Greetings from the Netherlands!

HAARLEM, THE NETHERLANDS—There's one other thing Hurricane Sandy screwed up, at least temporarily: my trip to Amsterdam!

Amsterdam's flag

Up until now, I had never traveled to any European country—most of my previous international travels had been to either Asian countries or Canada—so one other resolution I made at the beginning of this year was that I would finally take a trip to that continent—and because I know a couple of people in Amsterdam, I figured the Netherlands would be as good a starting point as any. (No, folks, it's not about the pot and the hookers—or, maybe, not entirely about both...)

Through Aer Lingus—which would take me to Dublin Airport before heading over to Amsterdam-Schiphol—I was all set to fly out to Amsterdam from John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday night. But then, Hurricane Sandy reared her ugly head and, with its damaging winds, essentially crippled all New York/New Jersey air travel until Wednesday, when JFK and Newark Liberty International Airport reopened to limited service. So I was forced to rebook my flights—and by the time I finally decided it would be a good idea to actually rebook, all of the available Wednesday- and Thursday-evening Aer Lingus flights to Dublin filled up, leaving a Friday-night flight as the earliest option. Thankfully, Aer Lingus made the rebooking free of charge—and better yet, the airline even allowed me to rebook my return flights to a later date. So in the end, I'm losing only one of my initial projected seven full days in the Netherlands.

A view of the sun rising out of the window of my flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Dublin Airport

So now I'm here! (Or, at least, I'm near Amsterdam; technically, I'm staying with someone who lives just a bit of outside of Amsterdam, in a quiet little town called Haarlem.) And I look forward to being able to share my experiences here in the Netherlands with you all here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second—at least, if I don't get too caught up in activity that I find myself with no time to post! (Hey, I at least found time to post this, right?)

More words and photos to come soon...

Shelter from the (Franken)storm, with Musical Accompaniment

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Some of your sharper-eyed readers might have noted the dateline in my last post and wondered, "What is he doing back in New Jersey?"

Well, I am back home with my folks in New Jersey to ride out Hurricane Sandy, the major storm that's about to bear down on the mid- to upper part of the East Coast here in the United States and is predicted to cause some devastating damage. I made the choice to rush back home when New York decided to shut down its public-transportation system in anticipation of this massive weather event at 7 p.m. last night; because I was working until 7:30 p.m. yesterday, and because I'm supposed to be on vacation starting today (my trip to Amsterdam has been postponed until Friday night), I decided I might as well head back home, pay a visit to my folks and stay in their company as the so-called "Frankenstorm" increased in strength.

So, after nearly missing what I discovered only when I boarded a Suburban Coach bus at Port Authority Bus Terminal was the last Line 100 bus of the night before they shut down service completely (nice going in giving all of us advance warning, Suburban Coach!), I am now back in East Brunswick. The electricity here at home is still working...for now.

But boy, Sunday morning was already pretty ominous, as this video I shot with my iPhone attests:



The winds started to pick up last night—to the point where I could hear it howling outside while sitting indoors—and it has only gotten worse, as this other video I shot demonstrates:



And, as of now, Hurricane Sandy hasn't even touched down on land yet! This doesn't appear to be yet another Hurricane Irene situation like last year; this looks to be the real deal. So stay safe, everybody!

In the meantime...well, one ought to have a bit of fun even amidst a potential natural disaster like this one, so I've been thinking of some of the best depictions of storms in music. I came up with this playlist of five on Spotify:


I'd love to add more if anyone has other suggestions to offer!

Me, Myself and (Hurricane) Irene

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—After all the media-induced hoopla over the supposedly apocalyptic implications of an approaching weather system, and after said implications so spooked New York City officials that they decided to stage an unprecedented complete shutdown of the MTA public-transportation system, the hurricane ominously named Irene came and passed by New York, at least, with generally a whimper, as what had been a Category 4 storm as it approached landfall while coming up the Atlantic weakened into a Category 1 upon touching down on land and eventually became a tropical storm. (Neighboring New Jersey, however, wasn't quite so lucky; as of now, there is still serious flooding on some major roadways, and many areas are still without power.)

Nevertheless, all of us prepared for the worst...especially Wall Street Journal employees, some of whom, upon hearing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announce the MTA shutdown midday Friday, immediately scrambled to make hotel reservations and/or other such last-minute accommodations in order to be in a more convenient position to be able to get to work on Sunday morning. As I've undoubtedly said before: Welcome to the journalism world, folks, where the news never sleeps and reporters and editors are always on call.

Actually, I was already preparing Thursday evening, when one of the editors I work with came over to my desk and suggested I start thinking about how I planned to be in the office on Sunday (because, it seems, they really really wanted me to be there! For once!). So that night I decided to be on the safe side and book a hotel immediately.

My company usually recommends Club Quarters, a discount hotel chain with which I assume Dow Jones has a special pricing deal or something like that. But when I tried to reserve a room there online, I discovered they  were all booked up for Saturday night. Then someone sitting near me suggested I look into the Marriott Marquis located in Times Square; "they always have vacancies," he said. He was right...but, even though this particular hotel stay would ultimately be on the company's dime, I figured I might as well see if there were cheaper or similarly priced options even closer to my office. So, through the Marriott Marquis website, I looked into other Marriott hotels in the surrounding area....and came upon...

...the Algonquin Hotel, legendary for being the daily lunchtime meeting place during the 1920s of a slew of writers, critics and actors including such luminaries as writer/critic Dorothy Parker, humorist Robert Benchley, comedian Harpo Marx and playwright George S. Kaufman. The price for one night's stay seemed pretty close to that being offered by the Marriott Marquis, so...I decided to stay there. At the Algonquin. With this...

Natalie Ascencios's The Vicious Circle

...and this...

First time I've been at a hotel that offered a complimentary issue of The New Yorker!

...and this...

This was on the door of my room at the Algonquin.

...and this...

A portion of the wallpaper at the Algonquin—a virtual museum of New Yorker cartoons!

...and this...

This is what my hallway looked like. Jokes related to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining popped up often.

...and this:

Apparently, the Alongquin has a famous cat named Matilda. Well, here she is.

Not a bad way to spend an evening gearing for a supposed hurricane apocalypse, huh?

Yes, I just conceived and executed a blog post as an excuse to post photos of my stay at the Algonquin. I hope you, um, aren't too jealous...

A Cautionary Journalism Tale About Reneging on Interviews

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Even during a time of ill health, you manage to learn some lessons.

Last Monday, I was scheduled to do a phone interview with Aaron Katz, the bright young independent filmmaker whose entertaining third feature, Cold Weather, opened at IFC Center this past Friday. This was to be published as a blog post on The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog. But then I got sick Saturday afternoon, and that sickness extended to Monday morning and beyond. And because I thought I only had equipment to record a phone conversation off a land line, and because I didn't have a land line in my apartment, I figured the only thing I could reasonably do is to ask the film's publicist to put off the interview for another day and see how I felt the next day. So that's what I did...and the publicist kindly obliged.

The next day, I turned out to be no better health-wise than I was the day before, and I made the same request: to see if I got better enough by Wednesday to be able to go to work and conduct a proper phone interview. Again, the publicist consented to this.

And then, Wednesday morning came and my cold had not abated; in fact, judging by the 101.7°F temperature I had when I woke up, it seemed to have gotten worse. By this point, I figured that if I hadn't been able to get an interview down on my digital recorder, I probably wouldn't be able to transcribe and edit the interview down quickly enough for it to be published either Thursday or Friday, in time for Cold Weather's official theatrical release. So, unfortunately, I felt I had to let it go—and when I asked one of the Speakeasy editors whether or not I should continue to pursue this interview, she agreed that it was best to drop it at this point.

Of course, these publicists weren't willing to let this opportunity for extra exposure go until they were absolutely sure they weren't going to get press from me. So they persisted in trying to coming up with alternative solutions. At one point, one of the publicists suggested an email interview. I ran this by the aforementioned Speakeasy editor, and, as I suspected, the editor said that was not acceptable.

But then this editor dropped this line at the end of the email:

"But for future reference, if you agree to an interview, you should try to do it [emphasis mine]."

Here's an approximate summation of the infuriated thoughts that swirled through my brain immediately after I had read this: You gotta be fucking kidding me! Could that be, like, the WORST thing anyone could say to anyone in my situation? You think I didn't TRY??? I could barely get out of bed Monday morning, and you honestly expect me to rouse my feverish, near-bedridden ass up to go to an office all the way in midtown Manhattan just to conduct a mere 20-minute interview that I will probably end up having to cut down to a mere 800-1,000 words just because you stupid blog editors impose some stupid word count on ONLINE blog posts in some misguided attempt at trying to affect a light, superficial (and completely uninteresting to me) "infotainment" style? And oh yeah: I don't actually get PAID for my stupid blog contributions, do I? So why the fuck should I bust my ass for you if you're not going to PAY me a little extra for my contributions, like you do with all the other OUTSIDE FREELANCERS you allow to contribute?

As you could guess, I was not happy to read those words at all, which reeked of a complete lack of sensitivity and empathy.

But then I got a valuable second opinion from a co-worker of mine who is also a news assistant at the Journal. She assessed the situation this way:

"It's definitely not your fault you got sick, but I guess in the journalism world--unless you're dead you're supposed to do an assignment (even if not in office). It's a sad but true fact of the culture."

And then I started reflecting on this situation more, on that day and on the next day (when I actually went into the office)...and I began to realize all sorts of ways that I could possibly have pulled off doing this phone interview even while sick. For instance, I could have done a Skype conversation and found some software to record off of my computer. I also could have conducted it through my cellphone and simply put my phone on speaker so my recorder could pick up both my voice and Katz's. Or, at the very least, I could have asked my Facebook friends/Twitter followers, many of whom are fellow film critics/journalists, to offer their own solutions to this unexpected problem; judging by the bevy of responses I got when I tweeted about this whole situation on Thursday, I would have gotten a lot of helpful responses, too.

However I did it, it most likely would have been a far more pleasing and effective resolution than the one that ultimately came about: with no interview to speak of and a lot of regret and frustration directed at others and especially at myself. Where is that intrepid, by-any-means-necessary mindset that actual journalists are supposed to have? Do I even have what it takes to be a good journalist, or was I just never cut out for this line of work in the first place?

I guess the takeaway from this story of an aborted interview is...well, I guess it's what that editor flat-out told me directly: "If you agree to an interview, you should try to do it." By any means necessary...because that's what is expected of you in the journalism world. Not even illness, it seems, is considered a legitimate excuse for reneging on an interview. Imagine if it was an exclusive with a prominent world leader! That would look really bad.

I still stand by what I said about my not getting paid, though.

P.S. I did see Cold Weather last year at Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM CinemaFest, and wrote down some initial impressions here. I actually saw it again recently, and while I generally stand by what I wrote before, I admit to finding it a more pleasurable experience the second time around, especially knowing in advance the zigzags the plot would take. It's a problematic movie, but it's warmhearted and emotionally generous—very much worth checking out.

Diseased

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—I know I haven't been nearly as prolific with posts on this blog as I had been before, oh, December...but this week, at least, I have an excuse!

That excuse, in this case? Illness.

In the midst of seeing—fittingly, perhaps—Fritz Lang's The Big Heat at Film Forum on Saturday, I started feeling a chill throughout my body that had nothing to do with the film itself (although, make no mistake, for those who haven't seen that classic film noir, the film has plenty of bone-chilling moments). That chill persisted even as a friend and I made our way to Jersey City that evening to check out the still sexually provocative Baby Face (1931) at the dazzlingly restored Landmark Loews Jersey Theatre. You should have seen me sitting in that theater, wearing my beret and a scarf to keep me warm while watching Barbara Stanwyck sleep her way to the top of the business ladder.

Despite still feeling some aches in my leg muscles the next morning, I foolishly decided to work anyway...and was then promptly sent home by my boss, who told me not to come back until I felt better. The next three days have seen me basically either lying in bed, sitting slack-jawed in front of my computer, making occasional trips to the nearest bodega to buy some soup and just basically wasting away, torn by a desire to be productive and the knowledge that I should probably rest as much as possible. During those days, my body temperature varied from 99.4°F on Sunday, to around 100°F on Monday, up to 101.7°F on Tuesday, then back down to 99.5°F on Wednesday.

Yesterday, I woke up and checked my temperature, and hurray: 98.6°F! Could it be? After all this time, and a certain amount of frustration, could my fever have finally dissipated? I felt good enough this morning that I figured I probably could come into work, and my boss told me that, based on what I described about my conditions, it was probably safe for me to come in. But I am by no means back to 100% health; a cough still persists, as does nasal congestion and a sore throat. I still sound pretty sick, most people in the office told me yesterday. And I still felt some of those chills. It's making me wonder whether I should have come into the office in the first place.

In any case, it's looking as if the better option for me this coming weekend—a three-day weekend for me, because I decided to take off for Superbowl Sunday—is to just lie low and recuperate. And since that means I probably won't be going out much, I figure I might as well just go back to my parents' home in East Brunswick, N.J., to regain my strength.

So I haven't been able to work up much energy to do a whole lot this week, including posting stuff on this blog. Hopefully I'll be back to some kind of healthier form next week...because, really, there is a lot of exciting stuff for me in the horizon that I'd like to share with you all.

Until then, though...well, happy Chinese new year! It's the year of the rabbit!

From Inland Empire (2006). I know I know: not Chinese. But hey, it's a rabbit! In a gorgeously framed and lit shot! It's all I could think of at the moment; indulge me, please!

You Know You're a Cinephile When...

NEW YORK—...you start to have dreams about movies...even ones you haven't even seen yet!

Last night, I dreamed that I was on the countryside, and that I heard about the midnight screening of a film that I had heard about as a kid but had never seen. So I tried like hell to make this midnight screening...but then ended up getting there way too late. I think it was about this time that I woke up from my dream.

The film I was trying to catch? Considering that this came up in a dream, maybe it's fitting that that film was...

...Frank Henenlotter's 1988 horror film Brain Damage. It's yet another one of those horror titles I referred to in this post whose VHS covers I frequently passed by at a local video store, and whose box art—plus a three-star capsule review from Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide—always tantalized the heck out of me. But no, I still haven't seen it yet.

Now, thanks to this dream, I feel like diving into the work of Frank Henenlotter. Maybe I'll finally get around to Basket Case (1982)?

Or maybe even Frankenhooker (1990)?

Apparently even my dreams give me movie recommendations!

What about all of you, dear readers? Have you ever dreamed about a particular film? Have you ever dreamed you were in a film? What are all your movie-related dreams like? Do tell!

Quotes of the Day, Courtesy of Asian Mothers

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—From "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," an essay by Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor, that was published on Saturday in The Wall Street Journal's Review section:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

This, to a certain degree, was my mother's reasoning for pushing accounting on me during my first two years at Rutgers: that despite my vocal and emotional resistance to spending my four years of college studying something I had no passion for, eventually I would "learn to like it" (her words) if I kept at it.

Of course, why did my mother think the study of accounting was the best path for me in college? Chua suggests it in the last paragraph of this article:

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

One of the reasons my mother often cited as her justification for foisting accounting on me was that becoming an accountant right out of college would keep me financially secure, in contrast to all those others out there desperately living paycheck to paycheck—a state in which she dearly wished never to see me. In her highly practical mind, this was a "right" major, in contrast to "wrong" majors like, say, English.

In spite of my frustrations, I always tried to give her credit for good intentions. That, I think, is why I struggled for so long—to the point where I became an emotional wreck during the spring of my sophomore year and actually had to see a therapist for a bit—before deciding to pull the plug on my Rutgers Business School accounting studies just before my junior year began.

But you know what? All of that is in the past, and while it has taken years for me shake off all the resentment that built up from not only this accounting-major disagreement, but from plenty of smaller annoyances in my younger years (like not being allowed to watch any movies except during lengthy school breaks, and even then rarely in a movie theater), now that I live away from home and don't have to be reminded of all those resentments on a daily basis, I'm not inclined to dwell too much on all that anymore.

And then comes this rather gloating essay, which managed to bring back back some not-so-fond memories of the kind of "tough love" that I suffered through during my years at school—not to such an extreme as what Chua recounts about herself, but nevertheless, there are aspects of the parenting style she describes that I recognize in my own personal experience. The only thing this essay made me wonder, in the end, is what Chua's own kids really think of her strict parenting style: whether they are swimming in gratitude or secretly hating her guts.

Surprisingly enough, even my own mother found Chua's model to be, well, a bit much. When I forwarded this article to her, this is how she responded via email (I've made only minor edits to this, by the way):

Regarding that article, this is a very extreme case. I do not agree that some mothers have the right to deprive the kids completely of the intrinsic right to pursue happiness.  There is no right or wrong; if the kids are happy and have no complaints being scheduled and manipulated as instrument machine, so be it. This is nobody's business. If the kids enjoy playing, enjoy the ensuing success, why not. The mother is the hard pusher. You know what they said, "Behind the success of a man, there is a successful woman (or women)." Some kids are pushable and can be helped. Most are not. If you try to push, you are looking for trouble. You are fighting against gravity. You have taught me a lesson. I have learned my lesson. I have also learned that the parents should inspire, not manipulate. You know and you witness too many pushy parents. There are pluses and minuses. How to balance is a real challenge to the parents. To be an excellent instrument player is not the only way to measure success. It also does not guarantee happiness. I start to realize the golden rule: to do what please you and be pleased what you are doing and have fun and happiness. Know who you are and maximize your potential. You will be a winner in life.

Mom, after all these years, I think I can honestly say that I agree with you 100%!

And yet...there may be more to Amy Chua's essay than meets the eye! It's apparently an excerpt from a new book of hers that will be published tomorrow. Go take a look at the front cover of the book, on its Amazon page. It says, "This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old." Maybe this essay is not telling the whole story about Mrs. Chua's relationship with her children. In which case, then why publish that particular, and perhaps misleading, excerpt from it???

Video for the Day: Hard Truths About Journalism

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Last Monday, as a favor for a friend, I woke up super early and went down to Bound Brook, N.J., to speak to a bunch of high-school children about my job at The Wall Street Journal. Basically, I told them about how I got to where I'm at now, what exactly I do now and what they would probably have to study in order to be prepared to go into the journalism field.

One thing I didn't really delve all that deeply into, though, was the troubles of the journalism industry, especially print journalism. The closest I came to being at all negative about the journalism industry was when I said, partly in response to a question about how much I made as a News Assistant at the Journal: "I wouldn't discourage any of you from going into journalism, but you just need to be prepared to make some sacrifices."

If I had been more brutally honest with those kids, though...this might be what I would have said to them:




Maybe this means I myself am negative and bitter, but I really do hope that no one going into college to study journalism is as cluelessly idealistic as that light-skinned bear.

And of course, the deadpan computerized voices make this bitter pill even funnier to watch. Killer punchline, too.

Whoever you are, BrooklynLee: Hats off to you!

Blogging to the Rescue!

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Today at work, my boss, in trying to figure out if I was owed more comp days for the rest of this year, asked me about certain holidays which she wasn't sure whether I had worked or not. At first, I panicked, because I wasn't entirely sure whether I had worked those particular holidays either. Oh, I had my guesses as to which ones I did work and which ones I didn't...but I admit that I wasn't good about keeping track of my holidays worked/not worked on my own, and apparently my boss wasn't obligated to keep track on her end. So even if I did have inklings as to which holidays I worked and which ones I took off, I didn't have any real way of proving those inklings correct.

Or so I thought.

"Maybe you could check Facebook, see if you posted anything on those days," my boss suggested. No, I said to her, it would take way too long to go that far back to see what I had tweeted on those days in question (same with Twitter, too...because I have my Twitter feed linked up to my Facebook account). But then, after thinking about it and temporarily blaming my less-than-ideal work schedule for getting me into this mess, I was struck with inspiration: What had I blogged on or around those certain days?

And sure enough, I went back to old blog posts and found perhaps-not-quite-definitive-but-close-enough passages like this:

—From "Spring Awakenings," published at 8 p.m. on April 1, 2010: "But wait a minute, some of you might be wondering: Aren't you supposed to be working today? In fact, thanks to the Asia and Europe editions of The Wall Street Journal not publishing on Friday and Monday, I have Thursday and Sunday off. Four-day weekend, woo-hoo!"

—From "Celebrating the Fourth of July—1776-style!," published at 7 a.m. on July 4, 2010: "As I am working both today and tomorrow—alas, the international Wall Street Journal editions don't celebrate America's independence; at least I get time-and-a-half for my holiday labors, though—I'll be celebrating Independence Day in my mind..."

—And from "(Late Labor Day) Weekend Film Round-up, Procrastination Edition," published at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 8, 2010: "In the meantime: I saw a really mixed bag of films theatrically during my long weekend."

All of that was enough to get me four more comp days to use by the end of the year!

Earlier this year, I recounted the story of how one angry tweet on my Twitter feed somehow managed to catch the attention of someone up at Aetna's corporate headquarters in Hartford, Conn., and how that helped speed up the process of getting an increasingly exasperating hospital-bills situation resolved. It looks like something similar occurred here, except this time it was my blogging that came to my rescue!

Who knew that oversharing on the Internet could have such positive consequences?

Howard Finster's Fire-and-Brimstone Marriage of Text and Image

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Speaking of religion: Who among you knows of the artist named Howard Finster (1916-2001)?

A few weekends ago, I ventured forth into Harlem for the first time ever to check out a private new art gallery that recently opened up. How private? So private that it's basically one family's two-story studio apartment! One of my co-workers—who, it turns out, is himself an artist specializing in scanner photography (check out his site here, if you're curious what "scanner photography" looks like in practice)—decided to turn his apartment into an informal art gallery displaying some of his own works, some of the work of other artists, and cultural artifacts he has collected over the years.

Among the works of art displayed in this gallery was this:

The Devil's Vice, Howard Finster

Two things jumped out at me about this print: first, the sheer, overwhelming amount of detail packed into this canvas; and second, the fact that much of that detail was given over to words rather than images.

When it comes to movies, a lot of critics have a sometimes seemingly knee-jerk disdain for such characteristics as "preachiness," "heavy-handedness" and "didacticism." I guess many critics just don't like to preached to—but who does, right? And we all consider film a visual art more than anything else, so of course we'll vastly prefer something expressed visually rather than verbally; if a filmmaker is so clumsy as to feel the need to spell out his/her intentions for us in the audience...well, then, where's the fun in that?

Personally, I've always taken films that go the didactic route on a case-by-case basis. So yeah, sometimes such spell-it-out-too-explicitly heavy-handedness can bother the hell out of me too. Take one of the most popular, and widely praised, films of recent years, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008). This highly touted sequel to Batman Begins (2005) abounds in fairly graceless speechifying about, among other things, what morality there can really be in a world governed by chance and fate; but the speechifying matters less to me than this gnawing sense that Nolan is so insistent on putting his order-versus-chaos allegory across that he sacrifices character development and subtlety to do so. When he actually tries to turn his thinly veiled allegory into some kind of human drama, the lack of three-dimensional characterizations is thrown into sharp relief; there's nothing to care about on a human level beyond each character's preordained place in Nolan's grand allegorical scheme. The film ends up playing more lke a big-budget philosophical thesis paper than a drama with flesh-and-blood characters; thus, its many moments of overt didacticism—especially its "will one boat blow up the other" climax—stick out like so many sore thumbs.

Sometimes, though, didacticism can be done in a way that's genuinely thought-provoking and maybe even emotionally stirring. When it comes to some of the more hardcore-intellectual work of Jean-Luc Godard, for instance, sure, the same criticisms I just lobbed at The Dark Knight would probably apply. Does anyone really remember much about the characters in films like 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Tout va bien (1972), or in more recent work like In Praise of Love (2001), Notre musique (2004) and his latest, Film Socialism (2010)? In these films, to varying degrees, his "characters" mostly spout off ideas and aphorisms, and he leaves it up to us to either take his thoughts seriously or dismiss it as "pretentious." And yet, Godard's didacticism usually evinces a curiosity and engagement with the wider world that Nolan's never does; plus, for all the chatter he includes in his films, he's far more visually inventive in the ways he expresses his intellectual obsessions on the screen (witness, for instance, the back-and-forth tracking shot in the supermarket towards the end of Tout va bien, from which the above still is taken). There's an exciting sense of exploration in Godard's later work that, even at its most inscrutable, offsets any sense of preachiness; he's trying to pin down his ideas the same time we in the audience are.

Admittedly, Finster's art isn't fueled by that same sense of exploration. A Baptist pastor from Georgia, Finster often claimed that God, through visions, implored him to spread His word through his art; in that way, much of his more than 46,000 works are essentially fire-and-brimstone expressions of his faith. And yet, one look at the portrait above and one gets the sense that he is so passionately committed to that faith that he'll even go so far as to include large amounts of text, scriptural or otherwise, in his canvases in order to get the Word out. One could consider this the visual-art equivalent of the kind of talky didacticism in Godard's films or The Dark Knight, and one might even dismiss it wholesale as crude and un-artistic. For me, however, there's a certain purity of intent to Finster's art—his posters, his sculptures, his self-built Paradise Gardens—that rises above its simple means and becomes almost transcendent. It's his zeal that moves you, whatever the method.

 Here's another example of his art, this one in the shape of an American flag:

Oh, and for those who think they've never seen Howard Finster's work before...remember this album cover...

...and this one?

Yep, Finster designed the album covers for both R.E.M.'s 1984 album Reckoning (the band's second) and Talking Heads' 1985 Little Creatures. In the former, he collaborated with lead singer Michael Stipe, and it looks sparer than many of the Finster paintings/sculptures I've seen; the latter seems more echt-Finsterian in its denseness. Rolling Stone magazine named the Little Creatures cover the best of its year. The more you know...

You can get more information about Finster, by the way, at this ancient-looking website. He seems quite a character; I look forward to delving even more into his work in the future.

The man himself

Spontaneous Combustion...of Fun in New York

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—One thing about living in New York that I'm really enjoying so far is that I find it easier to plan my days—my weekends, especially—in a far more spontaneous manner than I was able to do having to commute back and forth to central New Jersey.

Every time I came into New York on a weekend while still living in East Brunswick, I always felt a need to immaculately plan beforehand: what I was doing, where I needed to go, when I needed to get to certain places, and (perhaps most importantly) when I needed to leave in order to be able to get back home. Sure, there was always a bit of room to maneuver even within such a carefully worked-out schedule...but most of the time I always felt constraints hanging over my head preventing me from being able to fully enjoy everything the city had to offer.

It's a different ballgame for me now as a New York resident...and this weekend was a case in point.

At the beginning of the day, my Friday looked to be a fairly humdrum one: one trip to the movies in the works, but otherwise not much else in the way of friendly gathering or even flat-out partying. But then, that morning, an old friend from East Brunswick posted a status update on Facebook alerting her friends that she would be at a bar in the Meatpacking District to celebrate her (super-belated) 25th birthday, and I decided it would be nice to make some time to reconnect with her there. And later in the day, thanks to a friendship I had struck up recently with someone who works at Brooklyn Academy of Music, I found myself in possession of a free ticket to a performance at BAM that evening of a new opera by composer Evan Ziporyn entitled A House in Bali. If I wasn't living in New York, there was probably no way I could have attended that House in Bali performance on such short notice. (The opera is fascinating musically, a bit less electrifying literally, but overall totally worth my time.)

In short, a quiet, sober Friday night suddenly turned into a far more wide-ranging, adventurous (and fairly drunken) one. Oh, and thanks to the free ticket as well as a couple of people at the birthday party being nice enough to pick up my tab on the drinks I consumed, I ended up spending only about $17 that evening ($7 of which was spent on a ticket to see Olivier Assayas's wonderful 1991 feature Paris at Dawn, also at BAM).

It was a similar story on Saturday. After a thrilling double-bill of Rififi (1955) and Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)—both of which I had never seen before, at least in full—at Film Forum, I met up with a friend at a bar on 28th and 7th, and we ended up going up to Central Park to check out the new Tavern on the Green, now reconfigured as a more modest visitor center and food court. Then, during our dinner, my friend mentioned a place even further uptown that served good dessert, and so we ended up spending some time there as well (I gorged on gelato and a piece of super-chocolate cake). Everything that happened after the two films was planned on-the-fly. And whereas, as a New Jersey resident, I probably would have been careful not to spend so much money on subway fare, now that I finally have a reason to purchase an unlimited MTA fare card, I feel free to explore all over the city with abandon. (I spent a bit more money on food than I had hoped on Saturday, but I think the $6 I spent on that double feature made up for things at least a bit.)

Earlier this year, when I was still deciding whether to take the plunge and finally move to New York, a co-worker of mine said to me, "You of all people need to be here." Boy, how right he was. The possibilities, the convenience, the seemingly endless sense of discovery: Maybe one day, my romance with New York City will end...but for now, we're still in the honeymoon phase, as far as I'm concerned.

P.S. Perhaps later in the week, I will find time to say more about the films I watched this weekend. For now, though...I have a phone interview with legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman to prepare for later today.

Living In—and For—the City: My First Month in New York

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—

The doors to my apartment building, on the left

It's been a little over a month since I moved into my new apartment here in Crown Heights, and thankfully, I have survived that first month with my well-being fully intact.

I say "thankfully" because, for a day or so after I officially moved all my stuff into the apartment, I suddenly found myself seriously questioning my decision to live in this particular neighborhood. That brief bout of self-doubt came as the result of a message I received from a friend of mine on Facebook after I officially changed my location on my profile to "Crown Heights, NY"; in that message, she not only informed me that she had just recently moved out of the area after two years, but also proceeded to recount horror stories about things that she witnessed or heard about: people being robbed and mugged; young kids shooting guns in the air, etc.

A synagogue at the intersection of the Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue

For a couple of days, this Facebook message positively haunted me. I was fully aware of the racially charged riots that took place between the black and Jewish communities in Crown Heights in 1991 before I looked at the apartment in which I now reside, so I certainly had my misgivings from the outset. But then, on a sunny Friday evening in August, I and one of two potential apartment-mates met with the resident who had put up the listing in the first place (she was still going to be living there, but she needed to fill the three other rooms in the four-bedroom apartment, since the rest of them were moving on); sat in the park right across the street; talked to one or two of the residents in the building next door; and in general found myself liking what I saw and heard. I mean, it's across from a park, I reasoned to myself. There are lots of families here. Surely it can't be that bad. And then, when that one potential suite-mate dropped out of the apartment hunt and the other took a look at the apartment on his own, he came to the same positive conclusions. If two people like this same potential living space so much, I reasoned, then there must be something special about it... (Did I mention the $700-a-month rent?) 

But then, with this friend's Facebook warning, I began to second-guess myself: Was I naive in making such assumptions? Did I fail to do enough research before agreeing to this? For about a day afterward, I obsessively searched for information about living in Crown Heights on Google, and I was not encouraged by much of what I read. Based on various online forums and articles I encountered, Crown Heights seemed to be placing fairly low in "safe-to-walk-at-night" rankings (right alongside its neighbor to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant, in that regard), and some of these respondents openly expressed disbelief that people would even think about living in the area. What had I gotten myself into? was the question that kept ringing my head that day, and the feeling in my heart was heavy.

Walking down Kingston Avenue

As you can see, though...it's been a little over a month, and I'm still alive and kicking. I keep to myself while walking home from the subway, I don't carelessly flash money and valuables around, and I certainly don't try to invite trouble by associating with shady-looking people I might see on the street. That is not to say that trouble might not present itself to me in the next 11 months living in this area...but I mean, what can I do now, right? The only thing I can do is be careful, or at least as careful as I usually am when walking on any city street at night.

My room. Purty, ain't it?

Besides...it's all a part of living on one's own, isn't it? Handling such troubles, or potential troubles, by yourself? So far, I really am enjoying this whole living-on-my-own thing: making my own decisions on finances, doing my own grocery shopping and laundry, and the like. It's been years since I've felt this kind of liberating independence. Even at Rutgers for my undergraduate-college years, I still felt like I was on training wheels, so to speak; my parents were paying most of my tuition, and I was so close to home that I often found myself just going home most weekends. Well, for the most part, the training wheels are off here in Brooklyn, and I'm flying solo: no parents paying rent for me, no close proximity to home (though admittedly, home still isn't that far away). For once, I find myself perilously close to feeling like a real adult!

And I don't think I'm doing too badly for myself so far. Sure, I probably spent far more money last month than I should have...but I figured I'd be spending a lot in my first month getting whatever supplies I needed to help settle myself in, and that, starting next month, I'd make a stronger effort to budget myself as much as possible. Because of my desire to save as much as I can, I've been less intense about keeping up my usually rabid moviewatching habits on weekends; I have errands I need to take care of every weekend, so if such sacrifices have to be made, I will make them.

That said, I'd like to think I haven't completely cut myself off of high—and low—culture here in New York because of my newfound frugality. My first Friday night as a New York resident, for instance, found me at, in this order: a housewarming party thrown by the residents on the first floor of my apartment building; a horror-movie-themed bar in Park Slope witnessing two pole dancers gyrating while I knocked down a mug of beer with a fellow film critic; and then, also in Park Slope, the birthday party of a friend of one of my roommates', at which I knocked down more alcohol and got fairly buzzed from the experience.

On the higher end of the cultural scale, however, I did visit Brooklyn's Light Industry for the first time ever to see a couple of little-seen Maysles Brothers documentary shorts (one about IBM, the other about Truman Capote and In Cold Blood); and a couple days later—pretty much on a whim, actually—I finally witnessed a very fine live performance of Gustav Mahler's majestic Sixth Symphony, with Alan Gilbert directing the New York Philharmonic, at Lincoln Center. (Thanks to a membership to the Gustav Mahler Society of New York that I had completely forgotten I had, I was able to save quite a bit on rear-orchestra seats.)

Oh, and now that I don't have to worry about getting picked up by family members every night to get home, I can stay out late even on weekdays if I wanted to do so! And I've taken advantage of that. Just last night, I decided to go check out Michael Mann's 1981 debut feature Thief at Film Forum—playing as part of the theater's "Heist" series—at an 8:30 p.m. screening after work; I probably wouldn't have even bothered to try to see such a late show if I was still living at home in central New Jersey. (It was totally worth the time, too. Judging by the film, Mann had mostly solidified his vision in his creative game; the seeds for his 2006 Miami Vice, with its swooning romantic fatalism, were planted way in advance.)

The fact that I now live close enough to be able to take advantage of all the New York City has to offer culturally is enough for me to conclude that I made the right choice in moving...whatever dangers my neighborhood may pose.

***

Oh, and also, there's this:

To my surprise, my mother—who had been skeptical of my decision to move from the outset—has not been calling me constantly to see how I'm doing. In fact, she's done the opposite: She has embraced email and (to a lesser extent) text messages, and is keeping in touch with me electronically, sending me about one email a week to keep in touch.

In one of her more recent emails, she dropped these lines:

I miss you. I have learned to let you kids go for you to grow [emphasis mine]. I hope you eat your 3 meals properly. It is important to respect your body. I know you are learning to do so. Hope everything is going smoothly with you. God bless you.

I have to admit, I felt a sense of vindication at reading that, at least for the moment. That is exactly what I've been trying to get her to understand.

That said: Sorry, Mom, but I have a feeling that saving $500 a month, as you (constructively) challenge me to do, might be near-impossible right now considering my salary...

An Attempt at Workplace Humor, Courtesy of Yours Truly

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—The following exchange took place today on the sixth floor of the News Corp. building between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m

MY BOSS

Is it Thursday yet? [Side note: Thursday is her last day of the work week—as is mine]

ME

Sorry, it isn't.

MY BOSS

Is it close to Thursday yet?

ME

Depends on what you mean by 'close.' If you just go by how many days it is 'til Thursday, then yeah, it's pretty close. But if you go by how many hours it is 'til it officially becomes Thursday...then that might seem like a really long time.

Well, my boss cracked a smile at that, at least...

New York Film Festival 2010: Playing Catch-up

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—My apologies, readers; I've gotten so bogged down with New York Film Festival stuff (in addition to a few socializing detours) that I haven't been able to find time to update My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second...until now.

So, as my way of catching up, here are a few links to recent New York Film Festival dispatches published at The House Next Door:

Film Socialism: review here
Aurora: review here
Black Venus and Post Mortem: reviews here

Not included among these links are reviews of my two favorite films of the festival so far, Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I caught up with both after I was forced to miss their respective press screenings Tuesday of last week; Kiarostami's film I caught at a smaller press screening on Monday night, Apichatpong's at its public screening on Saturday.

That was a fun experience, by the way, watching Uncle Boonmee at that public screening. First of all, I was able to score $10 rush tickets, half the price of a regular-admission ticket; even better, I got a seat all the way in the first row of the Alice Tully Hall auditorium! (Some people don't like sitting all the way in the front, but generally I don't mind; in this case, it allowed me to be better able to completely immerse myself in Apichatpong's wondrously surreal imagery and bask in its amazingly evocative sound design. I felt like I was staring up at an IMAX movie in complete awe.) And secondly: Apichatpong was there to discuss the film with film critic Melissa Anderson. I was so enthralled by the experience that, after the Q&A was over, I went up to him on the stage and asked for an autograph.

He obliged! Thus...

Maybe someday this will become very valuable? (I would have taken a photograph of him, but I didn't have my camera on me, and the camera on my cellphone doesn't seem to have the ability to turn off the flash.)

Anyway, I hope to write about both Uncle Boonmee and especially Certified Copy—an intellectually dense yet deeply moving achievement—in the near future. (Those two, Manoel de Oliveira's The Strange Case of Angelica and Olivier Assayas's Carlos would probably constitute the highlights of my festival experience so far.) In the meantime: Tonight I will finally be introducing myself to the work of avant-garde filmmaker James Benning through his latest work, Ruhr, playing in a program of its own at the festival's Views from the Avant-Garde series going on throughout this weekend. It's about time I delved more deeply into experimental cinema, methinks!

Clash of the Generations, or First Exit to Brooklyn

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—I was thinking a lot about generation gaps yesterday, and the reason for this has something to do with that second major development in my life that I alluded to in this recent post.

The development (which I announced on Twitter and Facebook during my vacation, but which of course I will repeat here)? In about a week and a half—and after I sign the lease and pay first month's rent—I am officially moving to Brooklyn!

Yes, folks: After all the complaining I've been doing in person and on Twitter and Facebook about my mother, about my increasingly agonizing commute and about just generally feeling too spoiled and sheltered at home, I finally got off my lazy/hesitant ass and did something to, as Michael Jackson famously sang in "Man in the Mirror," "make a change."

Most of the people I interact with either in person or online support my desire to fly my parents' coop and try to make it on my own. And when I told some of my friends and acquaintances about how much I'll be paying a month to live in this four-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights—$700 a month, plus approximately $50 extra for utilities—just about all of them agreed that that was a pretty reasonable monthly sum for living in New York.

The only dissenter (or maybe not the only one, as you'll see below)? My mother, of course.

But I come here not to trash my mother—I've already done that too often this year, and I don't know if I can take any more guilt over it—but to try to understand where she's coming from. And the more I think about her reasons for believing this to be a bad move on my part, the more I'm convinced that this is probably yet another instance of a clash of generations at work.

***

In the mornings, whenever I'm waiting at a nearby bus stop for a NJ Transit bus to take me to New Brunswick, every so often I will be waiting next to a fairly feisty elderly woman, who looks to be in her 60s, if not older. We usually greet each other, and sometimes we even briefly discuss things pertaining to our lives as we wait for the bus to arrive. 

We saw each other again yesterday, and after I mentioned to her that I was moving to Brooklyn in about a week and a half, and that my mother was less than pleased about the decision, she told me right off the bat that she thought my mother was right in this matter. Even bringing up the $700/month rent figure didn't sway her. "That's a lot of money," she said. "At your young age, you should be saving money, not spending it away on rent. Why would you want to leave home and spend all that money away like that? Doesn't make sense to me."

This is more or less the stance my mother has taken on the matter. Unlike this elderly lady, though—who went so far as to say, "The biggest mistake young people make today is leaving their parents' home too early"—my mother takes pains to make clear to me that her disapproval is not about her wanting to keep me at home. Instead, for her, it's mostly about money: how I should be saving as much as I can while I'm young; and how she's worried that, based on how much money I bring home every two weeks from my job, I will end up like one of those people living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling.

Believe me, I grasp the parental concern underlying these reasons, and I would be lying if I didn't share some of them, to a certain extent. And I had always assumed that such concerns could be chalked up more to cultural differences than anything else: Asian people are often known (or is it stereotyped?) for being extremely frugal with their spending, as well as for being submissive to the supposed wisdom of their elders.

But if even this elderly American woman is agreeing with my mother on how youngsters should be approaching money and living...then maybe what we have here isn't just a clash of cultures after all. Maybe this difference of opinion can be explained in part by gaps in time, not just gaps in cultural understanding.

***

Coincidentally, the front page of yesterday's Personal Journal section in The Wall Street Journal featured a "Moving On" column by Jeffrey Zaslow discussing generational differences when it comes to how younger folk these days perceive and process advice offered by their elders. This one spoke to me with an especially powerful personal resonance.

As Zaslow writes:

Older people have always offered advice to younger people, with words of wisdom culled from their memories of youth. And, of course, in every era, young people have found advice from elders to be outdated and ineffectual. These days, however, given how fast the world is changing, there's been a clear widening of the advice gap.

It's rooted in a devaluation of accumulated wisdom, a leveling of the relationships between old and young. On many fronts, people from Generation Y—now ages 16 to 32—assume their peers know best. They doubt those of us who are older can truly understand their needs and concerns.

With my mother (less so my father, by the way, who, despite being born and raised in my mother's generation, seems to have a mindset closer to that of mine in matters of how someone my age ought to live), I sincerely wish I could feel comfortable enough to ask for her advice on matters of life and living. More often than not, though, I end up feeling frustrated by seemingly irreconcilable differences in worldviews. Like most other people I know, I consider living on my own and facing whatever difficulties one might have to face in doing so a natural rite of passage in adulthood; my mother, however, seems to be of the mindset that a parent's job is to provide enough for her children so that they don't have to face the same difficulties she might have had to face growing up. Thus I feel like I can't really talk to her about living on my own because all I'll get is disapproval that I'm even thinking about moving out in the first place. And that disapproval stings; she's my mother, after all.

Zaslow's article even features a quote from someone addressing generational differences regarding the idea of renting versus buying:

Dustin Borg, 28, taught English in Japan for two years and saw a culture in which older people are revered, and their advice remains unquestioned. He admired the respect young people showed their elders there, but wondered about the complacency among Japanese youth.

Now an actuarial analyst in Atlanta, Mr. Borg says he often challenges advice he receives from older people. For instance, they've counseled him to buy a house because prices are low. "Older people think renting is throwing away money," he says. "But I think owning a home is throwing away financial freedom. I couldn't pick up and move to a new city. I couldn't go back to Japan to see my old friends. I'd be tied to the house."

Having been pressured by my mother to co-own a house in Perth Amboy, N.J., with her—and going through with it begrudgingly, with the understanding that I would not actually live there—I sympathize with Borg and applaud him for sticking to his convictions. But, of course, his parents's advice isn't wrong or misguided. It just comes from a different set of values, one that perhaps treasures the permanence of a house over the transience of renting.

***

One of the things my mother seems to value highly is the idea of a family as a kind of warm respite from the outside world, a unit in which one can come home every night, have dinner around a table and talk about things that occurred during each member's respective days. This kind of tightly knit familial closeness is important to her, to the point that she will not only ask us if we will be home for dinner, but will give off a faint but unmistakable sense of disappointment if one of us tells her that he will not be coming home to eat with the rest of the family.

Of course, I myself don't really feel that same sense of disappointment whenever that happens (which, on most weekends, is quite often). This right here could be one classic manifestation of a generation gap: Whereas an older generation might have prized family above many other things in life, Generation Y feels less tied down to family roots. That, by extension, makes the idea of fleeing the family home in early adulthood to live on one's own seem natural to us but possibly naïve and foolish to our elders, as it seems to be with my mother and that elderly lady.

There is no right or wrong here. As frustrating as generational gaps can be...well, they are an inevitable part of life, a part of history. The only thing one can really do when faced with such major generational differences is to try one's best to understand the points of view involved and decide for oneself how to proceed.

Who knows? Sometimes those elders whose advice you pooh-pooh now will turn out to have been right all along.

*** 

Will my mother end up being vindicated in her skepticism over my impending move to Brooklyn? Will I end up struggling like crazy to get by? Will this end up being similar to the mistake I made in living in that overly expensive on-campus apartment-style housing during my third and fourth years at Rutgers—a mistake I'm paying for right now through monthly student-loan payments? All I know right now is, this move feels right for me at this moment in time. If it ends up being a mistake...well, at least it will be my mistake to learn from, whether my mother understands such a mindset or not.

Stay tuned, I guess.

Mikey and Nicky, and Films That Hit (Too) Close to Home

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

Two of my favorite pieces of writing on Charlie Kaufman's 2008 film Synecdoche, New York—outside of Roger Ebert's definitive take—are Andrew "Filmbrain" Grant's two-part examination of the film's thematic and philosophical intricacies, and the review written by Film Freak Central's Walter Chaw (both of whom, by the way, appear in an extra on the film's DVD, along with two other favorite critics of mine, Some Came Running's Glenn Kenny and Los Angeles Weekly's Karina Longworth). I value both these pieces of writing because both dare to inject the personal element into them while also trying to take the film on in something close to an objective manner. For Grant, the film hit home so hard for him that he went on an alcohol binge the night after seeing it for the first time; Chaw similarly admitted that the film made him feel depressed for weeks afterward, and one of the conclusions he draws about Kaufman's work is that "the more it's examined, the more it's a dissection of the critic's own fears and prejudices."

Though I myself am more of a detached admirer than a passionate advocate of Synecdoche, I think I understand the film Grant and Chaw saw: the kind of work of art doesn't just mess with your mind, but has the power to possibly even scar you emotionally.

This past Saturday, at Brooklyn Academy of Music, I saw, for the first time, Elaine May's 1976 film Mikey and Nicky. For those who don't know much about this film: It's a comedy-drama about down-on-his-luck hustler Nicky (John Cassavetes) who calls upon his old friend Mikey (Peter Falk) in a moment of desperation: Nicky knows a crime boss has ordered a hit on him, and, fearing for his life, calls upon Mikey for help. Over the course of the night they spend together, they get into an aimless series of adventures, shooting the shit, baring their souls, getting into bitter arguments and generally bonding in their own way. Alas, Mikey, it is revealed early on, is in on the hit on his friend, and the film features scenes which suggest long-seated tensions in their friendship that eventually explode in a devastating conclusion that suggests limits to male comradeship.

There's not much of a plot to speak of outside of those bare outlines; Mikey and Nicky is a series of episodes in which the two titular characters' friendship is tested, and it is all done in an unnervingly realistic, improvisatory manner that suggests the mold-breaking style of Cassavetes's own directorial efforts. May uses this loose structure to touch on all sorts of heady subjects: life, death, religion, friendship, masculinity, femininity.

It's a rich and almost unbearably poignant work...and, for this viewer, it's a film that truly hit close to home for me in ways I didn't even fully realize until the next morning.

There is one particularly painful scene in the middle of the film in which buried resentments between the two friends are thrust into the open, with Mikey accusing Nicky of, among other things, only being friendly with him when he's in trouble. Somehow, during this scene—which climaxes in a near-fistfight between the two—I began to think about some of my own friends, and whether I have been less than appropriate friendly to them in recent weeks.

I thought about one friend in particular: someone who I've known since middle school, who I've hung out with often over the years, to the point that we're considered a kind of unofficial couple among our circle of friends. Just about every week, we're usually seeing a movie together, to give you an idea of just how close we are. Recently, though, I've kept a certain distance from him. It's not entirely deliberate, mind you—other social engagements and weird work schedules have gotten in the way. But I've also come to realize that there are many other people in whose company I find more genuine pleasure than I do when I'm around him.

This friend had texted me earlier in the day asking me if I was interested in seeing The Expendables that night—and for maybe the third time in about a month, I had to turn him down because I had already planned to see Mikey and Nicky and then have dinner with someone that evening. Obviously, there wasn't much I could do about it at that point; plans had already been set. And yet, when I turned him down this time and saw that he didn't respond back for the rest of the day, I nevertheless felt a twinge of guilt, mostly out of the deep-seated realization that perhaps I was partly trying to avoid him. (I went to Los Angeles with him earlier this year, and as the week dragged on, the silences between us got longer and longer.) So when I saw this particular scene in Mikey and Nicky, some of that guilt started rushing back to me again, a feeling only intensified by the film's tragic final shot of a startled Peter Falk.

The last thing I expected, though, was to actually end up seeing my friend later that night...in a dream—a dream in which he verbally, and angrily, expressed to me everything I feared he was feeling after all these rejections: snubbed, jilted, ignored. He's not the type to get visibly angry, so to dream of him acting sarcastically bitter and wounded in front of me was, well, nightmarish. I awoke from that dream shaken, and that feeling didn't really leave me for the rest of the day.

That cannot be mere coincidence. Mikey and Nicky has had a more profound effect on me than I even realized upon exiting the theater Saturday evening. I'm still thinking about the film: about what it says about the sometimes tenuous nature of friendship and loyalty, and about how it pertains to my own life. Maybe I'm just not as good a friend to even supposedly "close" friends as I am to others. This film won't leave me alone. I have no doubt in my mind that this film is a masterpiece, but I'm almost afraid to revisit it. Do I dare feel that same sense of shame again?

I've detailed a mostly subjective reaction to this film, of course, one which probably won't apply to everyone. But I'd like to think my personal experience with the film is not exclusive to me, and that the film is universal enough in scope to touch others in a similar way.

If it ain't Mikey and Nicky or Synecdoche, New York, what other movies have had a comparably powerful effect on you? Comment away; I'd love to hear about your too-close-to-home movie experiences.

An Outsider's Ode to Sunset Park, Brooklyn

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—As I may have mentioned on this blog recently, and as those of you who follow me on Twitter perhaps already know, I am in the process of trying to find an apartment in New York in which to live. I've mostly been looking in the Brooklyn area because one of my potential roommates is planning to return to school in the fall in an area that is ostensibly closer to Brooklyn than Queens is.

This past Saturday, my apartment hunt took me to Sunset Park, a neighborhood that's a bit south of the ever-popular Park Slope. I had never been in the area before, and honestly I hadn't even heard of it until I started trolling Craigslist apartment listings recently and noticed quite a few of them in that area within my specified price range. But, at least in my brief exposure to Sunset Park on Saturday, it's actually a nice area: quiet, reasonably scenic and homely. It also seems to have a fairly wide variety of ethnicities coexisting there: Chinese, Hispanic, African-American, just plain American. This pleases me; I'm all about variety in general.

A few blocks away from the apartment I tried to look at (I explain the "tried to" part in the postscript below) is the actual park named Sunset Park, and while it's fairly small—two blocks north-to-south, two blocks east-to-west—it's also rather breathtaking. If nothing else, it offers some lovely views of New York City, as you can see here:

Oh, and there's also this:




Chinese pop music? Blasting from a radio? At 11 a.m. in the morning on a beautiful sunny day? I felt like I was at home already!

P.S. Who knows, though, if Sunset Park is where I'll end up living? When the realtor for the apartment I was hoping to view showed up, we discovered that the key he had was only good for opening the apartment building door (which was already open anyway) and not the unit itself! I haven't yet heard back from the realtor as to whether he has been able to procure the actual apartment key since then, and each day I don't hear back from him, my hopes for being able to see this apartment in this potentially promising spot dwindles. So for now, the apartment hunt continues...