who is good at bars, but I am good at other things. (I'm worse at bars when I've had alcohol, which is worth remembering for next time, and sort of defeats the purpose of being at bars.)