Bunniblog

The Top 20 Horror Movies of the Decade

2010-12-21T16:24:00.004-05:00

I just couldn't narrow it down to 10 so here's 20 movies that'll scare the socks off of you before the new decade begins.These movies are listed in no particular order.

1. Feed-This movie is actually the only movie to make me dry heave. Seriously. It's insanely sick, but in a good way.

2. Subject Two-This movie is, quite simply, the best adaptation of Frankenstein I've ever seen. Get the DVD and watch how the movie was made as they had to schlep all their equipment up a mountain in Colorado, no easy trick.

3.Feast-AVOID THE SEQUELS TO THIS MOVIE. Feast is one my faves, if for no other reason Henry Rollins has his pants ripped off my a ravenous hell beast. That's always good in my book.

4. The Descent-This is just an awesome movie.

5.Zombie Honeymoon-Much like an American Werewolf in London, this movie is one of the rare horror movies that manages to incorporate comedy while still remaining terrifying. Also really good rockabilly soundtrack. (The story was inspired by the death of the author/director's sister's husband.)

6.Saw-I love Saw. While the needle pit is the best trap, this is the movie that started Jigsaw on his way. You'll never hear "hello-I'd like to play a game" the same way again.

7.Slither-Nathan Fillon, a mayor with tourettes, and an alien who likes to eat dogs make this movie totally charming.

8. Cabin Fever-I, quite honestly, have only watched this movie once. I can not watch it again for just one scene (you know it well) the leg shaving scene. AAAAiiiiiiii. Roth has not lived up to the reputation this movie set up for him, but this movie is enough on its own.

9. Drag Me to Hell-Poor Allyson Lohman gets puked on more than any human being can in one movie. This Raimi at his absolute best. Hey Sam baby I do not want your puny kitten (wink).

10. Ginger Snaps-A really great feminist twist on the werewolf story.

11. Pitch Black-So cheesy, but I love this movie. My favorite part is the end when Vin stares down the alien by staying in its blind spot. (He also wrote Critters 2!)

12. Bubba Ho-Tep-Not really scary, but totally awesome for Bruce Campbell as an old Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK (whose been dyed black). LET'S GET DECADENT!

13. Nightwatch-This Russian vampire movie has amazing visuals, and a pretty gripping story.

14. 2001 maniacs- A "sequel" to the Hershel Gordon Lewis classic, this movie keeps the campy bloodthirsty spirit of the original.

15. Willard-This remake of a 1971 horror movie did not fare well at the box office despite the absolutely perfect casting of Crispin Glover as a social awkward man who befriends some rats. There's a scene set to music in which a cat is threatened by the rats that's absolutely flawlessly funny.

16. Cloverfield-This tribute to Godzilla set in NYC earned my undying love because the trailers offered very little insight into what was destroying NYC. In fact, the only clear shot of "the monster" is in the last 5 minutes of the movie. I do have a problem with a scene in the subway because no NYer in his/her right mind would turn and see WHAT THE FLOOD OF RATS WAS FLEEING FROM.

17.The Tripper-More bizarro fun, in this slasher the serial killer wears a Ronald Reagen mask while hacking up hippies at a tribute to Woodstock run by (wait for it) Paul Rubens!

18.28 Weeks Later-Robert Carlyle gives good zombie, and I love the end!

19.The Orphanage-Man, I never expected to cry watching a horror movie, but this movie is both horrific and touching. Beautifully shot.

20.Paranormal Activity-I gotta be honest this movie plugged DIRECTLY into a fear I had growing up. When I was 10 I was terrified of demonic possession, and I barely made it through this low budget but very effective thrillfest.

Threshold of Revelations: End of Days

2010-08-22T16:18:00.002-04:00

Now that the end of Asshat's life was nearing, he was dealing more and more with his own death and the afterlife. I do not mean that on a philosophical level. I mean the actual details of what was to happen after his death. Who was to inherit what? What was to be done with his remains? Where was the memorial to be held?

During these days in the house there was lots of idle talk about these things. Magpie was particularly excited to discuss what she planned to sing at the memorial ceremonies. It was sickening, like watching a vulture circle with ever increasing pleasure eyeing an animal as it weakens, but struggles on. But it was Magpie who shared that Asshat had always wanted to be buried on the grounds of the farm.

The "farm" was actually a palatial, but unfinished house. Asshat had built it himself and while I thought some of the design features were....unfortunate and odd, they were definitely his. It was to have been his magnum opus. Still, his house was unfinished. On the top floor, there was one room that was barely rudimentary, and the basement had a completely non-functional bathroom. Other parts of the house, as I looked at it in the sun, desperately needed maitenance. Eaves were sagging, wood was rotting, paint was chipped an entirely faded. I thought worse than his premature death was that all of his efforts had come to this. The house, as I examined it on this bright summer day, looked absolutely pathetic. He wouldn't even have the time to build the chapel where he wanted to be buried on the property. There wasn't even time for him to fulfill his dying wish.

I sat on the porch and looked out at the horizon. Asshat had bought all the land surrounding the house so he had a completely uninterrupted view from absolutely any vantage point at the house. Man tries to control his environment, his destiny, and he comes to this. Dying in a house with apathetic relatives with even one of his enemies now more of any ally than those who should have loved him, his house unfinished, his death wish not able to realized. While Euripides once wrote, "A bad beginning makes a bad ending," I think Sophocles was more accurate when he wrote "Count no man happy until he is dead." Of course, it's very difficult to count the dead as happy under any circumstances.

Treshold of Revelations: Humans Without Humanity

2010-08-10T23:04:00.003-04:00

The following day Asshat's sister, Magpie, was to arrive. Magpie has the type of nasal twang for a voice that's like a diamond drill-it can cut through anything including your sanity in a matter of seconds. It's the way I imagine H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu to sound, that is if Cthulhu was a shrewish, invasive idiot without even the vaguest concept of tact and appropriateness. I kinda expect that even the Elder Ones have better manners than the Magpie, as to talk to her for even minutes is to make you want to run screaming for Innsmouth and all of its horror as a welcome alternative.

If her voice wasn't enough, she personifies one of the truths I realized quite early in life: the people who most want to advertise their intelligence are usually the stupidest people around. In this case, Asshat, her brother, at this point could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room, and she wouldn't hear him. My mother and I decided to leave Magpie with Asshat so 1 they would have private time together to talk 2 we could go pick up some respiratory gear.Before we left Magpie, who likes to announce every five mintues that she graduated from an ivy league college, stopped my mother to ask if she should check in on her own brother from time to time. My mother was confused, "What do you mean check in?" "Well I wanted to do some work on the computer." The computer was in the basement on the other end of the voice. Luciano Pavaroti couldn't have yelled loud enough from the living room to be heard in the basement computer room nevermind a guy who could barely talk thanks to lung cancer. In this case, Asshat, her brother, could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often when he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room getting something for him, and she wouldn't hear him.The "work" that Magpie was referring to was the VOLUNTEER work she did helping to rescue beagles in Florida.

Now, I do not in anyway disparage people who save animals. My cat is a rescue, my mom's cats are rescue cats. HOWEVER if you have the choice between spending time with your dying brother and trying to help save animals over the internet, I'm gonna say go with your brother. I'm an only child fer chrissakes and even I understand that time with your brother is short. Not to mention that the two aren't mutually exclusive. My mother and I were coming home in a few hours. I refuse to believe she couldn't put it off for three hours. But in truth, she just didn't want to spend time with her brother despite her presence there.

However, where I would slapped this stupid bitch upside the head and said "Listen, go sit with your brother until we come back." My mother patiently explained that Asshat couldn't talk that loudly and needed help with things like walking to the bathroom and COULD NOT CALL FOR HELP so SHE HAD TO STAY IN THE ROOM. (She did not punctuate the sentence with "idiot" or "bitch" as I would have.) She grudgingly went to sit with her brother.

Before we left my mother told Magpie to be sure BE SURE to give Asshat his 3 pm pills. She told her twice and even put a note in front of a little dish filled with the appropriate pills that said "3 pm!" We gave her exactly one thing to do.

Did she do it?

No. She forgot to give him his meds which included pain medication, something he absolutely needed. I mean seriously, one thing ONE THING. Mind you my mother was the one who was giving him IV fluids, emptying spitoons filled with bloody phlegm, even draining his lungs. And this alledgedly intelligent human being couldn't remember to give him clearly labeled pills? I mean did she think the meds were OPTIONAL? Did she not get that giving a terminal lung cancer patient his medications on time is important? And if she didn't get it, why the hell not?

Later, Asshat's son, Gekko, arrived as well. We were all sitting in the living room chatting, Asshat was in the middle of saying something, when suddenly he coughed up bile. The son and the sister RAN OUT OF THE ROOM.

Let me say that again. They fled.

Being me, I thought that they had run to get paper towels or something useful. It never occurred to me that they had just run out. My mother and I cleaned Asshat up. I took the bile soaked tissues and walked into the kitchen, which is where I found his son just standing there.

Growing up disabled, it does something to you. You learn quickly that the horror of what has happened to you is not being trapped in a body that's the enemy, but how people treat you because of it. The people who should be there for you, abandon you. They make excuses not to come to the hospital. To avoid asking how you are. Or to just vanish until things are "better." To leave you to crutch home, 5 blocks in the rain, from the hospital alone. To expect you to act after a 5 day emergency hospitalization that everything is fine. The people who have benefitted from your empathy. The people who should have your back. The people who should understand. They are the ones who generally disappoint and on an epic level.

The converse rule is that the people who come through are generally those you don't expect. Some random person you barely know who sends you flowers or an encouraging email or stops and asks if you need help. Unfortunately, those people are far outnumber by those who lack basic humanity.

I threw out the tissues and washed my hands. I knew the worst part of what had just happened wasn't the lack of control over his own body. It was knowing he had become revolting to his own sister and son. To know that what had happened to him had so frightened them they had fled the room. I know what's like to see that horror in the eyes of others and that is why I acted like everything was normal. I went back into the room where he apologized profusely for what had happened. He apologized-as if he had some control.

My mother and I told him he had no reason to apologize, and of course he didn't. It wasn't like he wanted to barf up phlemg. The son finally came back into the room. The conversation started to resume a bit, but there was a problem.

Where was Magpie?

Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and there was no sign of Magpie. Finally I went into the kitchen to get a refill of my iced tea and that's when I saw her. She was in the back garden pulling weeds and talking on the phone. She ran out of the room and didn't even care enough to check on whether her brother was OK. She just decided that weeding and chatting was more important than her brother's feelings in the same way she decided that those beagles were more important than her brother's welfare.

I have to be honest with you that incident so upset me that I was spitting mad for a week. I have no idea how a person can care so little about the welfare of a fellow human being, nevermind a sibling. As I said, I hated the man and yet I found their behavior so obherent that I literally couldn't talk about anything else for a week. It is, to me, a perfect distillation of how human beings generally lacking humanity especially when it's the most important for them to have some.

Karma, however, will pay them back as someday they will know what it's like to have their body fail and their family flee. It's what my father told me all those years ago: The one great common denominator of all humanlife is pain. If you ever wish great pain on someone, you only have to do one thing: wait. And so eventually their apathy will come back to haunt them in the form of those they will expect to support them. They will then know the horror of causing family members to flee, having family members hide from their needs with invented important tasks, and having family think your basic needs are unimportant or more importantly they don't care to protect your feelings in the least.

Personally, I would like it better if people could actually act like human beings, but having lived with disability for so long, I know I might as well wish for a hot tub filled with blue Kool-Aid and a calorie free Swiss chocolate. But will I take plain ole vengeance? You bet I will. And the truth is, if I ended up seeing them sick I probably couldn't run out on them anymore than I could run out on Asshat. Luckily, I'm sure other family members will have that covered.

Review of Philip Roth's "Indigination"

2010-08-04T03:13:00.001-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Roth's, and Indignation is so engaging that I read it entirely in one day. It breaks off from his more recent books, which have focused on older characters facing the end of life. Still, this book, like Everyman, deals with the death of the main character-in this case the death of a 20 year old college student who is narrating his tale from what he thinks is the afterlife.

The book begins with the character essentially recounting what is the inciting incident of the b...more I'm a huge fan of Roth's, and this book is so engaging that i read it entirely in one day. It breaks off from his more recent books, which have focused on older characters facing the end of life. Still, this book, like Everyman, deals with the death of the main character-in this case the death of a 20 year old college student who is narrating his tale from what he thinks is the afterlife.

The book begins with the character essentially recounting what is the inciting incident of the boos, his father suddenly becoming so terrified for his son's welfare that at one point he locks him out of the house. Confronted with his father's increasingly obsessive fears, Marcus decides to leave Newark and go to school in Winesburg, Ohio. Winesburg, Ohio is the title of a coming of age short story cycle by Sherwood Anderson in which a young man, George, grows up and eventually leaves as a young man . Once there, Marcus confronts a cast of different characters from the gay, antagonistic Bert Flusser, his more successful double Sonny Cottler, to the romantically damaged Olivia Hutton. Marcus faces increasing difficulties at Winesburg, which results in his expulsion and subsequent draft. In fact, Marcus seems to constantly be "drafted" into conflicts-whether it's the sudden attacks of his father's mania or Bert Flusser's masterbatory stalking. Despite his desire to avoid these conflicts, he is unable to escape (foreshadowing his early demise as a casualty of the Korean conflict).

One of the major themes of the book is losing control and the destructive impact such behavior on those around you. It's his father's loss of control that results in Marcus "running away from home." Bert Flusser's inability to control his own behavior (he doesn't wash or change his clothes or turn down his music) drives Marcus from his dorm room. Later, Bert breaks into Marcus's new room and masterbates into all of his clothes making his lack of control overtly violent. When Marcus's new roommate, Elwyn refers to Marcus's love interest as a "c**t", Marcus decides to change rooms rather than engaging him in a discussion about why his statement is wrong. The problems with roommates results in a visit with the Dean and Marcus makes himself a target when he is unwilling to control himself when he confronts the Dean about a variety of different issues. This lack of control is made manifest by Marcus vomiting all over the Dean's trophies at the end of the visit. Marcus is ultimately doomed because he refuses not only to go to Chapel (a requirement of his school), but to make up chapel visits as a form of penance. Could he control his impulses, he could have easily have graduated. Similarly, during the panty raid his classmates, by force, break into several female dormitories and steal panties and masterbate into them. The panty raid is, to some degree, a parallel with the Korean war. After all, the soldiers are exactly the same age as Marcus, an observation made clear by his fear of being expelled lest he be drafted. Furthermore, blood is shed in the passionate spirit of attempting to liberate these ladies garments, which, far from the spirit of independence, is more about a "barbaric pursuit of thoughtless fun" as the president of the university tells the boys during an address.

Olivia, Marcus's romantic interest doesn't escape either. She suffers a nervous breakdown as a result of pregnancy. her inability to control her libido results in a breakdown, which is described by the dean as being a state in which "You have no more control over your emotions than an infant" a statement that could equally apply to the behavior demonstrated in the panty raid or Flusser's masterbatory spree.

Roth has already demonstrated his skill in fusing the historical and the fictional in novel like the Plot Against America and I Married a Communist. Here is no exception. Roth uses the Korean war to highlight some aspects of our current situation. When the president addresses the boys of the school, he harshly declares "beyond your dormitories, a world is on fire and you are kindled by underwear. beyond your fraternities, history unfolds daily-warfare, bombings, wholesale slaughter, and you are oblivious of it all. Well, you won't be oblivious for long! you can be as stupid as you like, can even give every sign, as you did here on Friday night, of passionately wanting to be stupid, but history will catch up to you in the end." This seems like an apt indictment of what I, as a professor, encounter with college students quite often. The consequences of this "barbaric pursuit of thoughtless fun" are death, but not because of the panty raid, but because of their refusal to learn and engage the problem.

Marcus's fate is set in motion because his main coping mechanism is avoidance-he leaves his house and his rooms when problems surface. He is at college mainly to AVOID THE DRAFT, rather than attempting to confront the problem head on. This avoidance is demonstrated in the panty raid where students either engaged or ignored the raid. The president makes it clear that not one student actually attempted to defend the female residents of the dorms. He demands to know where their manly courage is and how this courage will serve them in Korea if they can't even defend the rights of women at the school. These accusations, the lack of courage and the passionate desire to pursue thoughtless fun, ring true for the current situation America confronts with its young men and women currently. Roth is a master at using historical conflicts to illustrate current ones and does so here. Still, one is left with a touching affection for Marcus who dies at 20.

Threshold of Revelations: Job's Lament

2010-08-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

After watching the movie, it was time to go up to bed. This was something that annoyed me. Asshat couldn't make it up stairs without help so my mother would have to help her boyfriend up, not one, but two flights of stairs all the while also lugging his air tanks all because he refused to have things set up in the bedroom. Why? Because he things to be the way they were. He still didn't accept that things were never, ever going to be the way they were again. He was trying to cling to his life as a healthy person, and while he was still alive, his life as a healthy person was already over.

I went up ahead of them to have a little bit of a snack before bed. While I was in the kitchen I head the two of them talking. I had thought they had gone up, but no. Asshat was sitting in a rocking chair by stairs (placed there by my mother for this reason), he was struggling to breathe and saying to my mother "Why is God doing this to me? Why is God doing this to me?" My mother was bent over him trying to soothe him.

Like Job, he isn't asking for his suffering to end, just for a reason. The universal question, "Why me?" Of course the answer is "It is not your place to question or understand. It is your place to accept." On some level, it's a practical answer. God isn't going to open the clouds a la Monty Python and Holy Grail and say "Well, here's the reason." So just accepting what is happening seems like the best advice. And could there even be a reason good enough?

I've struggled with the why question myself. The type of cancer I had was idiopathic* up until a few years ago. Then, thanks to the human genome project, the cause was discovered-a random malformation of a single gene. Pure chance, bad fucking luck, that was it. Now I had the answer. Did I feel anymore satisfied?

Absolutely not. So while I understand the cautionary tale of Job, I also know the advice offered is absolutely impossible to take.

I felt almost assaulted by the intimacy between them. My mother had soothed me in rocking chairs as a child. She had rocked with me as I wailed from ear infections and strep throat until I calmed down. Now she was doing it again with her boyfriend. They didn't even notice me standing there before I ran back into the kitchen to pour myself a large glass of ultra calming vodka.

My initial reaction was pure rage. I sat in the kitchen, seething. I wanted to be God's proxy and say, "Listen you chucklehead, this has nothing to do with me. YOU CHOSE TO SMOKE LIKE A CHIMNEY FOR 40 YEARS AND YOU'RE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER so sorry your spin on the roulette wheel didn't at all work out. But it's not like divine providence forced you to smoke. This is the result of your own deliberate decisions. Not to mention, you've had a fantastic life for the last 60 years. Do you know how many people (including the 30 year old in the next room) would GLADLY suffer from lung cancer if they could only have half the life you have had? More than that tiny brain of yours could probably handle. So do me a favor. Accept your own culpability. Appreciate what you have while you still fucking have it. Now, if you don't mind you self centered prick, I now have to go listen to the prayers of some parents with infants in NICU."

Now I know this reads like David Mamet rewriting the Bible.

Part of my rage came from the fact that I got six months of health. Six months. Not sixty years. Not even one year. And my cancer wasn't brought on by my own acts. I was filled with a lot of righteous "HOW DARE HE?!"

But underneath that rage was the horror of watching my mother witness this. That she went through this every night, and she would continue to go through it until the end. The tremendous strength of her to do this, uncomplaining, unflinching.

Part of the reason it takes me so long to write these entries is I end up sobbing every time I write about this. I didn't cry when my father died. Not one tear. Not even at the funeral listening to my mother cry behind me. Where did that girl go? What is it about this?

How many times did my mother soothe me in a rocking chair while I wondered why God, who I believed in at that point, had done this to me? How many times did I think an answer to that question would be better than a cure? How many times do I hate myself for struggling up a flight of stairs? Every time. Every step. Feeling absolutely helpless-a victim of my own body. My body-the enemy. That antagonist that had to be fought and who retaliated with pain. And now I was reliving it by watching someone else go through it.

In the end, I stayed in the kitchen until the rage subsided. Afterwards I walked out the front door. It was a beautiful night outside. It was cool and clear. So many stars that it was shocking. I forgot what the night looks like in the country. The frogs, toads, crickets, grasshoppers, and other assorted critters were making a near deafening racket. I sat outside and felt sad that instead of enjoying the simple pleasure of the night, we stayed inside and watched a movie. Out here simple mindless life is going on-stars sparkling, crickets chirping-without any awareness of what was happening in the house, without any concern. The crickets and the stars had no answer except to keep going until you can no longer. Keep going.

Keep going.

* idiopathic means there is no known cause for the disorder

Threshold of Revelations: In the Country of Last Things *

2010-07-24T23:47:00.006-04:00

After we arrived at the house, Asshat had himself ensconced in a comfy chair in the basement so he could get IV fluids. My mother hooked him up, and we sat in the basement watching the latest offering from Netflix. When someone is dying, even the most mundane of activities, watching a DVD, suddenly take on completely different significance.

We watched Much Ado About Nothing, the Kenneth Branaugh version. Asshat declared it too sentimental, as it had to be too something in his estimation. I sat there wondering if I was dying, what movies would I want to watch? Would I bother with any of my horror movies? Would I suddenly go running for the musical comedies? Would I even want to see existential movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Existenz?

And this brings up a slew of last thoughts. What would I want my last meal to be? My last book? My last vacation? My last season? My last time of day? And these are all the big things, the things we know we'll miss-real gooey hot fudge sundaes, swimming in the ocean, smelling frais du bois on the streets of Paris, having wild passionate sex (in bed, on the couch, in the backgarden, in the shower), snuggling under the covers on a cold day, hugging an old friend you meet by chance, sitting a field filled with fireflies on a quiet summer night, struggling to walk in knee deep snow, enjoying a rose scented bath filled with bubbles. The list goes on and on. Someday, I will have enjoyed all those things for the last time.

And then there are the things you don't think about. The last time you brush your teeth, take a quick shower, do the laundry, vacuum, go to the DMV, do your taxes, pay the bills, pick up the dry cleaning, change the lightbulbs, walking up the stairs...hell wipe your ass. You'll miss those too one day, you don't think so, but you will. Trust me.

A week before I went to upstate, a friendly acquaintance was watching me eat a cupcake. I offered him some, but he declined even though he really wanted some. I asked him how he had such self control, and he said "Well you're a spring chicken compared to me. When you get to my age, and you've had about nine thousand you think 'I don't need one more.'" I smiled and nodded and didn't trust a single word. How could I? One day I won't be able to have anymore cupcakes and won't I regret all the cupcakes I could have eaten and didn't? And don't even get me started on the truffle cheese, salted caramels, bacon chocolate bars, jalapeno peanut brittle, caramel apples, chubby hubby ice cream...well you get the idea. And that's just the decadent treats. What about the nights out with friends? Laughing in the park? Discovering new lovers in France? The adventures? The creature comforts? The enjoyable challenges? The hard won accomplishments? Even the horrifying farces that will turn into amusing anecdotes?

My therapist told me once that she knew some people who died of Parkinsons. "They seemed peaceful after they embraced the fact they couldn't talk anymore." How does one embrace that? I thought. How could I ever be at peace with having spoken my last words?

How could I ever have enough?

Still, I sat there watching the movie with my eyes filling with tears because Asshat had already passed so many of those milestones. He had already eaten his last meal, even though he didn't know it at the time. The cancer had knocked out his taste buds early so he was living on Ensure, soon he wouldn't even have that. A gourmande all his life spending his last few months drinking Ensure. He wasn't going to get one last decadent meal. Not even a snack. Not one little sliver of truffle. And there would be more sacrifices to come.

He was living through Hell already and he still had worse to look forward to.

I posted a question on facebook asking people what movie they wanted their last movie to be. No one responded. I suppose no one wanted to think about the reality of it.

Still, whether we want to think of it, it's coming. The last movie we shall ever watch. The last meal. The last season. The last time of day. The last thought.

The last taste of strawberries and walking in the snow.

* I started writing this entry, and the following entries, before my mother's boyfriend passed away. He died on Monday 19, 2010.

Threshold of Revelations: Part One

2010-06-15T23:03:00.005-04:00

It started in November. Well, September really. My mother had come back from Europe with her boyfriend, Asshat, whom I hate.

I know what you're thinking. Hate is a strong word. Surely you don't HATE him. No, I do with the type of hate that actually raises my blood pressure for DAYS after I saw him. A hate that meant that I had to cut off contact with my mother for months just for my own health and my own sanity.

He had an old school Italian mentality paired with an outstanding belief that only he knew the right way to do anything.

Well, look at that, I'm already writing about him in the past tense, even though now, he's still alive. Still, his death is so imminent, the past tense seems to be more appropriate.

Once, we went to a prestigious Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. He saw zucchini blossoms on the menu, but insisted the chef was preparing them incorrectly. He gave the waiter very particular instructions for how he wanted the blossoms. When the dish arrived, he was openly and more embarrassingly vociferously disappointed. For the rest of the entire night, he would not let five minutes go without ranting about what a catastrophe the blossoms were. I found the entire night appalling and have never dared to show my face in that restaurant again.

Far more painful was his attitude toward my disability, which was "Just get over it." Having coped with massive neurological damage in my lower body, and several chronic health problems related to the damage, his callousness was upsetting. Christ, I spent most of my childhood flying to see specialists at hospitals, sitting in waiting rooms, having painful tests, waiting through winters and summers in casts and on crutches, recovering from surgeries and hospitalizations, facing an ever increasing line of doctors. And I had pushed through it. While I attended college, pursuing a BFA in Acting in one of the most reputable programs in the country, my father died, I almost bled to death, I was emergency hospitalized, had emergency surgery, had ambulatory surgery, and STILL graduated on time with honors. Furthermore, I went onto to pursue my Master's at one of the most highly ranked graduate writing programs in the country and then began my teaching career. I was an expert skier and amateur ballroom dancer. I had traveled to Europe alone. In short, I did my best not to allow the disability to interfere.

Still, it would part of that is the fear that I ever did let the disability effect me, I wouldn't be loved. The fear that the only way for people to accept me was to pretend to be something I desperately wanted to be. To be healthy. And while, I could make people believe I was healthy, it made me feel isolated and afraid. That love was tentative and came with a high price. That love meant I could never really be accepted for who I really am.

He made my position absolutely clear. I could never let down my guard. Never be truly understood. Because to do so, was to be weak, to be sick. Because sickness, disability on some level, was a choice. It was a failure of will.

Meanwhile, he thought all doctors were shysters. Of course, because if will is all that is necessary for health, then why would medicine or doctors be necessary? Strange that my mother, the ex-wife of a doctor, the daughter of a nurse, a former nurse herself would allow him to persist in these beliefs. She never saw how hurtful, how insulting and desultory his attitude was to me personally because she excused it with her excuse for everything he said "Oh, he's just that WAY." As if confronting that insidious attitude within my own family, harbored by my mother's own affection, was a minor pet peeve, like sucking his teeth. He, of course, was convinced that if he got sick, if he became disabled that's exactly what he would do. Because he was, despite his lack of experience and in the face of mine, always right.

On more than one occasion, I wished he would get sick, not seriously sick, but sick enough to actually have some empathy for the rest of us who have to cope with this kind of incapacity everyday. Sick enough to learn that illness is not a failure of will, not a show of weakness. It takes incredible strength to survive illness, not just physically, but emotionally-the abandonment of friends and family, the lack of privacy, the pain, the fear, the rage, the helplessness. To survive alone takes fortitude and faith. I wanted him to get sick enough to learn this, to appreciate how difficult a battle it really is. I wanted from him what I always want from the healthy: understanding. I understand them, but they flinch, they avoid, they deny understanding me. That's all I wanted. Back then I was naive enough to think that a bout with illness would de facto produce insight and compassion.

Illness memoirs enforce this view, particularly breast cancer memoirs. Often survivors say how the cancer helped them see their lives with clear eyes-to re-prioritize, to be thankful, to really live. I was diagnosed with cancer at 6 months old, so re-evaluating my life choices wasn't high on my list. I'll be honest. I've never been thankful that I had cancer, but I've always wondered how much of my development, my drive to help others through teaching and charity, has been spurred on by my own struggles. I accepted what these memoirs told me about the transformational powers of cancer.

I know a lot better now.

In September, my mother returned from Europe ill. At first, I didn't think it was serious. She claimed she had "travelers diarrhea." But weeks went by, she kept losing weight, and she still couldn't keep any food in her system. Finally, after a month and a half and a colonscopy ,she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis-not a great diagnosis, but nowhere near as serious as I feared.

As soon as she recovered, he got a cough that wouldn't respond to treatment. I wasn't surprised by the cough, in fact, since he was a hard core smoker for 40 years who had only recently quit, I was shocked he hadn't suffered from a cough like that sooner. Plus with my mother's illness, I thought his illness might have been a bid to regain attention and focus. Still, my mother was concerned. Then, he got diagnosed with pneumonia. The pneumonia didn't respond to any treatment. Now, my mother told me that he was having chills nightly that were so severe "they shake the mattress like in the exorcist" but he would soak the sheets with sweat.

"I'm worried this is something bad," she said to me.

In the darker parts of my mind, I thought "Wouldn't it be ironic if months after he quit smoking, he got lung cancer?" I thought it because that kind of perfect irony only happens on "Made for Lifetime Movies" and soap operas.

Except this time, it did.

I remember calling my mother from work the minute classes got out. We knew it was cancer by now, but not the prognosis. She answered the phone and said rushed, that he had 2-5 years and then hung up. In retrospect, those years would have been a gift. It seemed horrifying then, but now, how much could have happened in those years? We shall never know because he won't even make it to the end of the first year.

That's one of the first horrors of illness. It's like life on a swiftly tilting planet. Everything changes radically day to day-one day you're hoping to die, the next day you're praying to live. My mother says it again and again on the phone now to the many people who call to inquire, "I don't know. I just don't know. Things change so quickly. I mean, I can't tell you anything because in the next ten minutes everything could change."

Everything could change except one thing: he's going to die very soon.

I Once Was Lost-Reflections on the Series Finale

2010-05-25T22:29:00.005-04:00

So last night was the season finale, and I repeated a cycle I seem to have-coming to a show VERY LATE (usually when all a majority of the original fans have abandoned the show hurling insults in its direction for failing to meet the promise of the first season/episode), becoming slavishly attached (maniacally watching all the episodes in a week), and then the show ends. In short-once I'm a fan, the writing is on the wall. Thus when I began watching Lost last year, well, it's days were numbered. (The exception here is Law and Order which managed to survive my fandom for over almost a decade-and before you huff and puff I didn't have a TV until 2001.) And so only a year after becoming a hardcore fan, I had to accept that the series was ending.

To prepare, I watched every single episode in order last summer so I would know what was going on. Yet there wasn't a single episode this season that didn't completely freakin baffle me. Whidmore likes Desmond? Claire is the new Danielle? The smoke monster has mommy issues?I felt like I might have well not watched ANY episode. How the Hell were the writers going to resolve this? How were they going to answer all these questions (the magical numbers, the giant statue with FOUR TOES, the rules that govern the Island) in 42 minutes (the length of episode sans commcercials)?

What makes the final episode is the writers' layered approach to the episode-for example Juliet's lines to Sawyer in the break room. They are the same lines she says on the Island before she dies. Thus when Juliet originally said to Sawyer before her death on the Island "Let's go for coffee sometime," it made no sense and was dismissed as incoherent babbling. When Juliet repeats the lines in the break room, the viewer understand that Juliet was in between realms, in the same way that Jack, as he dies on the Island, is in between realms-both aware of the Island and the sideways flashes. Thus a question that seemed to be answered (Did the bomb work? Yes.) was actually the answer to a very different question. (What the hell is the sideways world? It's the purgatory/bardo that the main Lostaways go to.)

It is this nuanced approach, like Rose telling Jack on the plane that it's OK to let go at the beginning of the flash sideways that in retrospect indicates IMMEDIATELY that this is a purgatory realm, that attracted me to Lost in the first place. I wasn't in it for the Others or the soap opera drama between Sawyer, Jack, and Kate or figuring out why Desmond was special. (It's because he says "Brother" all the time, right?) I was in it for the more difficult characters like Locke, Linus, Sayid and Eko (who I did seriously miss in the finale). Even Danielle Rousseau is a complex character (although ultimately she's really playing out the Man in Black's mommy issues, which are also visited upon Claire), and it was this inability to quickly characterize these individuals or actually to effectively give them a consistent character that was Lost's strength. (This is the same thing that drew me to Brian Lumley's epic Necroscope series.) The series actually highlighted something that Michel de Montaigne wrote about in his "essaies" that human beings are inconsistent. A person may act like a villian in one circumstance and a hero in the next. I certainly saw that on Lost, and it was this quality that kept me coming back (way more than Jack looking tormented-although he did tormented really well).

The ending struck me as two-fold-sure it had a kinda kumbaya afterlife feel, which I have to admit was problematic for me for various reasons. It completely omitted to explain WHY THE ISLAND WAS MAGICAL and yeah that annoys me, but more importantly this happy fuzzy ending doesn't really gel with me in terms of the world of Lost. I mean, I don't want to say that the world of Lost was bleak, but happiness on the island was about short lived as a Arzt handling dynamite. So suddenly this "Let's all hold hands and sing as we walk into the great golden beyond even though we all tried to kill or torture each other."But that was offset by Jack's actual death. His redemption was achieved literally minutes before his death so I guess they tempered the happy happy joy joy with brilliant surgeon dies young on island with dog.*

But what the ending allowed the writers to do was give closure to the characters and speak directly to the viewers. The main focus of the episode comes down really to two things-the relationship you forge with people is the most important thing you will ever do in your life and you need to know when to move on. These two messages work perfectly with focal points of Lost-the writers have maintained this is a character generated drama so of course relationships would be the most important aspect of the show. (One of the sub tenets of this is that issues from the past, if unresolved, will come back and wreck havoc upon on our lives. Kate was the first person to learn this lesson on the Island).

But it also works as the writers talking to the audience-by telling us that the relationships are the most important, they are openly telling us "The polar bears, number sequence, smoke monster, giant statue with four toes...all that mythos stuff isn't important. So we don't need to explain it." Why? Because the most important aspect of the show is the handwavey sci-fi stuff, it's the relationships the characters have to each other and the relationship we as the viewer have to them. Me, I was most invested in the morally ambiguous characters, but the show offered such a smorgasbord of characters that, much like a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, there was something for everybody including lots of hot eye candy in bathing suits on the beach. So all the mythos didn't matter-it's that we formed a bond with these characters and that's what is ultimately the most important quality of the show.

The second issue-it's time to move on-is kinda obvious. It's the finale. In some ways, it's a plea to fans saying "You have to let go." Much like the sideways reality, yes it's fabulous and fantastic, but it's also transitory. The viewers, like the characters, have to prepare to let go of these individuals even if you think there is still a great deal more of their character to be explored (like Ben Linus.) But as someone who has loved many characters in my time and watched what can happen to them when a series goes on too long (I'm looking at you X-Files), I praise the wisdom of writers who know when it's time to let a story go and move onto the next thing. So ultimately the viewer, if he or she is emotionally engaged is receiving the same message as the characters, only it's far less dire because when the viewers are told to move on all it means is to watch the finale of 24.

Which brings us to the credits. There has been lots of theorizing about the credits. This is how I interpreted it-those closing shots are for us. It's so we can say good-bye to the Island itself which both the writers and actors have admitted is a character on the series. Seeing the Island empty and peaceful, these locations that meant so much to us and the survivors the message is clear "They have gone." And by seeing it empty and peaceful, we can let go.

Listen, I'm not one for messages about the afterlife to end a TV series, but as finales go-I enjoyed this one. It wasn't as powerful for me as Six Feet Under, and it certainly was more frustrating than many finales I've watched. But still, it felt like a good-bye. You always want one minute more, one more hug, kiss, moment, but there has to be an end. And damn if I wasn't crying when that dog lay down next to Jack ,and I'm sure that the reason why Vincent wasn't in the chapel is that all good dogs go to heaven immediately. They don't have to wait around. (And yes I'm welling up while I'm writing this. Sigh. Oh Vincent. I will miss you most of all.)

And if all that means nothing to you, at the very least you should respect it as a finale because at least the ending wasn't Walt looking at a snowglobe of an island with a crumbled statue. (Because yes St. Elsewhere is the yardstick by which I measure all finales.)

*Jack's death in both the sideways world and in the real world is a direct refutation of his first season Mantra-live together, die alone. Physically Jack dies with Vincent (his laughter at Vincent seems to indicate his awareness of that) and spiritually his death is shared with the other key Lostaways who formed "the most important part of his life."

What the "Remember Me" Spoiler, My Latin Education, and 9-11 All Have in Common

2010-03-11T18:30:00.001-05:00

If you actually want to see the movie "Remember Me", stop here. When I saw the ads, I knew instantly this is one of those melodramatic weepy romances, like "Autumn in New York", in which a lover doomed to die manages to "save" the beloved from being jaded before untimely demise. This story is nothing new-Dumas fils wrote about in La Dame Aux Camelias. Because Emilie de Ravin (better known as Claire from Lost) seems jaded in the ads, I figure the "twist" was the BOY saves the jaded girl before his untimely death.

And I was right.

What I missed is that the BOY DIES IN 9-11. Yep, the whole romance is Pre-9/11/2001.

And just when my mind was going to explode with rage, I read this metafilter thread, which restored my sanity as well as reminding me about 2 things.

When I was in middle school, I studied Latin for 2 years. The text book was kind of like Dick and Jane, only in Latin, and with historically accurate details. The lessons followed the every day doings of the "average" family in the Roman Empire. It covered events like watching gladiators, punishing slaves, and even regular religious practices so while learning Latin, we also learned history. So for two years, we dutifully read about the lives of these family members-hell we even read about their dog. Then in the very last lesson THEY ALL DIED WHEN MOUNT VESUVIUS EXPLODED! We had no idea they WEREN'T in ROME, but they were in fact in Pompeii. For the last day of class, we watched The Last Days of Pompeii just to cement the horror into place.

This movie made me think of that not in the least of which because it's a crappy pull the rug out from under you for no real reason type of way. I do admit that it was at least a very dramatic ending to what was a fairly dry textbook.

What's truly odd is my Latin teacher was named Mrs. Hightower and that experienced filled me with a lifelong desire to see Pompeii, which I did a few years ago where I did indeed see A DOG PRESERVED IN ASH FROM THE EXPLOSION!

It's also Mrs. Hightower who I thought of on the morning of 9-11 when I stood on Waverly. After the first tower collapsed, the Idiot Formerly Known as My Fiance, squeezed my hand said "I'm sure everyone got out." I knew they didn't. I knew because Mrs. Hightower told us that many people in Pompeii stayed after the volcano exploded thinking things would get be OK. (She failed to explain that was because there had been a severe earthquake in 17 years BEFORE and many Romans had fled thinking the city doomed. However, the city recovered.)

I looked at the plume of ash and thought that 2,000 years hasn't changed human nature so much. Some of them stayed, I thought, sure that everything would be OK.

Shame upon the makers of "Remember Me" for using such a huge tragedy just to lure tweens until the multiplexes or rather Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris. (Translation: If Caesar was alive, you would be chained to an oar.) But if you MUST use real tragedy to manipulate your audience, at least TEACH THEM SOMETHING OF VALUE WHILE YOUR AT IT.

Thus I make the following proposal:

When I took Latin, some of the high school Latin students would put out a monthly all Latin newspaper. They would write about current news stories in Latin, but on the back page some enterprising student would translate the lyrics of a current Top 10 song until Latin. (You haven't lived until you have read the lyrics to Monkey from Wham! in Latin, I swear.) I think to make amends for this epic insult, the entire film needs to be dubbed in Latin.

Seriously. I would pay for that Twilight twit to have to memorize lines in Latin. But until then, all I have to say to him is "Faciem durum cacantis habes ." (You have the face of a man with severe constipation.)

Some Thoughts on Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2010-01-21T22:18:00.001-05:00

So I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer this week because some wonderful human being gave me Season 3 for my birthday. (Thank you Chris.) And I realized something.

Angel is a total dick.

OK so let's ignore the whole he went psycho after he had sex with Buffy and killed some of her friends. That was the gypsy curse, so I'll give him a pass. However, after Buffy sends him to a demon dimension, he comes BACK and she accepts him. So then what happens? He fucking dumps her right before the Prom. Dude he's over 250 years old, he couldn't have waited a week to dump her? It's not like he didn't know how important it was to her. If he really loved her, he would gone with her to the Prom and THEN dumped her. But no, he dumps her, then shows up at the Prom, but it's only for the night. So it's like ripping off a bandaid only to cut a bit deeper and then squeeze lemon juice on it. THEN after being a dick about the Prom, Buffy almost dies saving his life. How does he repay her? BY TELLING HER HE'S NOT GOING TO SAY GOODBYE. BIGGEST IMMORTAL DOUCHEBAG EVER.

And what about that episode of Angel where he gets his curse lifted, and can thus be with Buffy, but it takes him away from his Hero Boy of the Night work, and since the People of the Night need their hero boy, he decides to go back to being a vampire? Again, Buffy, who was willing to do ANYTHING to be with Angel, gets the furry end of the lollipop from Angel. (Hence my liking Spike more than Angel as a bf for the Buffster-even though the Buffybot thing IS a little creepy.) At least in that case only he will be tortured with the memory of what he COULD HAVE HAD but Buffy, blissfully, will be spared of knowing that they could have had a perfectly normal relationship EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT ANGEL IS A FUCKING DONKEY DICK but he's a hot brooding donkey dick. So in that case I think it worked out well, but it wasn't of Angel's doing-it was just how things happened.

And don't get me started about him loving Cordelia. SO WRONG MY BRAIN ALMOST EXPLODED.

The Worst Dating Story I've Ever Heard

2010-01-17T20:58:00.002-05:00

Confession Time

2010-01-04T20:46:00.002-05:00

I know I haven't been writing much this year. Somehow near the end of 2008, I began to lose my writing mojo. It was the first time I was actively writing SOMETHING on a daily basis. This seemed to coincide with the onset of a relationship that has now ended. I was hoping my desire to write would come back, and in a mild way it has, but I have to admit that only 2 weeks ago I was thinking of officially closing down this blog for good. I thought maybe Bunniblog had run its course, and if I decided to blog again, I needed to re-envision the site and my goals. As it was Bunniblog has gone through many incarnations, originally intended just to be a way to help my friends keep up with what was going on without having to send out a thousand emails, it later became a place for me to showcase a range of different types of writing (film reviews, personal essay, literary analysis). It also allowed me to write about my frustrations with dating-from dating websites just plain old bad dates. I thought maybe why I wasn't posting on Bunniblog anymore might have to do with an identity crisis, and new blog with a clearer goal would be the best way to carry on.

And then came the most soul crushing ending to the year ever. 10 years ago when my life fell apart, one of the ways I rationalized pushing on was to think "Listen if this is worst, it can only get better, right?" Yes, a person who survived cancer and an insane father only to be dumped by her fiance two weeks after September 11th should know better than to tempt the Fates like, because just when you think you can go any lower, someone hands you a shovel. Quite simply, this year seemed hell bent on teaching me just how much worse things can get-and now I'm not 26, I'm 35. 35 and unmarried and cynical and depressed. And a lot of the not writing anymore comes from the loss of a belief I held for so very long. The belief that not only did I have something worthy to say, but that people wanted to hear it. But I lost my confidence slowly that my writing had any kind of merit, and then sank into even more despair believing even if it DID, no one wanted to read it. And then this belief spilled into my inability to connect with people.

Talking to people has always been something I excelled at. My father considered it quite a gift that I could converse enjoyably with just about anyone. As I've gotten older, this ability has faded more and more. Now I find myself contributing to conversations that seem to awkwardly stop. Thus my feelings of absolute isolation, of being so unintelligible that I'm no longer even a real person prevail.

It is for this reason I think the novel Frankenstein has such a strong resonance for me-a Creature (as he is most consistently referred to as such and never given a name by his creator Victor) is rejected by all, even his creator. They do not acknowledge any shared humanity with this "thing" even though he shows not just physical, but intellectual and ethical superiority. (If you read the book, the Creature learns languages quickly and repeated helps and saves others who respond only with the violence.) In the end, after giving up all hope of finding even one person to be his friend, he drives his creator to die and walks into the snow. (There are two different versions. One ending is more ambiguous about whether or not the Creature dies. After all, since he made of reanimated tissue and is so physically superior to human beings, there is a question about whether he CAN die and if so, how that act could be brought about. The movie Subject Two actually a really compelling modern version of the story.)

It's difficult when these moments occur to know if it's the depression speaking or the rational mind. Perhaps there isn't much of a difference.

At the moment, I'm at a crisis point. Something drastic must change because I simply can't do this for another 10 years. I'm going to start by trying to write more regularly and pulling up old work in order to get published. I also have to write on my literary essays as I can't put grad school off another year even if my GRE scores are eating with the dirigibles. Of course, I've been saying this for years so I have to find a way to make myself actually do it.

The problem is I don't like the person I have become. I've become bitter. I've always been a passionate person and that translates often into anger, but I've not been bitter. Now, I fear I'm only a few crows feet away from being a caricature of woman in a bar with a martini cursing at all these happy couples. I don't want to become this. What I want is to become confident again in my writing, I want to feel connected with people again instead of feeling like a constant outsider-the Creature sitting unseen watching the happy peasants and longing to be with them and knowing this is not at all possible.

So I will be posting my latest travelogue here. Hopefully you will read it and like it and comment on it because honestly I could use all the emotional support I can dig up and find.

Marv, Movies, and Mortification

2009-12-08T16:08:00.002-05:00

Ah we all know what's like to have an uncomfortable movie moment. You know, one of those instances when the seemingly innocuous act of seeing a movie turns into a clusterfuck of humiliation. This is one of those stories, courtesy of my father.

Place Holder for a Holiday Season than is Anything But Merry

2009-12-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

So as not to ruin anyone else's holiday, I'll just post this. Perhaps when it's all over I'll explain what's going on but for now, enjoy the bunny.

Marv and the Dead Mice

2009-11-28T22:52:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving 2009 Timelapse

2009-11-28T22:17:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving 2009 Timelapse
Originally uploaded by bobtiki

Trying to Stay Positive

2009-11-19T17:02:00.002-05:00

I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to sleep now and wake up at 1 am so I can do work including plan a class. Seriously. Well, maybe I'll stay awake until 6. I know I'm racy.

I've replaced, after a year, the blogathon panel on the top left with a widget to contribute to a friend's surrogacy fund. I'll be adding her blog to the sidebar tomorrow, so you can all (all 2 of you) stampede over her to blog and ravish her with praise and cash at any time. For now, if you would like to know more, head to her blog. Unfortunately, I'm too tired to say more than that so I'll let her speak, eloquently, for herself.

Bedward, ho!

Candy Corn Infused Vodka

2009-10-30T13:44:00.002-04:00

For those of you wondering how to make candy corn infused vodka, the recipe is simple.

1 1/2 cups vodka
1/2 candy corn

Place the candy corn and vodka in an air tight container and leave for 3 hours. After 3 hours, strain the vodka. Viola!

To serve, I recommend that you mix the vodka with a bit of OJ and a squeeze of lemon juice, shake with ice, and serve in a martini glass with a gummy tarantula or worm as garnish.

Costume Sneak Peak

2009-10-25T20:48:00.002-04:00

My Grandmother Tells a Story About a Naked Gardener

2009-10-23T10:32:00.003-04:00

So I was reading this Metafilter post about a man who was arrested for being naked in his own kitchen Apparently details are still forthcoming, but regardless it shocked me that it COULD be considered illegal to be naked in one's own home. I mean even if the guy IS a flasher, he was in his own freakin' house!

Being raised in a "medical" family (ie both parents worked in medicine as do several members of my extended family) nudity was not considered, in and of itself, sexual. I didn't understand nudity as being funny (why did anyone care?) nor do I see it as something threatening. Not that I was going to go to school naked, but certainly it was OK to be naked in a private setting. So much so that when I was very young, I often went skinny dipping in our pool as did my mother. (I know, that Mere Lapin is a racy one!) Now my house was in the middle of the forest and the only side of the house that faced the street was protected by a very high fence. Thus no one could casually spy me swimming regardless of whether I was clothed or naked.

I've continued to have a rather casual attitude towards nudity-more European than American I suppose. I do lounge in my apartment naked (not as much now that there are workmen outside my window ALL THE TIME), and it is how I prefer to sleep in the summer. I'm not trying to let you in on more than you need to know, but I think I should be OK doing that. And if someone DOES spy me naked accidentally, they should just avert their eyes and move along not call the freakin' cops even if there is a 7 year old kid in tow. It's just not something to freak out about.

If you are one of those people, DO NOT GO TO A BEACH IN EUROPE. It's rather common to see even 7 year old children stark naked, casually playing in the water. My Parisian boyfriend made fun of Americans as Puritans, and in this respect he is right. I was perfectly comfortable hanging out with topless matrons and naked kids because, again, I don't think of nudity as shameful or inherently sexual.

But all of this is aside from the point, I wanted to share with you a story my grandmother told me, which illustrates how much our attitudes have changed. Not just towards nudity but towards out neighbors, particularly when children are involved. (This whole "think of the children" cult is plain old ridiculous. I'm not going to get into it in detail, but just seeing someone naked? Not that scarring for a kid especially if the parent talks to the child about it instead of creating a media frenzy. But I digress.)

In the early 70s, a psychiatrist and his wife moved into the neighborhood where my grandmother lived. Apparently, the psychiatrist liked gardening in the nude. So every day, he would go out there naked. Now my grandmother could care less, but she was amused by let's call it the theater of neighborhood drama. The neighbors would call the cops, who would arrive, and tell him to put on clothes. He would argue for a bit and then do so. Well this played itself out every day for almost two weeks. Finally, the cops said, "Listen, we can't show up here EVERYDAY. You need to wear clothes when you garden or when you're outside your home or we'll be forced to arrest you."

The next day the psychiatrist was gardening clothed. So a week goes by, and the neighborhood finally begins to believe the reign of the naked gardener is over. They become convinced when he and his lovely wife decided to have a cocktail party to make amends for the dispute and get to know people. Imagine the horror one their faces when he opened the door to greet all of his guests in the nude!

The point was since he was IN the house, this was perfectly fine, and my grandmother thought it was AWESOMELY entertaining, which I think is the right attitude to have. If it was me, I would have laughed and said "OK where's the wine and cheese?" After that, the neighborhood arrived at a comfortable truce-inside the house he and his wife could frolic in the nude, while outside he would dress. Essentially, everybody wins.

Except now in which heaven forfend a 7 year old gaze upon a naked human being. Sheesh.

Being a Woman is NOT a "Pre-existing Condition"!

2009-10-22T10:39:00.001-04:00

or, Create a Petition

Losing My Religion

2009-10-14T22:05:00.002-04:00

Aubade

2009-10-09T23:19:00.002-04:00

My Tribute to Gourmet: Risotto with Radishes

2009-10-09T16:58:00.007-04:00

The truth is I never thought I liked risotto. My mother always ordered it, and I tasted once or twice and hated it. Now I have a thing about textures-mushy or mushy with grains in it, I don't like it. (Yet somehow I love yogurt with grape nuts. I'm just weird that way I guess.) But then a few weeks ago my mother and I were in an Italian restaurant and she ordered risotto. And it came with carrots. My mother hates carrots, and carrots weren't listed in the description of the dish, but there they were. And I LOVE carrots, so in the name of carrots I tried a bite and I realized that I do like risotto if it's al dente. Whenever I discover something I new I like (for example artichokes 2 years ago) I can almost hear "A Whole New World" playing in the background, which is odd because I've never watched Aladdin. Suddenly a whole new venue of recipes and dishes, I can see them in my head laid out on a long table with a white cloth, which makes me excited to immediately get into the kitchen and begin playing around because I've already wasted too much time thinking I didn't like this wonderful thing. Thus my risotto revelation resulted in my desire to begin making it, and just my luck the most recent issue of Gourmet included a risotto with radishes dish. I had some leftover radishes, and it seemed that Destiny was trying to tell me "It's time you make risotto."

And then I found out Gourmet was folding.

I'm going to digress for a moment about Gourmet. When I was little, I remember my mother getting Gourmet and leafing through the pages. This was back when my mother cooked, and we had family dinners every night. I knew that Gourmet was important to my mother, which is why I recall the following incident so clearly. My mother had angered me. I don't remember why, but I was mad. And being me, I decided to seek revenge, so I tore up the front page of the latest Gourmet. My mother hadn't even looked at it yet. It had a bunch of purple wet grapes on the front, I think. (It could just as easily have been blueberries.)

But my revenge was calculated. By tearing up the front page, I knew it was bad and I was interfering with her enjoyment of the magazine. However, I also understood there was just an ad on the other side of the page. I wasn't destroying anything with real content. So my revenge was calculated to be hurtful, but even I wouldn't destroy the precious contents, which were the real value of the magazine.

This is how far back my memory of Gourmet goes. In high school, when my mother had long stopped cooking and dedicated her entire caloric intake to rice cakes with peanut butter, I began to cook. Instead of showing me how to make things, she would simply tell me where to find the recipe in the recipe books. And this is how I began to teach myself to cook. I couldn't sleep at night in CT and so often I would begin making elaborate dishes at 11 only to finish cooking around 1 or 2. I would make steak au poivre, potatoes dauphinoise, or minestrone in the middle of the night. I would leave the leftovers in the refrigerator and put a note on the table so my mother would know that should she wish to eat actual food it was available.

Thus my mother got me a subscription to Gourmet, which I enjoyed throughout high school. In college, I didn't have a kitchen, but while in graduate school I discovered Epicurious. Glory be! I didn't need Gourmet anymore to get recipes from Gourmet! Until a few months ago when Gourmet sent me an offer I couldn't refuse and even though I like Epicurious there is something about getting Gourmet. Maybe it's that I remember watching my mother read it as a child. Maybe it's all the dishes I learned how to make when I was in high school. Or maybe it's just that it's one of the last great magazines. But when I found this out, in the wake of 2 of my favorite restaurants closing (We Liang Ye, which was written up by Gourmet, and Payard) I thought "This is truly the end of American Culinary culture." (I know, I know. I'm a drama queen.)

This is not to say that Gourmet didn't have bad moments or contribute to hours of my time lost to make some dish that was only so-so. I remember one dish in particular-a white bean dip that they claimed could be made in a food processor OR blender. NOT TRUE. Only Cthulhu could make this stuff in the blender and not lose his mind, but I wouldn't give up. Unfortunately, the result did not nearly warrant the hour and half of sweating, cursing, swearing, and improvising so I could serve it to my then boyfriend and my mother who were decorating the Christmas tree.

Or even more entertainingly, in the back of issue there was a list of specialty cocktails including a long island iced tea. For some reason, despite the fact that ALL the other recipes had the serving size listed under the title and before the ingredients list, this recipe had the serving size at the end. Thus everytime I would mix a long island iced tea, it wasn't until I got to the bottom of the recipe I would see "Serves 2" and realize I had to drink a double all on my own. Somehow, I never remembered this and made the mistake over and over. Still, I'm filled with nostalgia for even the more trying moments I had with Gourmet, and so I wouldn't give them up. It makes it easier for me not to give them up that most of the time I would make a recipe, realize I screwed up after the fact, and still get something delicious out of it as well as a lesson learned.

As such, I felt morally bound to make a tribute to my love of Gourmet while it still was around. And so exhausted on a Friday, I set to work in my postage stamp of a kitchen making risotto for the very first time. And let me just tell you not only was the dish MADE OF AWESOME, I even managed to make it look pretty, which I NEVER PULL OFF. So it seemed like a fitting tribute to one of my favorite periodicals ever.

If you do make this, a note. The radish salad and risotto work well on their own if you're as nervous about putting radish salad on top of the risotto as I was. You can try them separately and then try a bit together just to be sure that they work. Also I used regular chicken soup because, well, I had it and I didn't want to run out to the store again. Long story short, you can use regular chicken broth and just omit the salt later. Seriously, it'll be fine.

So in closing, thank you Gourmet for all the the articles, the food porn, the tips, the hours spent in frustrating contemplation of "how the hell did they pull this off in 35 minutes in the test kitchen?", the fantasies about owning a kitchen large enough to include some of the fabulous equipment you showcased, the recipes clipped with the best intentions of being made that week but somehow patiently waited for years before they were attempted, the "Eureka" moments when I tried a new dish that on paper seemed questionable, but on the palate were a revelation, the "crack bar" recipe (chocolate and caramel covered graham crackers) that is the hit of every party, and, most importantly, the accidental double long island iced teas. I'll never forget you...mainly because I still have a backlog of about 400 recipes to make from old issues. So you'll still be a part of my life, which is good. It's very very good.

Bed Bugs Help Me Teach How NOT to Deal With a PR Scandal

2009-09-29T16:56:00.004-04:00

Over the last few years there has been an increase in bed bugs in NYC. So far this fall not one BUT TWO colleges-John Jay and now Manhattan College- have serious bed bug problems. So now as a NYC college prof I risk getting bitten by bed bugs and potentially bringing them back to my apartment all of this in the name of trying to get my students to read a 6 page article, which they didn't do. They couldn't even bother to feign interest in it. And this wasn't 6 pages of the Lacanian literary analysis, this was 6 pages of this is how to handle a PR scandal.

What's fun is MC is handling it the wrong way, which illustrated my point to the class exactly. While they did send out an email to students, they didn't inform students about 1. what to do if they suspect they have bed bugs 2 how to prevent a bed bug infestation. Considering what I teach-the first thing I would do (after dealing with getting students into "clean" housing) would be to clarify these issues. As it was, I spent a large portion of the class discussing ways students can prevent an infestation. (I happen to know because my apartment had bed bugs when I first moved in.) With a lack of disclosure and useful information, it's not surprising that some students say "They also say that neither the building manager nor college officials are handling the situation correctly."

I would agree.

The school sends out daily emails about H1N1, but doesn't do the same for bed bugs? Not only should students receive an email but ALL STAFF-the kitchen staff, guards, receptionists,-should receive an email clearly explaining what is going ("The infestation is confined to one building off campus") and how they are coping with it ("We have moved those students to another dorm on campus while we make alternative housing arrangements"). Furthermore, they should include directives to help prevent a bed bug infestation (a special mattress cover can help reduce the likelihood of infestation as can vacuuming every three days).

Finally, because of the way the school is handling information (or not handling it) students aren't finding out from administration, they are finding out from word of mouth. Not only does this fail to instill faith that administration knows how to cope with such a situation, it also increases the potential for misinformation to be repeated as truth. We know from the game "Telephone" that even a well intentioned repetition of what one THINKS one hears can result in a horrible distortion of the original phrase. Now imagine that same game in a highly emotionally charged atmosphere and with the players who have their own agendas-emphasizing or inventing details to make the story more dramatic. Essentially by not offering clear information, the school is fostering an atmosphere where damaging "untruths" will proliferate.

And now I'm going to vacuum everything in my apartment (sigh).