Spanish (Back on that topic AGAIN?! Yes)

Oh, I do have something to mention. I got a note in the mail the other day saying the Spanish class I was going to take was canceled. I assume not enough people signed up. This leaves me with the following options: Sit out the semester (bad) or take 202 with that teacher I hated (worse). If I had more time before the semester started I could have switched to a different school. Now I'm not sure what to do.

Also, randomly today, my air-conditioner switched from Fahrenheit to Centigrade. I have no idea how to switch it back. I've suddenly become fluent in the rest of the world's temperature measurements. Next stop, the metric system.

A brief tour of lower New York

Having nothing to blog about, nothing to do, and wanting to at all costs avoid writing on my novel (I suck at that. I really do need to take a class. I have no motivation at all), I've decided to post some pics Melinda took when she was up here earlier this month. A short tour of lower Manhattan:

After getting waylaid on the subway system, which randomly decided to bypass stops we needed heading in one direction (while the same train stopped in the opposite) we finally started our day with lunch in Chinatown.

Next we had gelato in Little Italy.

Then we walked down to City Hall and saw the Brooklyn Bridge. We did not walk to Brooklyn, however.

Then we rode the Staten Island ferry over and back. It passes by the Statue of Liberty and gives you a nice view. Plus the ferry ride is free. However, it was a high ozone day the day we went and everything was hazy. Typical. I don't have photos of the rest of our day, but the next day we spent some time at The Strand, which is a bookstore I love and yet I can't recall ever actually purchasing anything from there. Isn't that weird?

Eight miles of books and I can't find anything I want to buy. That has to be weird, right? I think it's because I'm not good with a lot of choices. It's the same reason department stores give me headaches and why I rarely buy anything when I'm at one.

My kindom for a Kinkos

Yesterday I sent in the worst package for a job opening ever. Not only did my letter suck and the resume was all weird due to the new Word having different proportions than the old Word that my document began its life on, but the quality of the photocopy reproduction of my clips hit an all new low.

And so we come to today's topic: how can this be considered part of the NYC MSA when there isn't a FedEx Kinkos in the ENTIRE county?! I had to go to Staples, which has a self-service copy center and let me tell you, FedEx Kinkos it is not. (I can't go to copy shops because they won't copy newspaper clippings because of copyright and they don't care if you are the author. And the copying machines at libraries and post offici are not made for this level of reproduction.) The toner was bad, the scissors wouldn't cut, they didn't have one of those medieval-looking devices that allow you to cut a straight edge smoothly. If sucked. It SUCKED. It sucked so much, I had to write a Post It apologizing for the quality to the editor I was sending it to.

I know the chain gets a bad rap and usually for good reason. But I think when it comes to copying, you got have Kinkos. Really. I mean 24 hours and coffee to boot? Come on.

The Candidate. Check.

Not that you all have been waiting on the edge of your seat, but as it turns out I did watch "The Candidate" today and indeed, as the blurb on the box says, it is still as relevant today as it ever was — sadly.

Watch as an idealist gets corrupted by the political machine. Did people make comparisons to Clinton? I can't remember. It seeks like if they didn't, they should have.

Now that I've depressed myself, I think I need to read more chapters in "Carter Beats the Devil" before I can get to bed. What better for cheering up than a novel about a magician. More on that when I finish the book — probably sometime next year.

The Polysyla...Polysylvai...The Po...Oh, screw it! The book I read.

So I was hoping to get "The Candidate" in this weekend, but I haven't yet gotten to it. Don't worry there's still time for me to do so before my work week starts. I've been procrastinating writing a cover letter for my resume to send to Newsday. I hate writing cover letters. I got this really pricey graduate degree in journalism and what they should have taught me — instead of classes on literary journalism and foreign affairs reporting, neither of which I'm likely to use — is how to write a damn cover letter that can get me an interview/job.

I did however finish "The Polysyllabic Spree", which (and Melinda will vouch for this) is completely impossible for me to pronounce. I have no idea why. The book itself is right now on its way to Melinda. Anyway, it was a strange experience for me because Nick Hornby is intimidating with the amount of stuff he can read in a month. Plus he's writing a book while he's doing AND freelancing book reviews for other publications, like The Times of London, AND he's a father of three. How the hell does he have time to do it at all? I'm lucky if I can pick my pants up off the floor during the course of a week and wash the coffee pot before I make a new batch of joe in the morning.

Also intimidating is the fact that of all the books he's read I only read one: "Mystic River." This is somewhat embarrassing because of the set up to his review, which is basically saying it's an excellent book but very plebeian and why oh why doesn't he have any friends common enough to recommend such books to him. Also, he loves Dickens and goes on and on about "Great Expectations," which he read during the course of this series of columns that's in the book. It's the last Dickens he hadn't read. I, on the other hand, have always WANTED to like Dickens. I love the movies they make from Dickens. I loved...LOVED..."Bleak House" that the BBC did with Gillian Anderson. I, however, have never ever read more than a single of page of Dickens. I've tried. Several times. I struggle through the first page and then I say, "Screw this." And go read a People magazine or something.

Finally, it's a little odd to reading about someone reading. Like, instead I should be reading all these books he's reading instead of reading about him reading them?

Despite all this, the book is strangely engrossing. I was fascinated to read his blurbs on books that I know I will never read. (With one exception. In the same two-week span that I bought "The Polysyllabic Spree," I also bought, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," which he reviews but doesn't seem to care for very much.) I actually couldn't wait to get home and read a couple more of his essays before bed. It helped to have his company on my largely insomnia-ridden week. And if nothing else, you should read this book, simply because you can finish it in a day or two and that will help up the ante in your "Books Read" column — which in my life is always far, far behind "Books Bought."

Addendum: In case you missed it in the comments section of my last review, Deadman had this to say about TPS:

"I'm glad they put out the Polysyllabic Spree editions. I love Nick Hornby on music, but can't bring myself to spend $8 on the Believer for it alone. (P.S. Hornby's last book "Long Way Down" is really fun and a high point for him)."

Please let this be a neighbor update

Listen, I by no means want to jinx this, but I think — I THINK — judging by what I've overheard, that the creepy, downstairs neighbor might just have a...girlfriend!

Oh, is it too much to pray for. Man, I hope it's true. Please. PLEASE, let it be true.

Please.

Do you come here often?

Up until now, the record holder for "Worst Pickup Line Ever Used on Me" was a guy in the Library in Baton Rouge (a bar, for those of you who are too young to remember or were never there to begin with), who said to me one night, "You have great hands. You must be a writer."

But great hands man has meet a very strong challenger in yelling from a van man whom I had the pleasure(?) of meeting(?) Thursday night as I was driving home from work on my Vespa.

We're stopped at a stop light on a winding two-lane route that connects the southwestern part of my county to the central north-south artery, Route 9. I'm at the light. The van behind me. When I hear: "Hey! Do you pick up hitchhikers?"

I turn around and hanging out the passenger side window of this old, white van (from the waist up is out the window) is a a 20- 30-ish something guy who looks like maybe he likes going on tour with Widespread Panic. I am used to getting a lot of chatter on my Vespa. People run across parking lots to ask me what kind of gas mileage I get. How fast it goes. How much did it cost. I get stranger questions and comments and even chat up lines as well. But I think so far this is the most bizarre incident to date.

I simply said, "No. No spare helmet." To which the van man replied, "Oh. Too bad then."

And then thankfully the light changed.

Mini Reviews

This past weekend I watched "Casablanca" at long last. I know, I know. I pretend to love movies and yet I own a copy of "The Divorce" but have never seen "Casablanca." It's embarrassing. But I have now fixed at least this one little thing. I liked it...of course I liked it. You're almost required to if you plan to go on living. So I won't bother to give you my review, only my favorite line.

Perhaps I just liked it because it wasn't one of the famous ones from the movie, but something about it made me laugh. I think it was the flippancy of it. Anyway, it's near the beginning when Renault says to Rick he has often speculated on why he doesn't return to America and there is a list of potential reasons he rattles off and then he says: "I like to think you killed a man. It's the romantic in me."

Funny.

I also, after much time, finished reading "Down and Dirty Pictures", which is about the rise and Hollywood-ization of the modern independent film industry, focusing primarily on Miramax and Sundance. It was as thorough as it could be, I suppose. At times it was a little text booky and hard to get through. Something the author went off on tangents within a story that made no sense. Other topics seem to go nowhere. And it was definitely a chapter too long. Though it also needs to be updated since Miramax isn't really Miramax any more. Their contract with Disney was up in 2005 and I'd like to know how that played out because Bob and Harvey now run the Weinstein Companies. [In case you're really interested this is what Wikipedia says, though that is only so trustworthy: The Weinstein Company is an independent American film studio founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein in 2005 after the pair left the Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979. The Dimension Films label of Miramax followed the brothers to their new company.]

Also there was a part near the end that I lived through and I don't remember Harvey being so involved in the battle for "Confederacy of Dunces" with Paramount, or involved at all. So then that made me question the accuracy of the rest of the book that I just read, which was really disappointing since I'd spend months trying to get through that thing. So in the end I'd say, if you really LOVE film, read it. If not, pass.

Next up: on DVD "The Candidate" (another classic I haven't seen) and on the written page "The Polysyllabic Spree" (which will then be on its way to you, Melinda).

Bucky's Turn is a-go...sort of

So I turned in my sample columns on the following topics/former blog entries:
1. Little Baby Superstar
2. Not My Space
3. Searching for the Bloody Veil
4. Gross stuff I see from my Vespa - not a previous blog topic, actually, but a whole new piece just for the column.

I also suggested for future columns the following topics:
1. Mother of the Koumbara (from last year's wedding that I was in)
2. Being stalked by my neighbor (not sure if I'll actually do that one)
3. Who is Al Sharpton? - a sad, but witty tale from my brother's and cousin's visit over New Year's, which speaks to the complete lack of knowledge the average 20- and 30-something has about what's going on in the world.

I got back this note from the editor today:

You rock!
These are very good columns and I like your ideas for future columns.
They're very witty and you've already developed a "voice."
Stayed tuned .....


P.S. I swear I saw your mom in that movie!!!

Help for the Broken Hearted. Also Known As: Give a sista a hand!

Due to the very dark period I'm going through right now, I am putting out a request for your best/favorite Broken Heart songs. Please post the titles here (also feel free to send me the MP3s via e-mail). I am working on a Compilation for the Broken Hearted. [Deadman, this is in addition to the Dead Inside Mix, which you sent me. I am still striving for Dead Inside status. Right now I am still at DEFCON: Weak and weepy girl.]

Once completed the album will stand ready for anyone once they find their hearts, inexplicably, shattered by someone they really shouldn't have liked all that much to begin with.

My album thus far —it's not refined I just dumped a lot of Ani DiFranco in there and I'm looking to diversify:

Untouchable Face (Ani DiFranco)
Metal Heart (Cat Power)
Wrecking Ball (Crooked Fingers)
Done Wrong (Ani DiFranco)
Out Of Reach (Gabrielle)
Sorry I Am (Ani DiFranco)
Asking Too Much (Ani DiFranco)
Tailspin (The Jayhawks)
Save It For A Rainy Day (The Jayhawks)
Easier Done Than Said (Kim Richardson)
How Do You Tell Someone? (Cowboy Mouth) {sorry. it had to be done}
Loopy Loopy Love (The Brunettes)
Sorry (Madonna)
One Of These Things First (Nick Drake)
Dónde Estás Corazón (Shakira)
Superhero (Ani DiFranco)
Sleep To Dream (Fionna Apple)

...And in other shocking news: the sky, blue

From our friends at The New York Times...

Young Adults Are Giving Newspapers Scant Notice

By JUSTON JONES
With the United States military fighting a protracted war in Iraq and a wide-open presidential campaign already making headlines daily, Americans of all ages are interested in current affairs and are consuming news like never before, right?

Not so, especially not teenagers and young adults, according to a report released last week by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

In fact, most teenagers and adults 30 and younger are not following the news closely at all, the report, titled “Young People and News,” concluded. It is based on a national sample of 1,800 Americans that included teenagers, young adults aged 18 to 30 and older adults.

Thomas Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard who conducted the survey, said that young people today do not make an appointment with news every day the way older adults do.

“We found that most young adults don’t have an ingrained news habit,” he said. “Most children today, when watching television, are not watching the same TV set that their parents are watching. So even if their parents are watching the news every day, the children are likely to be in another room watching something else and aren’t acquiring the news habit.”

The survey went a step further to see what the respondents meant when they said that they did pay attention to the news. Those results, especially among the younger groups, were equally discouraging for the news industry, said Alex S. Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center.

“What we found is that what people mean when they say they are engaged in the news has much more of a glancing, superficial basis than anything we would have hoped,” he said. “Young people seemed to think that just listening to the radio in the background was listening to the news.”

The results were especially grim for newspapers. Only 16 percent of the young adults surveyed aged 18 to 30 said that they read a newspaper every day and 9 percent of teenagers said that they did. That compared with 35 percent of adults over 30. Furthermore, despite the popular belief that young people are flocking to the Internet, the survey found that teenagers and young adults were twice as likely to get daily news from television than from the Web.

Despite this, some in the industry say the situation is not hopeless.

Jane Hirt, the editor of RedEye, a free daily newspaper that is published by The Chicago Tribune specifically for young, urban professionals, said that her publication had succeeded and had even expanded its audience by adopting some of the lessons learned from television and the Internet and by experimenting with ways to tell stories.

“We may have a short face-off with two sides of an issue,” she said. “We believe it is a way of delivering content in a form like younger people are used to getting on the Internet.”

She said that she reminds her editors that their younger readers are used to customizing their lives. “They pick and choose what they want on their iPods, what to TiVo and watch whenever they want, and so forth,” she said. “Therefore, because we are targeting that niche audience, we make story selections to really connect with them, and we can do that because we are thinking about them all day.”

Still, her publication and newspapers in general may be facing an uphill battle.

“My sense is that newspapers in their traditional form are not going to be able to recapture this audience,” said Professor Patterson. “What’s happened over time is that we have become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation, and the Internet is a little of both. My sense is that, like it or not, the future of news is going to be in the electronic media, but we don’t really know what that form is going to look like.”

Amelie

Did I mention that someone has foolishly asked me to be godmother to her child?

My friend Sarah, who lives in the UK and with whom I started a long-lasting friendship based solely on nail polish and the fact that we were two women in an otherwise all-male film class, just had a baby at the end of April...I think. See I'm already a bad godmother. I can't even remember her birthday. Not content to screw up the child herself, she has asked me along for the ride. Luckily she has two other godparents, who perhaps will lend some normality to her life.

I was fascinated to find out that in English tradition you have three godparents for your child. I'm not totally sure why. You have one of each sex and then a third based on the sex of your child. So little Amelie has a godfather and two godmothers. If she had been born, say Alan, instead, it would be a godmother and two godfathers.

As I am now out of my prime child bearing years without any prospect of acquiring a mate anytime soon, this will probably be the closest I come to children. I wonder what kind of godmother I will make? I wonder what it will be like for her to have a godparent in a different country? I wonder what one wears to a christening....Oh, I have so much to learn.

Little baby superstar

One of my neighbors babysits a little girl named Shelby. Shelby came over today as I was brushing Roland to talk about pets and to pet the pup. After we exhausted all possible pet conversation that a 5 year-old (I'm guessing, I don't know her actual age) and a 31-year-old can have — including her observation to me that, "Sometimes cats and dogs make out" (How does a 5-year-old know about making out?), she said to me: "Do you have any kids?"

"No. Just a dog and a cat."

"That's all?! Do you have a husband?"

"No."

"Not even a boyfriend?!" She said this with such shock, it caught me off guard. This 5 year-old couldn't understand a world in which a person didn't have a boyfriend. The idea was so foreign to her. Meanwhile when I was 5, I didn't know what a boyfriend was.

So I said, "Yes. I have a boyfriend."

"Oh," she said relieved. "Which one is his car?" she immediately asked, looking out over the parking lot.

"He doesn't live here," I said.

"He doesn't?!" Again, shock from her. Like, how can you have a boyfriend if he doesn't live with you, is what she was really saying to me.

"He's at work right now," I say.

Suddenly I realize I'm justifying my life to a 5 year-old girl who has previously told me that when she grows up what she wants to be is a "superstar." (It was so matter of fact, too. I said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Expecting nurse, teacher, hair stylists, lawyer...any of these things. Instead, without hesitating, she said, "Superstar." The most normal answer in the world.)

That's when I decided I should take my decidedly un-superstar self back inside. I may be a single, 31 year old newspaper editor, but at least I have all my teeth.

A call for the Best of Bucky

One of the feature's editors asked me if I'd be interested in writing a column today. It runs at the bottom of the life page and rotates through a few staffers and is about anything. It's not political nature. It's about life, or the lives of those who write it. Of the four or five people she had writing it, only two are still around. I think I'd like it. But I have to turn in some sample columns first.

I just finished a draft of one on my search for my mother's movie. It's very serious in its tone and I am mostly known around the office for my wit. So I'd like the other two sample columns to be funny. I think I can just recycle and expand some of my blog topics. Any suggestions on which ones would be best? I'd like to do my downstairs neighbor woes, but my name and photo would run with column, so I don't know if I'm that mean. It's one thing to blog to you guys about him...then again he doesn't get the paper, so he'd probably never know. I think eventually I'll do one on my misadventures in dating a government agent, but to start out with I think some more inane or innocuous topics might be better. So suggestions?

(Not So) Quickie Movie Review

Due to some personal drama - and the purchase of several new books, thus even further backlogging my reading - I have fallen behind on my movie watching. I did recently see "Children of Men" however and was blown away by how much I liked it. I think Clive Owen does not get the respect he deserves as an actor. He is incredible in this movie. His character development from bored, alcoholic government worker to martyr for mankind is totally believable.

The plot outline, courtesy of IMDB is as follows: In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

The film itself covers a lot of ground in the history of this future world the characters inhabit and the history of these characters, but it does so quickly and I can't really come up with any holes in the plot.

The film also features some great performances from the indomitable Michael Caine and Chiwetel Ejiofor - who gave a jaw dropping performance in "Dirty Pretty Things", which I only watched because Audrey Tautou was in it but then he blew her away; though most people probably know him better from "Love, Actually" or "Melinda and Melinda" or, at least with this group, "Serenity". Julianne Moore is also in this and she is fine. I've never been a huge fan. Also newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey as the pregnant woman Kee is pretty good.

I think I'm going to read this book. That's how much I liked the movie. This means my movie watching will be pushed back even more.

BTW: Cheri, if you haven't seen this film, THIS IS the film for your class. Under special features they even all these philosophers (whom you probably know, though, of course, I've never heard of) talking about the nature of humanity.

Nothing says Fourth of July like...

...a two year old, a second story walk-up and Queens.

I spent the afternoon/evening at a friend's house, which is right across the bay from Manhattan. Every year people pack the park across from her house to see the Macy's fireworks show from across the water. The crowd was thinner this year due to rain, as were the fireworks. All and all we agreed, a let down.

In addition to my friend and her boyfriend, the boyfriend's mother and his two-year-old nephew that lives with his mother were there. The baby was cute, but exhausting. The baby also cared more for puddles than fireworks and went crazy - and I mean crazy - when Sponge Bob Square Pants came on the television. I have never witnessed anything quite like it.

I tried to take some lame-o pics with my camera phone of the fireworks (to match the lame shots from New Years) but they're not even worth trying to post.

Are you kidding me?!

I have to say, this is EXACTLY what I thought when I read that Scooter Libby had his sentenced commuted.

Finally, broken beyond repair

This is my Google horiscope for today:

"Doing the same old thing in the same old way isn't working for you now and it's crucial for you to break out of any patterns that have served their purpose. Part of your problem, however, is in the difficulty you have distinguishing what you call a groove from a rut. Don't let your attachment to the past keep you needlessly attached to it for too long."

Oh Google, how do you know my life better than I know it myself.

Not My Space

Things I've learned from My Space: apparently all the single guys around here are losers.

Let us take the two most recent requests I've gotten. The first is Mike who is 30 and from East Fishkill. His photo is of his abs, which apparently he is very proud of. Mike's quote is: "Looking for good looking fun girls." His message to me was:

"How are you? I saw your profile and I really like what I see. I would like to get to know you better. Check out my profile and let me know if you're interested. I do have more face pics I can send you." He also included his e-mail and Yahoo/AIM screen names.

The second request is from John, who is cute, I will say, but he is also in the Army National Guard and he doesn't like to read. He's 28 and from Brewster. In his "about me" section he closes with: "i would like to meet some hot kool girl to chill with, so hit me up!"

But the best part is his message to me, which says: "hey i think your hot would like to talk to you : ) " — Does that WORK for guys? I mean what part of me says, "Uhm, I have no self respect. Can I show you my breasts?" Oh and also YOUR? YOUR HOT....Yes, it is my hot; now please leave it alone.

I gotta move some place where they know who the Coen brothers are.