It's Genetic

December 27, 2009

Liz has DVDs like I have books. She has a Netflix account and I am on it. Every time I order something from Netflix she tells me, "I have that DVD." Iit is time to start watching Liz's DVDs.

They are actually in alphabetical order on the shelves. Here is how the weekend went...

ET Boxed set. Didn't watch it as I have seen it and didn't really want to see it again.

8 MILE. Didn't watch it. No interest in watching Eminem.

THE 10TH KINGDOM. Didn't watch it. Looks terribly boring.

12 ANGRY MEN. Saw the play. Skipped over this but am thinking I want to watch it now.

12 MONKEYS. Watched this (had to take it out of the wrapper). It really was not good at all but I am definitely not a fan of Bruce Willis, never have been.

40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. Watched it. (Had to take it out of the wrapper.) Actually pretty funny.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, ADVENTURES of BUCKEROO BONZOI, AIRHEADS, ALADDIN..jumped right over these.

Alfred Hitchcock. She has two DVDs. The first one had three episodes on it, each one 90 minutes long. Longest 90 minutes of my life. Turns out these were from when he was very young. 1930 silent black and white movie. Dreadful. The one I watched was called "The Manxman". Three to four minutes of people talking, laughing, crying, talking, talking, talking. Then the subtitle says something like, "But I want to." The other two went unwatched.

The second DVD was actually four episodes from TV--The Case of Mr. Pelham, The Banquo Chair, and Lamb to the Salughter. There was a fourth one that for some reason I didn't watch. Will do that in the next couple of days. "Lamb to the Slaughter". Wife hits her husband in the back of his head with a frozen leg of lamb. Puts it in the oven and feeds the police who are at the house investigating the murder, thus getting rid of the evidence. It was really pretty good. The others were OK.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND-skipped this one.

ALL ABOUT EVE-such a classic. Marilyn Monroe has a very small bit part. She looks about 18, amazing. It was good although predictable. I am not sure what all the fuss about Bette Davis is about although she is a good actress.

I also watched JULIE AND JULIA this weekend as well as SEVEN POUNDS. Both of them were really pretty good. I am definitely a fan of Meryl Streep and also saw IT'S COMPLICATED in a movie theater this weekend.

I feel pretty movie-ed out.

Siblings

December 24, 3009

I have saved this for a long time, always struck by the last paragraph. A lot of it is pretty dramatic but that last paragraph seemed to stick.

I am glad that Karen is feeling better. Now I can hit her.

Siblings-A Sense of Connection

Anna Quindlen

I don't understand how people learn to live in the world if they haven't had siblings. Everything I learned about negotiation, territoriality, coexistence, dislike, inbred differences and love despite knowledge I learned from my four younger siblings: Bob, Mike, Kevin and Theresa.

In some essential way, they were my universe, even more than my parents. For while we costume ourselves for our mothers and fathers, pretend to be what they want or strike a pose as that which they most abhor, we let down our guard for our siblings day after day, year after year, without thinking about it much. We share with them real life.

"They're all you'll have some day," my mother used to say when we would bicker, fight or strike one another, as we did with some frequency. I always thought there was something pathetic about the way she'd say that, as though our siblings would be the sad leftovers on the plate of life, scraps of fat, puddles of congealed gravy.

But as I say to my own three children now-and I do, I do, almost despite myself-I realize that she meant something quite different. And I remember what I felt deep in my bones when I was pregnant with my third child, that she was an extraordinarily lucky person, not because she would have my husband and me as parents but because we had had the foresight to provide her with these two brothers, who, in the natural order of things, would still be part of her life after we were gone.

How difficult it is to fathom, to describe, to deconstruct all this, the common place bonds of blood. There is a sense of connection as powerful as a rope-those chains around the ankles that convicts wear when they're shuttled to and from prison. Lifelong, irreversible, accidental connection is like that. They are me. I am them. I say that now, knowing that some of us have almost nothing to say to one another that doesn't start with the word "remember". I say that knowing that sometimes we have been estranged, angry, uncaring.

"Flesh of my flesh," they say sometimes in the marriage ceremony, but it's just not true. It is not even true of our children who are part us, part someone dear to us, loved by us but not made of what we are made of. But our brothers and sisters: Well, it is all the same clay. That is why we can hit them. That is why we can hate them. That is why we can never really lose them or we have lost our history, our past, a part of ourselves that we cannot do without.

Going to try to keep this going.....

Monday, December 21, 2009

Books! Books! Books! I have an addictive relationship with books. I think my "to read" pile (s) is down to about 59 now. It is a very provocative time of year with all of the "Top 10 of 2009" and "Top 100 of 2009" coming out. I am practicing great restraint at the moment, being quite responsible about the lists and simply saving them.

I made sort of a resolution about a month ago that I would only buy one book after I have read five from the pile. It is feeling pretty harsh at the moment. To be more precise, at the moment I am feeling that if I want to buy books, I don't know a really good reason not to. Except that I have 59 that I "had to have" and haven't read yet. But it isn't like I am going out and beating up old ladies or robbing convenience stores to get the money to buy books. Sticking to my resolution, I would have to read 125 books to buy the ones on the "Top" lists. Ha! I'm an amateur. I only have 59!

I have a sponsor in my Book Buyers Anonymous group, a group of two. Actually, she is my good friend and neighbor and she understands this addiction very well. In fact, she gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Hanukkah and, double in fact, as I write this she is out shopping at the aforementioned Barnes & Noble. So I think I am flying solo at the moment. Actually, if all truth be told, she is shopping with the gift card that I happened to also get for her for Hanukkah.

Reading the weekly New York Times Book Review section is painful. But they don't even have to be new books. Yard sales are another temptation. Everyone is selling books at yard sales. I have a public library two blocks from my house that I never go to. Usually when I want a book, I don't want to go on a waiting list for it. And I definitely can't put it on my pile and expect to return it in two weeks. There is an aspect to all of this that I fortunately am not afflicted with. One of my friends' elderly aunt would only read new books as "you never know but someone might have been reading it in their bathroom." She's right. You just never know.

Oh, actually there is one missing in the pictures. Actually there are three missing from the pictures. I am breaking my usual resolve and reading two at a time.

That's right, Nick. Nick gave this to me about two years ago to read and I am just starting it. I am actually finding it interesting although, like I said, I am just starting it. It is basically about how the Pentagon was in no way prepared to deal with or look at a world after the Cold War. All of a sudden the Cold War was over and now what? It is about how our country had to learn a new way to deal with the rest of the word. As it was written in 2004 it is somewhat dated but still interesting....so far. As a reader of pretty much only fiction, it is impressive to me that it is holding my interest. On top of it all, I think I have a friend who is involved in just what this analyst is writing about.

I read Stieg Larsson's first book....."The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and really enjoyed it. Then when I read that he had written three books, this one being the second of the three, submitted them to his publisher and then, at the age of 32 commited suicide, I was intrigued enough to want to read the last two books. So this is the second book I am reading at the time.

"Under the Dome" is in Liz's room but it is stuck in my mind. My friend (sponsor) read it and couldn't put it down. I became disinterested in Stephen King a long time ago when it seemed he just got too weird but I am definitely interested in this. The dust jacket is intriguing in itself, no writing whatsoever on the back or the inside flaps. No synopsis of the story, nothing. Blank.

I don't understand people who don't read.