Hellzapoppin'!

Last night I couldn't sleep. Tossed and turned. Regretted my dumb evening nap and even dumber caffeinated tea. On the plus side, I discovered lots of interesting things on the internet! For one, doesn't this show seem like it would have been a fun evening back in 1938? At the time, it was the longest-running Broadway musical. Description below, courtesy of Wikipedia. 

A comedy hodgepodge full of sight gags and slapstick, the show was continually rewritten throughout its run to remain topical; its opening scene was Hitler speaking in a Yiddish accent. A circus atmosphere prevailed, with dwarfs, clowns, trained pigeons, and audience participation adding to the merriment. The sketches were a "smorgasbord of explode-the-fourth-wall nuttiness: comedy songs; skits abandoned partway through; cameos by audience stooges; an absurdist raffle; and in a trademark stunt, a man who wandered through the theater hawking an ever-larger potted tree." 

A few thoughts on HOARDERS

I have casually followed a couple reality shows in my time, but none have captured my heart and mind and free time like Hoarders. Ostensibly about people who keep far too much stuff in their homes, it's also a show about mental illness, family dysfunction, therapy, anger, trauma, and materialism. There is also something immensely (if superficially) satisfying about seeing a clean house at the end of an episode. It is impossible to fix these deep-seated problems in two days of shooting, but as a viewer, seeing tangible results of the work is very rewarding.

Secondly, while most of the show's participants are middle- or working-class, there is still a range of regional, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds featured, and it is amazing to see that they all follow eerily similar behavioral patterns. Typically, the hoarders have experienced traumatic loss or abuse in their lives. Many of them have a love for animals and feel that their pets are the only ones who care about them. They panic equally at the thought of discarding a family heirloom or an empty cardboard box. There is drama in the show and admittedly, a mild case of freak-show grotesquery, but most of all, there is profound pain.

And lastly, it has been both fascinating and frustrating to watch the therapists and professional organizers as they attempt to help the hoarders work through their issues. Most of them are harmless or ineffectual - this post will concern the two professionals I respect the most and the two that I most deeply detest.

DOROTHY BREININGER

Dorothy is an organizer and one of the most compassionate and respectful professionals on the show. She begins every interaction by thanking the person for allowing her into their home. Never didactic, she usually presents someone with the evidence of their problem (a thousand soda cans, cat skeletons) and gives them the space to come to their own conclusions about their choices. In one episode, she dons a face mask, grabs a shovel and works alongside the cleaning crew to shovel diapers/feces out of a young man's bathroom. Midway through, she turns to the camera and sighs, "This must be so humiliating for him." Her capacity for empathy is unrivaled. Unlike our next professional, she is not afraid to hug the participants and be truly present with them. While she is not always successful with the hoarders (and I've seen her get angry and frustrated), her level of respect for their humanity always elevates and expedites the process.

DR. ROBIN ZASIO

My negative feelings towards Dr. Zasio have grown with each episode, to the point that I sometimes have to fast-forward through her segments. Her most grating quality is that she is relentlessly patronizing. She talks to adults like they are children, and walks around with an incredulous, disgusted expression, which obviously puts her clients on the defensive. Often, these are people who have shielded their home from the public for years, or even decades. Despite the bravado they put on ("It's my house and I can do what I want!") many of them are severely embarrassed by their living conditions, and Dr. Zasio's nose-holding doesn't do much to reassure them. On the rare occasion that she touches or embraces a participant, you get the sense that she runs home and immediately slathers on the Purell. Her questions are often insincere and rhetorical, in a "Is this the kitchen? I see a sink and a stove, but I can't imagine that this is what you use as a kitchen?" sort of way. Ugh. I cannot stand her and her charmeuse blouses.

DR. SUZANNE CHABAUD

On the surface, Dr. Chabaud shares a fair amount of qualities with Dr. Zasio. She's not particularly warm and fuzzy, and she dispenses similar advice and judgment. And yet, her tone is a world apart from Dr. Zasio's. She is quiet and reserved, and has tremendous patience with the participants. Her empathy is not bubbling over, like Dorothy's, but I've seen her get visibly upset and concerned over the fate of some of the hoarders. One of the more poignant moments involved a middle-aged black woman, Theresa, who had hoarded endless amounts of purses and shoes. At the thought of her stuff disappearing, she began to panic and weep. Dr. Chabaud went over to her and asked simply, "Theresa, what's hard right now?" I almost started crying myself. What a smart, beautiful question to ask, with none of the pointedness of "What's wrong?" or "Why are you crying?" The question allowed Theresa to focus on the difficulties of that exact moment and how she was going to get through it. I think about that moment a lot. 

MATT PAXTON

Initially, I lumped Matt Paxton, professional organizer, into the category of the harmless/ineffectual. However, as he showed up in more and more episodes, I began to strongly disagree with his approach. Like the other professionals, he is well-intentioned, but he is fundamentally impatient with the hoarders and gets frustrated easily by their reticence to let go of, say, a box of vitamins filled with maggots. His two main strategies are incredibly flawed. For one, he tries to reason with the hoarders using logic. That will never work, because their behavior is illogical. So to say, "You're seriously going to use that rusted box of bent nails? When are you going to use that? You're never going to! This is ridiculous," means that you are refusing to work with a hoarder on their terms. Matt's other approach is equally futile, and that is to get personal with the hoarder and use guilt to snap them into action. He will often say things like, "Your grandchildren are here, trying to help you, and you can't even throw this little thing away?" or "All these people on the cleaning crew are here, away from their families, trying to help you, and you're not even cooperating!" I just think it's a pointless tactic, considering many of the hoarders have shunned their friends and families for years. Do you think they care that some random guy from 1-800-JUNK is missing his son's baseball practice? It's misguided, and again, shows very little understanding of the hoarders' mentality and the trauma they undergo every time someone throws away a seemingly meaningless piece of trash.

If you made it through this entire post, I salute you. And if you are like me, and fascinated by the world of hoarders, you can check out these links for more information:

Children of Hoarders

New York Times: Children of Hoarders on Leaving the Cluttered Nest

Hoarders on A&E

The Future

As I've mentioned before, I have mixed feelings about Miranda July. I surprised myself by really liking this movie.

Detroit

Much has been written about Detroit, and those who love ruin porn can find quite a bit to gaze at. I try to avoid falling into that trap too much (as tempting as it is) but I will say that I've always loved old signs and typography - from ancient laundries on the Lower East Side to fudge shops in southern Maine - so I feel pretty okay about documenting the terrific signage I saw on my Detroit journey.

Subway

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Last week I took a fun, adventurous, enjoyable trip to Michigan. (Photos coming soon). I came back to New York majorly sleep-deprived and all I could do on Sunday was half-lay on my bed and watch non-challenging things on Netflix Instant.

One film that entertained and infuriated me in my pathetic state was This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which I highly recommend. It's light-hearted and funny and yet still reveals the problematic - and, frankly, misogynistic - aspects of American culture which play out in the ratings system. While it's obvious to most people that violence gets a pass and sexuality gets a disproportionate amount of scrutiny, there is also a pretty hefty bias against sex that isn't strictly heterosexual (or missionary or artificial-seeming.) It was frustrating to see how these archaic, puritanical influences have created real barriers for creative filmmakers, who simply want to release their films in theaters for adult audiences.

Happy 4th Weekend!

Collection of vintage 1980's fireworks packaging, via @rafikam.

Alternate Universe Movie Posters

Through a long and unhealthy chain of Internet events, I arrived at a website run by an artist who creates, in his words, "alternate universe movie posters." Maybe it's the post-midnight surfing, but I think they're great, freaky, weird, hilarious. Below are some of my favorites:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips

I really love this, but I am terribly snobby about typos and the fact that the word "accidentally" is spelled wrong almost ruins it for me. Help.

Signs

Spent the weekend in the south of Maine with friends, which was full of good weather and fun. There was also a healthy dose of old signs/lettering which I always enjoy.

And this one isn't particularly retro, but just goofy and weird. I got "sweet."

Sleep No More

In elementary school, my friend Ashley and I found an old suitcase in my parents' attic. My mom said she didn't know where it came from, and so somehow we decided that it belonged to an old mental patient of my mother's, named Jenny. There were a few strange drawings and documents in the suitcase and we spent hours building mysteries around them. I remember writing in my diary something along the lines of, "WE FOUND OUT NEW THINGS ABOUT JENNY TODAY!!!!!!" I believed in these stories with every fiber of my being and they brought me great pleasure.

I thought about suitcases and attics and mysteries last week when I went with my lovely friend Gayle to see Sleep No More, which I can only really describe as a "production." Or, like a Shakespearean haunted house. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. But the experience was bittersweet because I realized how much work it takes, at the ripe old age of 25, to wholly activate my imagination. During the exploration of the old hotel, I wanted to make believe that I had stumbled upon it myself and was now parsing through some dark, gothic past. And yet, I found myself analyzing my struggle to fully engage ("This will make for a great blog post!"). Alas. My 9 year old self could have dove right in at 100%, whereas I peaked at around 15%.

But it did bring me back to the days of being young and desperate for real seances, graveyards, secret trapdoors, mirrors, diaries, and adventure. With a touch of Edward Gorey for good measure.

The Great Stumble-Upon

Once in a while, I mentally flirt with the idea of moving to Los Angeles, even though it's a city that I never ever in a billion years thought I'd be interested in living in. But sometimes it's winter in New York City and it's cold and my skin is all pale and sallow from lack of sun and I think about Ed Ruscha and Charles Bukowski and John Darnielle's lyrics in The Sunset Tree, and all of a sudden Southern California seems very romantic in a burnt-out, Hollywood sense.

And then there are days like last Thursday, when I can't fathom leaving New York.

Gayle and I spent the late afternoon and evening weaving around Greenpoint, with no goal in mind, just exploring the neighborhood in the nice spring weather. We stumbled upon a really wonderful bookstore, where I purchased Under the Banner of Heaven, and we meandered through the "historic" district (although the informational signage was covered in graffiti). We passed kids playing on quaint, narrow streets under leafy trees, and other kids playing in sad, littered playgrounds near the docks. We bought sauerkraut-and-mushroom pierogis from a Polish restaurant and ate them on the steps of a church. We browsed through cheap DVDs at an independent video store and bonded with the store owner about Boy A and what an underrated movie it is. Then we met up with some friends and went to a free neighborhood concert at a Mexican restaurant, where the lead singer of Wheatus (and Greenpoint resident) played "Teenage Dirtbag" for a bunch of hipsters.

It was great and almost completely unplanned. And that seems to be the beauty of living in New York: the ability to walk around a neighborhood and stumble upon all the weird and wonderful gems it has to offer. It's also what worries me about a city like Los Angeles. When you have to drive to your destination, do you ever see any of the places in between? Is there any unplanned wanderings? Any getting lost on foot?

Current or former residents of L.A., is the stumble-upon possible in your city? Or do you find your metropolitan thrills in other ways?

(Now I'm done with my Carrie Bradshaw-esque musings, I promise.)

So Bad It's Good

I recently saw two epic films, Troll 2 and The Room, both which have become cult classics due to their overall terribleness. For films like these to achieve a certain type of campy fame, there has to be an earnestness on the part of the director, a sense of megalomania, the notion that their work will stand next to Citizen Kane and The Godfather in the annals of film history.

The backstories to both films are great (Italian crew who can't communicate with the cast? Bizarre director who raised money through imported leather jackets?), but even without a great backstory, the films stand on their own. Two short reviews below.

TROLL 2

I watched this with my friend Matt, with whom I share a love for bad movies. He is the one who introduced me to this scene from Mac and Me, a blatant rip-off of E.T. He is the one who would entertain us in college by reading aloud reviews of Duncan Checks In on IMDB.com. He also just generally makes me laugh, to the point of embarrassment.

So in this grand tradition, we settled in to watch Troll 2, on Matt's recommendation, and it turned out to be one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I swear, I did not stop laughing for that entire film. It is so utterly ridiculous, with a plot that makes no sense, and awful acting, and monster masks that look as though I painted them. (Like, fifteen years ago. In fifth grade art class.) Without giving anything away, I'll just say that there is a lot of green food, an incredible love scene involving corn, and not a single troll anywhere in the film.

GRADE: A+

THE ROOM

I saw The Room in a completely different environment: a post-midnight screening downtown with a bunch of friends and co-workers. I had never been to the Village East Cinema before and although it's fairly unassuming on the outside, the interior is a gorgeously renovated Yiddish theater.

After waiting in line for quite some time, we all clutched our plastic spoons and piled in with our fellow hipsters at around 12:45. From the moment the film started, people did not stop yelling. I guess if I had seen the film before, I might have appreciated it, but it meant I missed a great deal of the dialogue. To me, terrible dialogue is what makes a terrible movie terrible! Granted, you need no words to understand the softly-lit, disgusting soft-core sex scenes, or the completely unnecessary chroma-keyed San Francisco skyline, or the randomness of a bunch of dudes playing football in their tuxedos. But it would have been nice to at least hear some key lines.

Also, a lot of the yelling was directed towards "Lisa," one of the main characters. While she is supposed to be a manipulative and awful person, there was something disconcerting about being in a darkened room while a faceless mass of guys yelled things like, "Whore! Slut! Bitch!" at the screen. I know she's the worst ("You are tearing me apart, Lisa!") but for me, it took some of the fun out of it. Whereas Troll 2 is just pure, unadulterated silliness, The Room is just a few yards away from some terrible student films I had to sit through. (Including my own.)

GRADE: B

Hail Satan!

A few weeks ago, on a very dark, cold, rainy night, I found an old paperback of Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin at the free book shelf at the Education Alliance. Rosemary's Baby is one of my all-time favorite movies and the novel proved to be no disappointment. It's pretty much an exact blueprint for the film, down to the most minute of details. And so while I think Roman Polanski did an excellent job directing the film, many of the dark and wonderful touches that I formerly attributed to him (Laura-Louise with the magnifying glass, the Japanese photographer, "I won't have an abortion!") were actually Mr. Levin's creation. Polanski barely changed a thing.

It confirmed for me what I heard many years ago at University of Michigan, at a lecture given by Chuck Palahniuk. I had a bunch of friends who read his books religiously and I tagged along for fun. (Personally, I think he's a good writer, but once you've read one Palahniuk book, you've read them all.) That night, he read some revolting stories from Stranger Than Fiction, but the one that I found most compelling was an essay entitled "Dear Mr. Levin."

The piece is a personal letter to Ira Levin and while time has dulled some of the initial wonder I felt while hearing it, the key points are still very resonant. Some excerpts:

Your books take some of the thorniest issues in our culture and charm us into facing the problem. What's creepy is, these are issues the American public is years away from confronting, but in each one - in each book - you ready us for a battle you seem to see coming. And, so far, you're always right.

In Rosemary's Baby, published in 1967, the battle is over a woman's right to control her body. She's controlled by her religion, her husband, by her male best friend, by her male obstetrician. All this you got people to read - to pay money to read - years before the feminist health-care movement. The Boston Women's Health Cooperative. Our Bodies, Ourselves. And consciousness-raising groups where women would sit around with a speculum and flashlight and look at changes in each other's cervix.

Mr. Levin, your skill to tell an important, threatening story through a metaphor, maybe it comes from your experience writing for television's "golden age," shows like Lights Out and The United States Steel Hour. This was television in the 1950s and early '60s, when most issues had to be masked or disguised to avoid offending a conservative audience and the even more conservative sponsors of a program. In a time before "transgressive fiction," such as The Monkey Wrench Gang, American Psycho, and Trainspotting, where a writer could stand on a soap box and shout about a social issue, your writing career started in this era, in the most public form of writing, when the mask, the metaphor, the disguise was everything.

In addition to what Palahniuk touches on, what I find so striking about Levin's work is the mundaneness of evil, right down Minnie Castavet's ill-fitting green toreador pants. And while I can't articulate exactly why, I think it's brilliant.

So if there's a stormy night coming up, I plan on watching Rosemary's Baby for the hundredth time, vodka blushes in hand.

Mr. Castevet came in, holding in both hands a small tray on which four cocktail glasses ran over with clear pink liquid. “Mr. Woodhouse? A Vodka Blush. Have you ever tasted one? They’re very popular in Australia." He took the final glass and raised it to Rosemary and Guy. “To our guests,” he said. “Welcome to our home.”

The Vodka Blushes were tart and very good.

VODKA BLUSH RECIPE

1. Chill a martini glass by filling with ice. Set aside.

2. Fill the cocktail shaker 2/3 full of ice. Add 2 1/2 ounces vodka, 3/4 ounce freshly squeezed and strained lime juice and a dash or two of grenadine.

3. Empty the martini glass and dispose of the ice. Shake the cocktail, and strain into the chilled glass. This will make one serving.

The Sound of Music

Two blogs about music have recently come to my attention. Mostly because they are authored by my friends, but I can guarantee that they are of the utmost quality.

1. SHADES OF ETERNAL NIGHT

http://shadesofeternalnight.tumblr.com/

This blog is written by my friend Ned. He is a music-lover and musician and there are a great many wonderful and obscure findings on his site. (Well, obscure to me.)

2. AUDIOVOLE

www.audiovole.com


This site is written by my friend Brandon and his friend Sarah. It's a unique take on a music blog, in that they each listen to an album and proceed to have a written dialogue about that album. I think it's easy for critics to feel all-powerful and all-knowing, so this is a way to avoid that, while still producing really interesting critiques. In the words of the authors themselves: "Ultimately, we feel that the greatest accomplishment any piece of art can achieve is the incitement of discourse."

City of Brotherly Love

This year is going by so quickly that I only recently realized I hadn't left New York since July, when I came back from China. Also, this winter was cold and gray and rainy and I think I was left with a slight case of seasonal depression, topped with a dollop of cabin fever. So I decided to take a very mini holiday to Philadelphia, to visit my friend Chris (from China) and Helen (from University of Michigan).

Philadelphia is one of my favorite cities. It has pretty much everything. It's small enough to feel intimate, but big enough to qualify as a "real" city. It has neighborhoods. It's very walkable. It has history and gravitas and cobblestone streets, without the preppy elitism of Washington, D.C. It's diverse and interesting and only two hours away from New York City.

When I arrived on Friday morning, I was happy to be there, despite the pouring rain. It always feels good to be in a new place and I was nostalgic for all my Asia traveling. Being in a new place is all about learning. How do you take the SEPTA? (Philadelphia's public transit). What are the best museums? What does it feel like at night or during the day or in the earliest hours of the morning?

My first stop was the Franklin Institute, where I met up with Helen and her boyfriend, Antoine, who was visiting from France. We went to see an IMAX movie about tornadoes. I haven't seen an IMAX since I was about nine years old. It was both cool and horribly nauseating. We also explored some of the galleries. It's always fun to be looking at museums from a critical perspective, now that I've worked in several of them.

I wasn't quite sure what this was, but it had something to do with cell phones and electricity and energy and Ben Franklin. When Antoine used his cell phone near it, the lights went crazy.

Some of the hands-on features seemed a little bit worn out, but even so, I got a major kick out of this one, pictured above. It was set up like a pinball machine and your ball landed on various ailments and time periods. So you might land on "broken arm" and "England, 1788" and an actor would appear onscreen and tell you how he or she might treat you for the problem in that place and time. It was pretty goofy and the historical actors were cheesy, but for kids (and myself) I found it entertaining and effective.

After the museum closed, we walked in the pouring rain to meet Chris at his favorite restaurant, Mercato. I really love the fact that Philadelphia is teeming with BYOB restaurants. I had some delicious pasta with beef bolognese, rosemary and shaved grana padano, we drank lots of wine, and then Chris and I dashed off to a show. Our friend Tae had attended Penn and been part of an historic, all-male musical comedy troupe called Mask & Wig, and they were performing that night.


It's hard to describe the show, except to say that the dancing and songwriting was excellent and that I've never seen such heterosexual drag in my entire life. It reminded us of Tae and that made us happy. Afterwards, we went out to a bar, where I talked Chris's ear off about all my white girl problems.

The next day was beautiful. Chris and I went to Reading Terminal Market for French Toast and eggs and grapefruit juice. Then we walked to the Italian market (they love markets!) and wandered around, checking out record stores and cheese shops. I met up with Helen and Antoine again, and then split off on my own to explore some other neighborhoods. I saw wonderful old signs and lettering, some Philly hipsters, some winding streets, and Ben Franklin's old house. All in all, a really lovely 36 hours.