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Piano Pick

Tonight at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I saw the most amazing thing. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 featured renowned classical pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who, according to her website, is “Japanese by birth, trained in Vienna… and is happy to call herself an Englishwoman.” Uchida bounced on stage to great applause and sat at the formable glossy black Steinway. A wisp of a woman wearing loose, colorful crepe clothing, she looked very New Age and relaxed. The orchestra started playing, and Uchida bobbed her head in rhythm, smiling serenely as she waited for her cue. Uchida is most famous for her Mozart concertos, which are well-suited for her crisp, blithe style. The audience tensed in anticipation of Uchida’s entrance into the animated melody. Uchida steadied herself on the stool, faced the keyboard, and then, to the collective horror of Symphony Hall, proceeded to pick her nose. Twice. It was truly the most amazing thing. Perhaps she was getting in touch with her inner Mozart. And then, she played.

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By Meredith – January 22, 2008

Movie Reviews: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Before the Devil Knows Your Dead

Sometimes, I crave a movie that has been focus-tested by a studio to be as uplifting as possible. I want cinema to serve as an escape from reality’s doldrums. I want romance, sexy sex, an obvious villain, and a sugary, fizzy, Hollywood happy ending that I’ll forget about the next day.

By those standards, both The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Before the Devil Knows Your Dead are horrible movies. Had I been craving meaningful misfortune that forces me to rethink my entire existence and that of humanity’s to boot, well, then they are near-masterpieces.

I went into The Diving Bell and the Butterfly knowing only that it was a French film by the American director of Basquiat. I didn’t know that it was filmed entirely in a hospital from the perspective of a man waking from a coma after a massive stroke that has paralyzed his body except for his left eye. This knowledge would have precluded me seeing the movie, as I am squeamish and easily upset by medical catastrophes. But Mr. Pinault convinced me to come along since “You can practice your French.” Yeah, and I can also practice not fainting in crowded movie theaters.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was supposed to be inspiring: Live every day as if it were your last! Don’t let anything get in the way of your passions! There are no limits to your imagination! But I left the cinema teary and inconsolable for the remainder of the evening. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has won Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film and is generally acknowledged to be the Best Movie Ever. It is also a serious, serious bummer.

When I heard Before the Devil Knows Your Dead was a heist-gone-bad movie starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, and directed by Sidney Lumet (who directed one of my all-time favorite films Dog Day Afternoon), I was expecting light violence and slight goofiness. Instead, the movie started out bleak and got progressively bleaker, with mounting follies finally exploding in full-blown misanthropic tragedy. Yes, it was a good movie, but only a Schadenfreude connoisseur could of enjoyed it.

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By Meredith – January 21, 2008

The Perfect Lead

In many forms of written discourse, the opening line(s) are not as important as the body or the conclusion. Take this paragraph, for example. Total fribble – I’ll make up for it later.

But in journalism, the lead paragraph of an article is make-or-break. It contains the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the news event. This formula allows readers to skim a newspaper and quickly decide if an item is of interest. After the lead, journalists tack on details in order of importance, to assist copy editors who must lob off content to physically layout the newspaper. Hence, most news articles start spastically and ramble to an abrupt, boring finish.

The modus to which journalists must operandi doesn’t allow for much creativity, so when I see a lead paragraph that satisfies all of the traditional criteria while establishing itself as hard news and soft news and using compelling literary devices like active conditional second-person voice, well, I must applaud it. The following lead belongs in journalism textbooks:

Drive across Virginia with an outsized rubber replica of testicles dangling from your trailer hitch and you face a fine under a bill before the General Assembly.

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By Meredith – January 20, 2008

Robert Frost Beer Pong

A few weeks ago, at least 50 teenagers broke into a historic Vermont farmhouse where Robert Frost once lived and held a drunken gathering, causing an estimated $10,000 worth of damage and destroying many irreplacable artifacts. It was Frost himself who wrote “Good fences make good neighbors”. Perhaps this quaint adage warrants modernizing: “Good security cameras, survellience equipment, and attack dogs make good neighbors.”

Robert Frost spent his summmers and falls at Homer Noble Farm in rural Ripton, Vermont and taught at nearby Middlebury College for over thirty years until his death in 1963. When Frost famously said “I go to school the youth to learn the future,” surely he could not have foreseen the youth of the future playing beer pong in his living room.

At least 20 people have been charged and will receive citations to appear in court, “mostly for unlawful trespass and unlawful mischief”. Perhaps the criminals could curry favor with the judge by using Frost’s own words to admit their guilt: “We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint.”

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By Meredith – January 17, 2008

It’s Not Easy Being Greengrocer

Mr. P and I are preparing for our civil ceremony next week. The real marriage ceremonies aren’t until September and October 2008, so we will be saving our sentiment until then. The civil ceremony will be just us sighing impatiently while the Justice of the Peace signs the marriage license so that Mr. P can apply for his Green Card… which, as I’ve been telling him all along, is the card that you get when you marry a Green.

Of course, after next week, I’ll no longer be a Green. I considered briefly keeping my name – Green is actually a terrific last name – but there were no other compelling reasons to keep it. Many women fear that they will lose their identity, but I got this here web site to keep me rooted. That’s right, I may give up my name, but I’m keeping my domain! Other women want to carry on their heritage. Well, I’m very fond of my last name, but I’m hardly the last Green out there. And some women have professional reasons for keeping their name. Well, I’m just not that successful.

Hyphenating my name was never an option, for a very good reason that I will explain with help of an antecdote:

In Middle School, I had a history teacher named Mr. Todd who was fond of taking roll every day by rapidly reading our last names from an alphabetical list. We had 3 seconds to yelp “Here!” lest Mr. Todd be forced to repeat the name while raising his eyes to confirm the absence of the student in question.

Yes, it was very Ferris Bueller?… Bueller?… except Mr. Todd had a lot more piss and vinegar. It was like Fitzgerald! (here) Grady! (here) Green! (here) Grosser! (here) And one day, Mr. Todd stopped the roll call – an unprecedented occurrence – and said “Green Grosser, har, har, har. You two should get married, har har har. Then you could be Meredith Green-Grosser.”

For a seventh-grade girl who suffered public mortification on a daily basis, it was as if he had very suddenly pulled down my pants. Everyone laughed except for me and the unfortunate Grosser boy who had already suffered undue hardship due to his name.

And I decided right then and there never to hyphenate my name. Because then, Green becomes an adjective.

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By Meredith – January 16, 2008

Candy Review: Jolt Gum

I discovered Jolt Caffeine Energy Gum while in a checkout line at KMart. Pride forces me to clarify that I am not a frequent KMart shopper, and I’m opposed to these types of ginormous big-box stores, partly out of environmental and societal concerns, and partly out of snobbery. But last Saturday, we happened to be driving in Somerville and I spied the KMart Garden Center. Hoping to score some cheap plant containers, I urged Mr. Pinault to pull over.

It’s been at least 12 years since I’ve been in a KMart, and Mr. Pinault is a complete KMart virgin. As we walked through the parking lot, I teased Mr. Pinault – “Omigod, I can’t believe you’re going to KMart!” – but I shut up the moment we entered the vast, cavernous store. An intricate maze of towering shelves fanned out before us, inviting us into a labryinth of cheap Chinese imports. Abject people milled through the aisles, leaning on their steel-caged carriages, their eyes dully darting from product to product to product. A hush filled the store, and it was louder than any audible noise could be. We had entered a capitalist purgatory.

We discovered that the Garden Center was currently functioning as a “75% off” clearance area for Christmas decorations. At least 20 mostly Hispanic women sorted through giant bins and queued for the electronic price checker to check the discount on snowflake napkin rings and Nativity scene lamb figurines.

On the way out, we decided to buy some laundry detergent. All 3 checkout lines were mobbed by people with absolutely full carriages. The cashier would slowly seize one item, scan it, then place it in an individual plastic bag. Every so often, the customer would question the price of an item and decide they didn’t want it. The cashier would then have to void the item, a process that required a manager to type a code onto the register’s touchscreen. Nobody seemed impatient or in a rush; I guess it’s either this or Saturday afternoon television.

My attention wandered to the crammed candy display, where I spotted Jolt Caffeine Energy gum (2 pieces equals 1 cup of coffee! With ginseng and guarana!) I was intruigued enough to buy the gum. When we finally made it out of KMart, I popped two pieces in my mouth. The taste was pretty gross, but I chewed. After about five minutes, I discerned a rush of caffeine. I inexplicably wanted to cry, so I spit out the gum and drank some water until my heart calmed down. Jolt Gum made me feel like KMart makes me feel: Anxious, slightly ill, and upset that such a thing exists.

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By Meredith – January 15, 2008

Flashback #2

I’m still combing through this web site’s archives in search of posts for my planned Best-of feature. I’m only about 20% done, but this process is proving to be most enlightening. My first realization was: Holy crap, I’ve written a lot of words for little recognition and no money! Luckily, my second realization mitigated this outrage: My writing style is honed and toned to the bone (I just made that up, and then Googled it to certify its originality. Proof positive!)

You know those Before & After pictures of people who’ve lost hundreds of pounds? In 2003, my writing weighed 400 pounds. It was sluggish, lethargic, and couldn’t scale a single flight of stairs without panting. Here’s a post, in its entirety, from October 13, 2003:

Happy Columbus Day. Of course, it would be a much happier Columbus Day if I didn’t have work. It’s like I’m freaking Bob Cratchit. At least the commute is smooth and I don’t have to deal with the Tuesday morning after a three day weekend. Those are brutal.

Omigod, how flabby is that writing? But I wrote every day, and pound by pound, my writing slimmed down to a svelte 140 pounds. It’s confident, energetic, and enjoying life. From March 20, 2006, here’s a review of the men’s fragrance Voyage by Nautica:

Though the name implies adventure and exploration, this generic marine scent is strictly for a routine day at office. If you close your eyes and let the odor waft deep into your nostril, you can pretend you’re on a 46 foot cruising yacht, the sea water misting onto your Helly Hanson offshore jacket while you gaze at the expansive ocean in Yves Saint Laurent Aviator sunglasses and nurse a Smirnoff Lime and Cola. But open your eyes. You’re staring at an Excel spreadsheet while the guy in the next cubicle clips his fingernails and munches on peanut M and Ms, and you smell like generic aspirational tedium.

Yes, it took a lot of hard work, but my writing finally feels confident and sexy in a swimsuit.

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By Meredith – January 14, 2008

Mmmmm, Bridezilla

A friend emailed me this picture of a bride in Texas whose wedding cake is a full-size likeness of herself (here). Wow. The pure bridal narcissism. Isn’t there at least a little plastic groom, perhaps perched on her massive cake shoulder, or baked inside of her like a king cake?

While I wouldn’t mind having a 68-inch tall cake (my love of cake is legendary) at my wedding, there would be something Kafkaesque about watching people eating a giant cake me.

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By Meredith – January 11, 2008

Snowballs in Hell

Bombs aren’t the only things dropping from the sky in Baghdad. Friday morning, residents in Iraq’s capital were stunned to see snowflakes, which is such a unique event that many residents refer to the snow as a type of rain (“the sky is raining snow”). You know how the Eskimos reportedly have over a 1000 words for snow? Apparently, the Iraqis have one: Rain.

The appearance of snow filled many Iraqis with delight and optimism. Oh, how lovely to see the snow drifting through the air. It’s a message from God. It’s a sign that every little thing is gonna be alright. Hallelujah, it’s raining snow! Hell has frozen over!

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By Meredith – January 11, 2008

Ode to W00T

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2007 is W00t. This is old news, because W00t was crowned way back in December 2007, but by now, you’ve probably forgotten what “w00t” means (it’s defined as an interjection for “expressing joy.”)

I had no idea what w00t meant before reading the announcement. I had never seen the word, since it is only ever used “in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t…the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for ‘we owned the other team.'” Ah, 133t. That is, Leet. Once a slang used by hackers to communicate quickly, Leet has evolved into a full-blown corruption of English – the cool language of a generation. It proudly disregards proper capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It employs a limited vocabulary that often follows intuition. In other words, d00d, l33t sux0r.

Merriam Webster president John Morse applauded W00t’s selection, saying it blends “whimsy and technology.” No. It blends the infinite degradation of language with online gaming. And Merriam-Webster’s condoning of W00t shows that they’re willing to compromise their prestige as Noah Webster’s lexicographical heirs for a marketing effort to appear hip and impress people who obviously aren’t reading dictionaries anyway.

Sometimes I am so flummoxed by humanity’s asininity, that I feel like it’s time to head to the elephants’ graveyard.

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By Meredith – January 10, 2008