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Iron Man

Mr. P and I fell pretty neatly into traditional domestic man/wife roles. I do most of the cooking, except when Mr. P is inspired to concoct some fantastic, time-consuming plat principal. I do the cleaning, the tidying, and the de-cluttering. Mr. P takes out the trash, handles the heavy garden labor, and is the resident IT guy. But although I do the laundry, we do deviate from our gendered responsibilities when it comes to  the ironing.

I don’t iron, not out of any staunch refusal, but simply because I don’t know how. Once in a great while, I’ll decide that an article of clothing transcends the acceptable wrinkle threshold, and I’ll clumsily poke at it with an iron until it’s riddled with profound creases and half-melted buttons. So, I don’t iron.

When I first met Mr. P, he wouldn’t wear anything unless it had been ironed. He even ironed his t-shirts. Apparently ironed clothes feel really great against the skin. Partly because of time constraints, partly because of my relentless teasing, he’s relaxed his “iron everything” policy in the past few years, but still insists that his buttoned-down shirts be meticulously ironed.

This, he must do himself, with a skill, dexterity, and wit that never fails to fill me with pride. My iron man.

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By Meredith – August 8, 2009

Book Love

Some people assume that, because I’m a reader, and because I work in the software industry, and because I enjoy listening to music on an iPody gadget doohickey, that I must be contemplating the acquisition of an e-book reader such as the Amazon Kindle or the Samsung Papyrus. Not only are these people overestimating my willingness to be an early adapter, they are also underestimating my hatred of e-book readers.

First, there’s the cost. One must shell out at least a couple of hundred bucks for the device itself, plus the books reportedly average around $9.99. No borrowing from the library, no loans from friends, no reselling the book after you’ve decided you never want to see the thing again, and no shoplifting.

(Like leafy green vegetables and basic health care, books are something that, ideally, should be free for all. But the ‘shoplifting’ thing is really just a joke. I mean, it’s been months since I’ve shoplifted a book.)

Second, there’s reportedly a massive amount of typographical and formatting errors in the e-books, a result of file conversion. Considering how lividly my blood pressure ratchets whenever I spy a typo in any writing that I have paid for, I’d be dead in a week.

And of course, what are you going to read if you’re on an airplane that’s taking off or landing? Sorry, friend-o, you’re out of luck if all you’ve got is an electronic book reader.

But the biggest problem with e-book readers is the absence of the physical book, the loss of intimacy with the book that comes from caressing each page and hearing the spine crack as you close and open the cover. Holding an electronic device is just mediocre.

The other day I was in one of my favorite book stores in Cambridge, Rodney’s, which specializes in rare, used and out-of-print books. Many of the books are 50 or more years old, and although they smell a tad funny, they are gorgeous. I covet them not for the prospect of their content, but because they are beautiful books, like a work of art.

I mean, look at the books pictured below. Beautiful! Reading them is like talking to a person whose beauty is so distracting that everything they say is just “Blah, blah, blah.”

It saddens me to think of the inevitable time in the future when all books are electronic, and paper books are relics of a primitive era, and there are no book stores in which to contemplate shelves full of beautiful literary objects. Does anyone else see the cruel metaphorical irony in the name “Kindle”?

 

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By Meredith – August 6, 2009

What My Day Would Have Been Like Had I Been On That Jury

Domestic violence, punching, strangulation, a drive-by shooting, and a beaten-to-death cat (here).

It’s a good thing I wasn’t picked to serve on the jury last Thursday, because I’m the woman who would be frequently jumping to her feet, pointing at the defendant, and shouting “FRY HIM.”

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By Meredith – August 5, 2009

How do you say “Holy Shit!” in Demotic?

While browsing eBay for used copies of Rosetta Stone language-learning software for French, I stumbled across the most amazing thing:

The Rosetta Stone! On eBay! For $24.99!

And there were no bids!

(OK it is stupid, but for some reason this eBay ad totally charmed me. I think it is the post title – “Rosetta Stone, The.” I love the gratuitous article appendage).

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By Meredith – August 4, 2009

Movie Review: Grande école

One facet of my multi-pronged approach to learning French through self-imposed cultural immersion involves watching French movies, so last week on Netflix, I queued dozens of French-language flicks to watch on DVD as well as via the “Watch Instantly” feature.

Mr. P was pleased. “Let’s watch Breathless,” he said as he browsed our Netflix Instant queue.

I recoiled, my mind already surfeited on French New Wave from our painful screening of Godard’s Masculin, féminin more than 2 months ago. “Hmmm… I kind of wanted to see this other movie in our queue,” I said. “It’s called Grande école.”

I leaned over Mr. P’s shoulder, clicked the movie in question, and read the summary: “This drama directed by Robert Salis and inspired by playwright Jean-Marie Besset examines how class, race and social standing still wield a mighty influence in modern-day France, most notably in the shark-infested waters of private school.”

Mr. P looked hesistant, so I pointed at the DVD’s cover illustration, which featured a background of bare torsos mashed together. “It looks pretty sexy!” I said in a mock-tempting voice.

So we ended up watching Grande école. And to quote my poor husband… I’ve never seen so much penis in my life.

The movie started out with a graphic heterosexual sex scene. But that’s pretty typical for French cinema. Hell, it’s pretty typical for French television.

About 15 minutes later there was a prolonged scene in a men’s locker room featuring 20, um, members of the French water polo team cavorting in the showers. Well, hello full frontal male nudity! What do you have to do with the plot?

The main character has a girlfriend, but he seems to have an undeniable fondness for good-looking men, including his dreamy upper-class roommate, and a handsome Arab maintenance worker at the school.

During a slightly odd scene, the main character and his roommate sit in bed together and the roommate reads a homoerotic passage of literature. At this point, Mr. P says “I know where this movie is going.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is a gay movie.”

“No it’s not! It’s about ‘class, race and social standing in the shark-infested waters of private school.'”

As if to expressly disprove me, the main character goes out to dinner with the handsome Arab maintenance worker, who kisses him and totally freaks him out. Then we promptly return to the men’s locker room for a 2-minute sequence of full frontal male nudity.

“Ok, turn it off!” I ordered Mr. P, who was sulking with his eyes half-closed. “I admit, it’s a gay movie. An extremely gay movie.”

“Of course it’s a gay movie,” Mr. P said. “You couldn’t tell from the beginning? The way the characters talked, walked, dressed, stared at each other’s penises?”

“No, I didn’t think it was gay. I just thought it was French!”

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By Meredith – August 3, 2009

Live Bloggin’ Jury Duty

“Jury Duty: Your civic obligation” said the postcard in the mail, informing me that I was due to appear at the Middlesex County superior court in Woburn at 8am today.

I always thought that my primary civic obligation was to wear clothes. Anyway…

As of 10:15am, there’s not too much action in the jury pool. We were greeted by a court officer who won over the surly crowd with his Red Sox references, then we watched the same 18 minute orientatory video that I remember from 3 years ago, and then we received a visit from an actual Superior Court judge who droned on a bit about how rewarding and fulfilling jury duty could be. She finished with a quote from Bill Clinton’s inaugural address:

But for fate, we—the fortunate and the unfortunate—might have been each other.

Not an ingratiating quote to just randomly bust out, but I believe that she was referring to us (the prospective jurors) as the fortunate, and the derelicts that we are about to convict as the unfortunate, but we’ll see what happens as my civic obligation progresses…

UPDATE 6:30PM

Well, not 5 minutes after I wrote that, civic obligation took me and the other 95 members of the jury pool to a courtroom for potential impanelment on a criminal case. The judge read us the list of charges against the defendant: Two counts of attempted murder, 10 counts of assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, two counts of witness intimidation, three counts of animal cruelty and stalking (at home, I went home and googled the news article, which is here). And then the judge warned us that the trial might take 5 days.

Attempted murder?Assault and battery? Animal cruelty? The jury pool stared at the defendant, a large bald African-American man who looked clean-cut and intelligent in his suit and glasses. As the list of potential witnesses was read, I felt woozy just thinking about all of the testimony about violence that this jury would be forced to consider. There was no way I could serve on this jury.

Luckily my number was 81, so I was pretty much guaranteed not to be called for potential impanelment. Yet I still had to sit in the courtroom all day long as numbers 1-68 were questioned. I had my excuse all ready — “To be honest, Judge, this sounds like it could be a graphic and violent trial, and I guarantee that I’ll faint at least once” — but I’m glad I didn’t have to use it.  We were released at 4:18pm. Civic obligation FULFILLED.

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By Meredith – July 30, 2009

Tales from the T

Alewife Station, 8am.

You know what I love about the MBTA? They can turn the most mundane, boring, routine weekday commute into an adventure.

This morning I arrived at Alewife station on the verge of sweating profusely from walking 1.5 miles in the sunless muggy malaise. Same old boring walk to the same old boring stairs to the same old boring turnstiles, when…

“The Red Line is not running!” a feminine voice inflicted with a murderous Boston accent shrieked down into the belly of the station from the ground-level busway. “I repeat, the Red Line is not running!”

Hmm. This woman could be a lunatic, or she could be a MBTA employee. Most likely, she was both.

“Shuttle buses are upstairs!” she shrieked. Upon reflection, it was a bad idea to listen to an MBTA employee who evidently lacked the authority to use the intercom, but I rushed upstairs to the bus way and crammed myself onto the single idling shuttle bus. I considered myself lucky, because hundreds of people pour into Alewife every ten minutes, so I’d say they were going to be needing a few more buses.

I hate buses, I really do. I especially hate standing on a bus, in lurching stop and go traffic, with somebody’s backpack forcing my torso against a stranger’s shoulder, griping a slightly oily pole, while staring out the window at all the single-occupant SUVs driving by.

It took 25 minutes for the bus to reach Davis Square, the next Red Line stop. A crowd several hundred strong was packed on the Davis Square subway platform, and an automated voice apologized for the “delays to a switching problem” (aka ‘we’re having trouble pushing a button.’) After ten minutes, a train finally pulled up…. the train was coming from Alewife…. and wouldn’t you know? There were people on it. So many people that I couldn’t get on the train. Or the next one. I had taken a bus from Alewife to Davis Square so that I could watch trains coming from Alewife leave without me.

I arrived at work 55 minutes later, unvented rage percolating in my stomach like a head of raw poorly-chewed cabbage.

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By Meredith – July 29, 2009

Walker the Trash Talker

Former Boston Celtic Antoine Walker, the pudgy trash-talker whose unpredictable 3-point shooting could make my heart alternately soar and lurch, has been arrested for writing bad checks in Vegas. Specifically, Toine is accused of “failing to make good on 10 checks totaling $1 million written last July through January at Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood and the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas (here)”

Sounds like Toine has a little bit of a gambling problem!

It doesn’t surprise me, because towards the end of his career, he was taking a lot of crap shots.

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By Meredith – July 28, 2009

Movie Review: Séraphine

Well, the 14th annual Boston French Film Festival closed yesterday with a screening of Séraphine, and although I didn’t see any of the other 19 films, I feel confident in proclaiming Séraphine as the highlight of the festival. Let’s review some of the descriptions of the other films :

Rumba: In this deadpan and near-silent comedy, a tango-loving couple remains optimistic in the face of tragedy.

La belle personne: This film follows the complex romantic relationships of Parisian high school students—and their teachers.

Cliente: A matter-of-fact comedy about the world’s oldest profession.

(The French have gifted the world with some of the finest writers, philosophers, artists, and certainly the premiere cuisine… but there’s a particularly grating quality to their music and cinema).

Séraphine is a historical drama based on the life of French painter Séraphine Louis (quirky housekeeper by day, holy-rolling banshee painter by night.)  It won seven César awards (France’s Oscars) in 2009, including best actress and best film, a category in which it was up against 4 matter-of-fact comedies about the world’s oldest profession.

Séraphine is a middle-aged domestic worker and laundress, fiercely devout in her religious faith as well as her love of nature. She toils for coins that she uses to buy white paint and then concocts vivid colors by mixing it with animal blood, wax, leaves, and seeds. She paints late at night while singing warbling hymns. She claims that her guardian angel tells her what to paint.

Séraphine, you see, is a lunatic.

sera-1As fate would have it, one of Séraphine’s customers is noted German art collector Willhelm Uhde, who recognizes the genius of Séraphine’s paintings and buys all of her work. Then World War I breaks out, and he leaves France, while Séraphine loses her mind even more. When he returns, her paintings are more wonderful than ever (see left), but her mental state is precarious at best.

I loved the narrative story, the cinematography, the well-worn theme of the ‘crazy eccentric artist’ from the vantage point of a middle-aged Frenchwoman who scrubs floors and launders sheets. I loved this movie. If you have Netflix, go add Séraphine to your queue. Honestly,  you’d never guess it is a French film (except for the fact that everyone’s speaking French).

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By Meredith – July 27, 2009

Owl’s Head 4025′ July 25 2009

When a person makes that fateful decision to hike all 48 of the White Mountain 4000 Footers, they probably don’t know about Owl’s Head.

But when they start planning their hiking trips, Owl’s Head will quickly loom large as the biggest pain-in-the-ass peak on the whole damn list. The shortest route to this remote summit is 18 miles round trip (although bushwhacking shortcuts can shave off a mile or two), is mud-prone, and has 3-4 mildly difficult brook crossings. The 1.6 mile-long Owl’s Head Path to the summit is not marked, not maintained, riddled with wet rocks and fallen trees, and runs literally straight up the side of the mountain. And the kicker: the summit is heavily wooded with no redeeming views. Sounds great, sign me up!

“Bring extra flashlight batteries,” is the joke about Owl’s Head, so we started early. We woke up in Boston at 5am, dipped in the shower, stuffed our backpacks with enough rations to support 18 miles of hiking, and hit the road. The radio programming at 5:30am is light and soft — even the hard rock stations were playing lite Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rod Stewart, and Beatles — until we got to central New Hampshire, where there are no qualms about breaking out AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” at 7am. Stay classy, NH.

By 8am we were on the Lincoln Woods trail, and by 8:05am, it had started to rain. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes and was not recurring, but it seemed ominous. Still, it was a gorgeous morning and we enjoyed the calm, scenic woods.

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We walked and walked on the flat, muddy terrain. We bushwhacked a shortcut that may have saved us distance (~1 mile) but certainly not time, so we didn’t reach the Owl’s Head Path until noon. Since the path is unofficial and park rangers usually dismantle cairns, a permanent arrow is etched into a tree to mark the path:

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We encountered a surprising number of hikers on the punishing Owl’s Head Path — all fellow peak-baggers, because who else goes to Owl’s Head? It’s notorious as the peak that everyone procrastinates bagging, but there were some hikers like us, who still have a dozen or so to go and wanted to get it out of the way.

The steep climb was agonizing, certainly one of the hardest yet.

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Owl’s Head Path may have sucked, but at least we had a rewarding view of the east side of Franconia Notch:

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The lack of trailmarkers confused us at times, but overall the path was well worn by other peak baggers and pretty easy to follow. Still, when we finally reached the summit cairn (which had recently been relocated .2 miles from an old false summit), I really wanted Owl’s Head to just kiss my ass.

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After much nagging, I convinced Mr. Pinault to pose in a similar manner (“Come on! Tell Owl’s Head to kiss your ass!”), and if I ever needed confirmation that my husband is heterosexual…

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As we made our way back down Owl’s Head Path (leaving several large groups of hikers at the summit — one woman exclaimed “Wow, it’s busier than Monadnock up here!”) we saw the most amazing, wonderful thing that made Owl’s Head totally worth it: A baby moose!

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The baby moose was totally unfazed by our presence. In fact, she was most interested in us, and let me get very close to her. I thought maybe she has been fed food by other hikers, for she stared at us expectantly, so I tossed a tomato at her feet. It rolled away from her, so I inched closer to retrieve it and toss it again. This time it hit her hoof. She didn’t seem to notice it, but she began moaning at me. “Go ahead, it’s organic,” I said, but of course a moose doesn’t know what a tomato is, so we bid her reluctant goodbye and continued on our way.

We didn’t make it back to the car until 7pm. Our legs and backs ached, we were covered in mud and bug bites, and we had to drive 2.5 hours back to Boston. But bonding with the baby moose made the trip totally worth it.

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By Meredith – July 26, 2009