(Title should be sung, as so:)

I bought an ice cream maker on a whim a month or so ago — I had been reading the tumblrs I follow and someone had posted a picture of strawberry ice cream with the note “I think this means I need to get myself an ice cream maker” and I thought to myself, “How much do ice cream makers go for, anyway?” And I Googled and found one for a lot less than I’d been expecting, and marked down to boot. I took it as a sign and I bought it. I now count it as one of the best impulse buys I’ve ever made. Three words: EMERGENCY ICE CREAM. You know those days or nights when something happens and you either need to celebrate or wallow? (It is a testimony to ice cream’s greatness that it can be used in both situations. What else can? Alcohol. Alcohol and ice cream — all I need in life.) And you might not have ice cream in your freezer because you’re trying to be “good” about what you eat? Whip out the ice cream maker and in 30 minutes you’ll have delicious preservative-free ice cream. Provided you have the necessary ingredients: cream, milk, sugar, vanilla. So you’ll need to, like, prepare for emergency ice cream. It will be worth it.

I’ve always had a weakness for ice cream, plain old vanilla or loaded up Ben and Jerry’s style. As a kid one of my favorite times of the year was when the Dairy Queens opened for summer — that first soft-serve cone was such a treat. Here in Fort Greene I believe the season will be marked not by the reappearance of Mr. Softee (who’s been cruising around since early March for some reason) but by the reinstatement of the General Greene Ice Cream Cart, which serves Philadelphia-style ice cream (no eggs or cooking) in a variety of wonderful flavors. It is surprisingly rich and complex for so few ingredients.

I do have a favorite kind of ice cream: salted caramel. The best I’ve ever had was in San Francisco at The Bi-Rite Creamery — so smooth and custardy and with large salt crystals right in it to balance the caramel’s sweetness. (The Bi-Rite is also where I picked up my “Good to the last lick” t-shirt, to date the wink-wink-nudge-nudgiest shirt I own). I have a much more pronounced salt tooth than sweet tooth, and sweet + salt is just about the best thing ever. I have dipped french fries into chocolate malts, and have sprinkled a bit of salt on ice cream like Grandpa Gene does in that one episode of Mad Men. It’s important to get the balance just right, and salted caramel ice cream does that.

So I knew that sooner rather than later I would attempt to make my own salted caramel ice cream. I found a couple recipes — one from David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop and therefore the leading ice cream making expert, and one from epicurious.com, which is a utilitarian source for recipes of all kinds. After reviewing them both I opted to go with the epicurious recipe as it seemed less complicated and fiddly.

I will apologize now for not having a lot of photos of this process, but I wasn’t initially planning on writing about this. Also, this isn’t a food blog. But I’m sure to make this ice cream again and will see what I can do about documenting the steps.

The first thing I had to do was melt sugar in a skillet. This was more fun than I thought it would be, and it took longer than I expected, probably because I wasn’t melting the sugar IN anything. You just pour the sugar into a skillet and turn on the gas and stir it around until it liquifies, which all of a sudden it does — I was worrying at the way my sugar was still dry and unmelty when I noticed that there was a small pool of light amber expanding from the center of my skillet. COOL.

Once the melted sugar looked dark amber enough, I added the cream. The note that the “mixture will splatter” when adding the cream to the melted sugar was helpful, but equally helpful would have been a note saying the melted sugar will instantly harden and stick to your stirring implement because THIS is caramel and this is what caramel DOES. As it was I had a moment of “fuck I am doing this WRONG” until I realized that the hardened caramel was melting in the heating cream. So I let it cook, and it bubbled cheerfully, and then I was mightily pleased with myself because I had MADE MY OWN CARAMEL.

I live for these little triumphant I MADE THIS moments, even if they follow on the heels of “that was a lot easier than I thought it would be” moments.

The custard proved to be a little trickier. I was heating the milk/cream/sugar on low as I whisked the eggs together, concerned that I would cook the liquid too much. Pouring half of that liquid in a “slow steady stream” while continuing to whisk was when I wished I had an extra hand. I wasn’t able to get a slow steady stream as it was — the heated milk and cream just sort of gurgled its way into the eggs in blubs and spurts. I don’t think that was too much of an issue. I do think once I poured that into the main saucepan I cooked it for a little too long, because I found a couple solid custardy pieces as I poured in the cooled caramel. Would having a thermometer have prevented that? Not sure.

The most difficult part of the whole process was leaving the bowl of salted caramel custard in the fridge for 3-6 hours to cool down. I diligently stirred as I was instructed to, but couldn’t help tasting the spoon after each trip to the fridge. I went through a lot of spoons that night.

I wound up added a 1/4 (or maybe 1/2) teaspoon of kosher salt to the mix just before it stopped churning in the ice cream maker, and it was just the right amount of salt to balance the caramel. I wish I had a picture of the finished ice cream, but as you might expect, it’s all gone now.

No related posts.

I love Ben. I love Ben so much. Name me another character who is so deceitful, manipulative, Machiavellian, and yet so fragile and emotionally vulnerable. I loved Lost before he showed up, but he is without a doubt the best thing that ever happened to the show. You know a Ben-centric episode is going to be excellent. This one was.

I liked the Sideways stuff last week, but this was the best one yet — even with the wholly unsubtle Napolean lecture (I laughed, I’ll admit it, but seriously?). This is probably because it directly related to things that had happened and were still happening on the island. Most importantly, Ben is given a(nother) chance to save Alex, under a similar if not as violent set of circumstances — he’s faced with the choice between his own power and destroying her life. And Sideways Ben chooses wisely. I wasn’t the only one whose heartstrings were tugged on repeatedly while watching Ben tutor Alex, was I?

But then Island Ben chooses wisely as well, after an entire episode in which his attempts to cajole, persuade, bribe or blackmail — all of which have been successful in the past — are soundly rejected. And he returns to the group on the beach not as a leader, or anyone in charge of anything, but as one of them. And left out of the reunion, though I think Jack notices him there, at the end.

In the Sideways World, we learn that Ben and his father had indeed gone to the island to be a part of the DI, but then left. Why? Ben’s father is also a decent man, just as we can presume Locke’s father is, so I wonder if the Sideways World is like everyone’s second chance. Anyone who was on the island prior to Juliet detonating the bomb somehow gets a do-over. (Arzt was already dead, so he remains the blowhard he was before.) (Oh, Arzt.)

Sideways Ben relies on microwaveable dinners and store-bought sushi. I seem to recall Island Ben being a pretty good cook, so that’s interesting in a “huh” sort of way.

And there was just that one moment, when Arzt gleefully tells Ben “you’re a real killer!” as they plot the dethroning of Principal Reynolds (William Atherton — inspired casting, that) where Ben looks down and to the side as if maybe he sort of remembers that in some other configuration of his life he was literally a killer.

What else…

The big scene with Jack and Richard is important for a few reasons. First, Richard indicates that if Jacob touches you, you can’t die. Or rather, you can’t take your own life. Jacob touched Locke, Locke WAS going to kill himself but Ben interrupted him. And then Ben killed Locke. So that much is consistent.

This makes me wonder whether Jacob had previously touched Ilana, and wore gloves when he came to visit her in the hospital because he couldn’t touch her again, like Ned on Pushing Daisies. (I miss that show. Can a current show crossover with a cancelled show? Because that would be awesome.)

It also occurred to me last night that Jack and Richard are a lot alike, in a sort of Ben/Locke way, but I didn’t write that thought down and now I don’t remember why I thought that.

But that scene between them reminded me of a couple earlier episodes — it’s Jack who initially wants the timer in the hatch to run down because he thinks nothing is going to happen if it does; later it’s Locke who is so convinced. It also shows how far Jack’s come since Season 1 — that was a pretty huge leap of faith he took there, and while he’s always HAD faith, he never really put much stock in it before. But now — he got whatever it was that Jacob wanted him to get. He knows that he’s got some sort of purpose there, even if he doesn’t know what it is. He sounded exactly like the Locke of old.

And now I’m pretty sure we’re not going to get any special Richard episode, because it’s pretty clear that he did arrive on the Black Rock, as a slave (remember Smokey’s “Good to see you out of those chains”). It’s also clear that he never knew what was going on at all, the whole time he’s been on the island — which is actually pretty surprising, considering how the show seemingly set him up as the one who did have all the answers.

There are only six candidates left: One of the Kwons, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, Kate, and . . . Frank? Desmond? Walt? I think signs are pointing to Frank, considering the conversation he has with Ben, where Ben points out that even though Frank missed his chance to pilot Oceanic 815, the island got him in the end.

For what it’s worth, the books in Sawyer’s old tent are Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (OF COURSE) and something by Benjamin Disraeli. The title appears to be Justice and Truth in Action, which is not the title of anything Disraeli wrote. One of his more famous quotes is, however, “Justice IS truth in action.” So again, interesting in a “huh” sort of way.

Aaaaaaaaaand Widmore. Widmore! So it was WIDMORE that Jacob was referring to, when he told Hurley that someone was coming to the island, and needed help getting there. And then when Jack smashed the mirrors, Jacob assured Hurley that this person would find another way. Indeed. Submarines don’t need lighthouses.

BUT: Widmore is one of the good guys? He had been in Jacob’s camp, way back when, before he was exiled for whatever it was (fathering a child off island, I think. Right?) Is it possible that Widmore and Ben were always on the same side, i.e. against the Man in Black, but jockeying for who was going to be the Chosen Candidate? And I’m still a little confused by what Ben meant then, after Alex was killed, that Widmore “changed the rules.” Anyone?

No related posts.

The following was inspired by a writing prompt courtesy of Write One Leaf.

My family wasn’t the outdoorsy kind (too much nature), but I don’t think it’s possible to grow up in Minnesota and NOT go fishing at least once. And while ice fishing is definitely something one needs to experience — again, at least once — it’s lake fishing, in the middle of summer, on a 90 degree day, with a peerless cloudless sky, in placid waters, that I remember with such fondness. I don’t remember the first time I went fishing, but I do remember going out one day in North Dakota, during the month I was visiting my father, though my dad didn’t go with us. Again, not the outdoorsy type. Instead, one of his colleagues and friends took me out with his two sons, one of whom was roughly my age, out to some park or another that must have been outside Grand Forks because honestly, there isn’t a lot of natural beauty that I remember in Grand Forks. It’s been a while since I’ve been back, so forgive me if I’m wrong.

We had a picnic-style lunch of hot dogs and chips and pop (I say soda now, but I want to stay true to my Midwestern roots for this story), and then set out in a motor boat, life jackets at the ready. For the purposes of this story I’m going to make this the first time I’d gone fishing, and I’m going to say that this is why my dad sent me along without him, because he had no interest in it but knew that I was keen. And so Ed and his sons whose names I have forgotten (Tom? Mike?) taught me how to how to bait my hook, first offering to do it for me. I took that to imply “cuz you’re a girl” and I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I said, “I can bait my own hook, just show me how.” And I put a worm piece on my hook, remembering at the time how I used to dig up the backyard looking for worms because I thought they were fascinating creatures, and I used to collect them and put them in plastic buckets of dirt and I guess I was trying to start my own worm farm? But then my grandmother caught on to what I was doing and berated me for digging up her lawn, and that was the end of my worm farm enterprise.

We sat in the boat for what felt like hours, drinking pop and eating chips and listening to the water lap at our boat. We weren’t catching anything, and the boys and I were becoming frustrated, and we were running out of worms, because the fish would grab the worms right off the hooks and say thanks for the snack and then rush off again to tell their friends that there were free snacks availalbe if they were careful enough. I’d just lost my last worm but I didn’t want to give up fishing because I liked the experiment in patience, the possibility that at any moment something could happen, and the tranquility that comes with being on the water. (On certain summer days, those around me will hear me openly long to be on a boat. And not on the Hudson or East River. I mean on a lake, far away from anything. Give me a canoe and a paddle and push me off.)

We had leftover hot dogs, so I reached into the cooler, found the uneaten dogs, broke off a small chunk of one, and put it on my hook. The boys laughed at me. Fish don’t like hot dogs, they jeered. That’s never gonna work. I shrugged, because clearly they didn’t get it, and flung my hook back into the lake. Within minutes, I had a bite. A real bite, not a tug that would’ve told me that I’d just lost my worm to a hungry fish. This fish was threatening to pull my fishing pole right out of my hands if I wasn’t careful. I whooped, and Ed was right there to back me up. He told me how to move with the fish as I reeled it in, he held my shoulders down so I wouldn’t get jerked around. I held on, and while the fish wasn’t that big I felt like I was in danger of getting pulled right off the boat. The end of the pole was starting to chafe, my arm muscles were straining, it was all happening too fast and too slow at the same time. But we finally got the fish out of the water, and I whooped again, looking triumphantly at the boys who dismissed my hot dog experiment. I’d caught the first fish. I’d caught the only fish that day.

No related posts.

Whee hoo! Sorry for the delay, but I didn’t want to post this until all the blog transfer stuff got sorted. Don’t get too attached to the way it looks — I just wanted something other than the default generic blog theme. And with that, here’s this week’s episode nutshellified:

Well. That was some fucked up shit. G’night everybody!

(Kidding. Obvs.)

Dork observation: This season’s episodes have been repeating Season 1 in terms of who each episode centers around, they’ve both gone from Jack to Kate to Locke to Jack. Tuesday’s episode should have focused on Sun, then, but instead it focused on Sayid. And yet! S1E5 was called “House of the RISING Sun,” while S6E5 is called “SunDOWN.” Neato!

“Sundown” had the first Sideways world installment that didn’t feel as though it forced connections between people (yes, I noted the passing glance between Sayid and Jack, but at least Jack wasn’t the attending physician on his brother’s case). Keamy was the last person I would’ve expected to see back, but it made absolute random sense that he’d be the shark who’d loaned Sayid’s brother money. And that it was Jin locked up in the meat locker also made total sense — Keamy was the one who was going to get the watch from Mr. Paik. I think he’s wearing it, too. (I didn’t get to watch the previews for next week — does it look like it will focus on Sun? That would be nice, because what the hell happened to her when Jin was taken away?)

I was weirded out not that Nadia was married (the minute I saw the flowers in Sayid’s hand I knew that’s what would happen) but that she married Sayid’s brother, even though Sayid still loves her. The whole “I don’t deserve you” business was so Victorian romance literature, too, and I’m not sure I liked it. Also, remember that Sayid’s brother is the one their father berated and belittled for not killing a chicken. Then Sayid had stepped up and killed the chicken for his brother, so it stands to reason that his brother would turn to Sayid for help of the killing kind again.

I don’t think it much matters at this point, but was Sayid’s trip really to translate contracts for an oil company? Or is that a cover for what he was doing in the original timeline — which was to help the CIA capture his former friend-turned-terrorist. It was Nadia that the CIA dangled in front of Sayid as bait for helping them. But in this timeline he’s clearly been in contact with her already, so maybe the terrorist aspect doesn’t exist in the sideways world. (Doesn’t explain why he carries her photo around with him, unless it’s to always remind him that he’s not worthy. Sideways Sayid = Sydney Carton.)

Also, if you’re going to introduce a boomerang in Act One, you’re going to have to have it break a vase in Act Three.

On the island . . . DAMN. Two main things:

1. How many times in the last five seasons has Sayid either directly stated or implied that he was already dead? Something dark has been growing inside of him for a long time, I’d say from the time he tortured Sawyer.

2. Why is it that Sayid always has to prove himself through violence?

The initial fight between Sayid and Dogen was pretty fierce, but I was taken out of the moment when Dogen sees the baseball fall off the table. Like it’s his Rosebud or something. And when Sayid asks Dogen point blank why Dogen didn’t kill him then, Dogen responds indirectly with the story of how/why he’s on the island. I didn’t much care for that. And besides, I thought Dogen didn’t kill Sayid then because he’s not able to kill candidates any more than Smokey.

Do you think that Dogen knew Sayid wouldn’t be able to kill Smokey, or was Sayid not able to do it because Smokey managed to speak first? Was Dogen hoping that Smokey would kill Sayid instead? Because that makes no sense, as Dogen must know that Smokey’s not able to kill the candidates (or is that something that I made up?), and it’s an awfully big risk for Dogen to send out a man who will be easily corrupted because his scale tipped the wrong way. And when Sayid actually kills Dogen and Lennon (shades of Michael killing Ana Lucia and then Libby), in the miracle pool of healing where he had actually died as well, it was like Sayid had found a new source of strength. And he was so scary looking. The look he gives Ben? shudder.

And now because Dogen is dead, Smokey can enter the temple (I’m not sure why he can’t before, why Dogen’s breath somehow makes the ash work as protection). We see Smokey wreak the same sort of disaster that he did at Jacob’s place, only on a larger scale. Alana and Frank and Sun and Ben showed up out of nowhere (I missed you guys!) and I really thought that Sayid was going to kill Ben. Again. (“Why! Won’t! You! Die!”)

But everyone got out of the temple — we don’t see Ben actually leave though, which makes me wonder in a fuzzy sort of way — and Kate goes with Claire and Sayid and is TOTALLY PERPLEXED/creeped out when she sees Not-Locke. It would appear as though Smokey is perplexed as well, but I don’t think he’s going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Definitely curious to see what’s going to happen there.

“Catch a Falling Star” was never creepier.

So in terms of advancing the plot, this was a good episode. At least we got to see Frank and Sun et al, even if for a short time. Is Jin still at Claire’s camp? And where is Sawyer?

No related posts.

I own a number of things that I inherited from my grandparents — on both sides, I suppose, but mostly from the ones I lived with growing up. And by “inherited,” I really mean these are things I picked up from their house when we went through it to prepare it for sale after my grandfather’s death in 1997.

Some of the things are big and required movers to get from their place to mine. Most of them, however, are small items — and yet, though they are a fraction of the size of a piano or dining room hutch, hold much more of my grandparents in them.

Like these . . . I guess they’re saucers? My grandmother would use them as thread scrap receptacles when she worked on an embroidery project. When she got to the end of a piece, she’d snip off the end with her gold stork scissors and put it in one of these. There wasn’t a wastebasket near her spot on the couch, so this saved time. The next time she’d get up she’d bring the collection of thread scraps with her to dispose of them.

When she taught me how to work needlepoint, and then cross stitch, and later crochet and knitting, I’d use one of these saucers for my own thread and yarn scraps. I’d come home from school and we’d sit at opposite ends of the red and white upholstered couch, watching late afternoon TV — usually a syndicated epsiode of M*A*S*H — while we worked on our projects. I know the first thing I ever made was a cross stitch of my name, in a bubbly font decorated with hearts, using purple for the letters and pink for the hearts. SO GIRLY! I don’t think I was even 10 years old yet, and I chose the colors, but I was also embarrassed by them. I think my mom still has it somewhere; next time I’m home I’ll try to get a picture — especially since I think there’s a post on its own in this little side narrative.

I’m pretty sure these objects were not meant to be used as table top disposal units, and I am positive that my grandmother used them for this purpose instead of putting a small wastebasket next to her seat on the couch because the saucers were pretty and less intrusive than a clunky trash can.

So they’re mine now, and I keep them in the kitchen, in the cupboard with the plates and glasses. I’ve used them in ways my grandmother would probably not approve — one was just used this morning as a spoon rest for my coffee stirrer. They also make fantastic soy sauce bowls for when I bring sushi home, and though she probably would not have been a sushi fan, I think my grandmother would be happy knowing that these delicate, decorative saucers also have a practical use she hadn’t foreseen.

Now that I’ve picked up embroidery again, I brought one of the saucers out from the kitchen. Even though I have a wastebasket nearby, I like how it feels to put my embroidery floss scraps in a saucer first, because it was how I first saw them used, and how I first used them. And yes, a part of me feels like I am 70 years old and should order plastic coverings for my chairs and sofa and whatever else old ladies are supposed to do. But mostly what I feel, what I’m saying is — “I remember.”

No related posts.

Criticisms I’ve heard about this season so far: That we’re not getting any answers, that the answers we are getting are empty and meaningless, that the show works better when all the characters are together.

I say the first is wrong, the second is a matter of opinion, and the third I wholeheartedly agree with. I don’t think it’s going to be possible for me to say this season is good or bad until it’s over. Individual episodes so far have been decent, “The Substitute” was excellent, this week’s was better than “What Kate Does” but not as good as the premiere or “The Substitute.” In terms of story I think it’s fine. Did it answer anything? Not concretely. Am I bothered by this? No. I don’t think any of us should be watching this show with a checklist — I mean, I have a checklist, but if I’m watching each episode WAITING for something I think they should address, then I’m not paying attention to what they’re actually DOING.

There. I’m done with the whole “they’re not answering anything” bit, at least for a few weeks. But I definitely agree that the show works better when the group is together — if not physically, then at least within the parameters of a single episode. I miss Ben and Sun and Frank already, even though we saw them last week. I am eager for more of Ilana and her mission. I can’t wait for the timelines to reconcile.

Other things I want: Richard’s story, Desmond’s return (not necessarily to the island), the explanation for what/how/why Christian is.

OK. This episode.

You know, for a Jack ep I quite liked it, and I think that’s because it follows the course laid out last season, where Jack is not really in charge of anything. Here he’s following Hurley through the jungle (just as Sawyer follows Smokey) without knowing why, and when he tries to assert himself in bringing Kate along with them, both Kate and Hurley say no — not part of either’s agenda.

And I liked Sideways Jack as well — also not all that in control, but dealing with it. Doesn’t remember having his appendix out. In the original timeline, it was Juliet who took it out (Season 4, “Something Nice Back Home”). In the sideways timeline it apparently happened when Jack was a kid. his inability to recall this major event, in addition to Claire being named in Christian’s will — which I think would’ve been the first time Sideways Jack hears her name — points to the two timelines drawing closer together.

Sideways Jack has a son named David (who’s the mother? Don’t care. Could be Sarah, could be some random woman we don’t know, hell, it could be Juliet. David’s mom doesn’t seem all that important to the story at this point, so I’m not going to worry about it) who has just as tangled a relationship to Jack as Jack had to his dad, and as Walt had with Michael. Because really — they only see each other once a month? Horrible custody settlement, but maybe that’s because, you know, Jack didn’t have his shit together during the divorce proceedings (his mother’s “good for you” after he refuses a drink was telling). And the other parallel between Jack/Michael and David/Walt was, of course, Dogen telling Jack that David has a gift. It also hearkens back to what a number of people have told Locke over the course of his life.

Connections: David’s reading Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, which Jack had read to Aaron; the sign at David’s audition for the Williams Conservatory said “Welcome all Candidates.” (Ha.)

Dogen: he and Jack have a nice moment at the Temple, echoed in the Sideways world, but it brings up the question of why/how Dogen is off island. Additionally, something I didn’t think of at the time but someone else raised via Twitter, how is Ben off the island in the Sideways world? Two possibilities that I can think of: 1) again, these anomalies (they should’ve gone down with the island — provided, of course, that the island DID blow up and what we saw at the bottom of the ocean was real and not another fake) point to the two timelines drawing closer to reconciliation; 2) if we follow the trajectory of the original timeline, then if the plane never crashes then Ben never gets shot and never gets taken to the Temple . . . and now I’m in Back to the Future mode where it’s better just not to think about this too much.

I’ll get to Hurley/the lighthouse in a second. Want to talk about Claire first. Claire makes me really uncomfortable now, as she’s supposed to, but still — that fake baby? CREEPY. Her face when she tells Jin that Smokey is her friend? So creepy. She doesn’t seem to recognize that Aaron would be three years old now, which is interesting. She also has rewritten history it seems, implying that her friends just left her on the island, when what did happen is that she left Aaron to follow Christian into the jungle — AND she told Locke later that it would be better if he didn’t tell anyone that he saw her. That she distinguishes between “my father” and “my friend” is intriguing and confusing. That she axed the Other was predictable, but I did like how it showed Jin that this is not the Claire he knew, and so he lies to her in order to bring her to people he thinks will be able to help her. Of course Smokey’s along for the ride now, and this is the bad thing that Jacob tells Hurley is coming.

OK. The one thing I did not like about this episode was the shoddy writing given to Hurley. He’s always been the audience stand-in, and the pop culture nerd with the Star Wars references and whatnot, but last night it seemed that all Hurley really did was string along a bunch of Hurleyisms, and that’s not fair, especially when it seems as though Hurley is poised to be the next Island Guy. (Jackie raised a good point last night about the numbers: that their assignation to the other Losties explains why Hurley is drawn to them. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only explanation for the numbers that I need.)

Though I did like his line at the cave, asking whether THEY are Adam and Eve. It reminded me of very early in Season 1, when he’s convinced that the monster is a dinosaur. Both of these explanations are things the television audience had thought as well, and I think the Adam and Eve line is just an acknowledgement of that.

And the Lighthouse. I am sure Jeff Jensen is going to have something to say about Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which if memory serves has a lot to do with simply watching people, but it’s been a very long time since I last read the book (I should reread. It’s damn good). At the lighthouse we get the List again, and I saw more names this time: Dawson, Linus, Rousseau, and Austen, listed at 51, and not crossed off. This screencap, when clicked to embiggen, shows Radzinsky crossed off at 106 and I think Faraday crossed off at 101. (OK, I just like looking for the names.) And at 108, the degree to which Jacob told Hurley the lighthouse should be set, is someone named Wallace, but the name is crossed off. (My first thought: “Marcellus?”)

Lighthouse vs. cave: light vs. dark. Got it.

I’m not sure Jacob knew that Jack was going to smash the mirrors. And I’m also not sure that anyone is coming to the island now, or was ever going to, because the two points of the trip were 1) to get Hurley and Jack away from the temple, and 2) to get Jack to see why he’s important, and give him something to think about as he stares into the ocean. Jacob’s shrug that whoever it is will find another way to the island indicates that he’s not worried, and he might not be worried because he just made it all up in order for Hurley and Jack’s trip to have some sort of meaning for them.

But if someone is coming to the island, then my money’s on Desmond. Wishful thinking perhaps, but if 108 is still a significant number even if the name attached to it on the compass (?) isn’t, then he’s the one most closely associated with it, having pushed that button every 108 seconds for three years.

What were your thoughts?

No related posts.

So I watched Fame — the 1980 Alan Parker movie, not the (probably) inevitable 2009 remake — for the first time since I saw it as a kid (I must have been 12 or 13). Two scenes had stuck with me over the 20+ years before I watched it again: the Rocky Horror scene where Doris takes off her shirt and goes up to sing “Time Warp,” and the scene in which Coco is coerced into taking her shirt off on camera. And no, I did not put those two scenes together thematically until just now.

The Rocky Horror scene (below, starting at 2:03, though ER fans might want to marvel in Paul McCrane’s AMAZING hair first) was my introduction to the Rocky Horror show (I knew “Time Warp,” sorta, but I didn’t know what it was from) and I was mesmerized by the makeup and costumes and weirdness of it all.

I might have picked up on the fact that Doris was high and that this was what allowed her to finally shed her insecurity and shyness and jump up on stage with the rest of the Rocky Horror people. It felt triumphant, as I think it was intended, but moreso because at the time I was also shy and insecure and Doris’s victory was my victory. Removing her shirt was an obvious metaphor for skin-shedding, but she was still wearing a demure-looking camisole — she’s still Doris. On rewatch, it’s not as vicarious a thrill as it had once been.

But more than that scene, I remembered Coco’s “screen test.” She’d been approached in a diner by a man claiming to be a director, who flatters her and asks her to audition for his new movie. And when she gets to his place everything is a little weird, but she rolls with it because she so desperately wants to be famous. But then he tells her to take off her shirt, and she freaks, and he calls her a silly little schoolgirl, and then she takes her shirt off because she thinks this is what it’s going to take, but she’s crying the whole time, and this scene TRAUMATIZED me. Still does. The fact that she’s crying doesn’t bother the guy at all; in fact, he’s probably getting off on it. There’s no metaphorical skin-shedding here; Coco’s left vulnerable and raw, and we don’t know what happens next.

There are so many dark moments in the movie, many of which I had blissfully skipped over when watching it as a kid. In addition to Coco’s “screen test,” Ralph’s five-year-old sister gets brutally attacked, Montgomery lives completely isolated from his family and, once Ralph and Doris get together, his friends; one dancer almost kills herself, another has an abortion, Leroy is homeless in 1970s New York. And while by the end of the movie Leroy’s gotten himself an invite to join Alvin Ailey’s dance troupe, we don’t actually see his “poor kid makes good” moment of triumph, which is interesting. Should we have? The movie doesn’t really spend that much time on him, other than to highlight his refusal to turn in English homework and the way he gets used by whatshername to get back at her parents. We don’t see him dance, really, after his audition scene.

He’s not the only character left out in the cold, either. Bruno starts as a musical genius, snobbishly refusing to play “old” instruments, and ends up as a musical genius who may have learned his lesson about classical music, or not. He gets that one iconic scene with the movie’s theme song blaring out of his dad’s taxi while the students all dance in the street, but it’s not really HIS scene. He doesn’t really have a story, he’s just there. (The TV show gives him — and Leroy — more to do.)

Mostly what I was struck by, in both the movie and the TV series (available on Netflix Instant Watch — you’re welcome), is how normal everyone looks. Would any of these actors get roles in a high school musical movie or series today? Has it really been since the early 80s that we’ve had a TV show about high school kids so diversified in terms of socio-economic background? Not to mention race and sexuality — Montgomery’s homosexuality may not have been treated with significant depth and it is completely erased in the series, but he’s at least given not one, but two coming out scenes (one to Doris, one to his entire acting class). The only one I can think of is My So-Called Life, but Rayanne and Rickie were set as contrast to Angela’s comfortable middle-class heterosexual normative world — she’s the central character, and she reacts to them. In Fame everyone is pretty much given equal footing, and the norm is no one really has a comfortable life.

Oh, and there’s Glee, of course, which is as cheesy and campy as Fame was, with kids from a variety of backgrounds (in Ohio, no less!), though the show tends to focus primarily on the Jocks vs. Arts dichotomy rather than on the kids using art to raise themselves up. Do kids think that way anymore, anyway? What with arts funding slowing to a trickle if it comes at all and shows that promise insta-fame and celebrity without requiring either dues-paying or talent, are the ideas in Fame so outdated now?

No related posts.

When I was in high school studying for finals, the first thing I would do was make a study schedule. I’m not sure how I got the idea. As an adult I’m more the sort of person who looks at a big project and immediately feels overwhelmed, and it takes someone else to tell me to break it down into manageable chunks. For example, my dissertation advisor told me that I wasn’t writing a dissertation, I was writing chapters. And I wasn’t really writing chapters, I was writing a number of connected five-page sections that would make up a chapter. And together those chapters would make up a dissertation. Just focus on writing five pages at a time. I would occasionally need reminding of this, but it really helped. When I feel as though any task is too monumental to complete, I do need to sit down and make a list of all the little steps involved. Cleaning the apartment needs to be broken down into 20-minute intervals per room, or it doesn’t get done at all. (Well, it still doesn’t get done, but the list making helps anyway.) It makes sense to me that I would’ve been the sort of high school student who looked at finals week with paralyzing, heart-stopping fear, as a sort of insurmountable crisis, not knowing how I would ever get through it, and it would’ve been my mom who told me to just study for one subject at a time, for a certain amount of time, with breaks for lunch and dinner and stretching and so forth.

So the first thing I’d do was take a sheet of notebook paper and block out my week of studying:

9-11 AM: Science
Break
11:15-1:15: Math
Lunch
2:00-4:00: History

As the week progressed I’d amend the schedule to spend more time on subjects that needed it. But I stuck to the idea of the schedule, and I followed it more or less to the letter. Call it compulsive and/or anal, but it worked, and it was a tremendous help when I got to college.

Maybe the schedule was entirely my idea and as a high school student I was far more disciplined than I am now. Somewhere along the way I have lost the ability to discipline myself and budget my time efficiently. Or maybe it’s that I simply haven’t found anything that matters as much to me as acing my finals mattered to me in high school. (Is that sad? what I would give to live in a world where it is not at all a pathetic notion to have acing my finals as something that matters more than anything else.) I mean, no one’s checking my transcripts anymore. Sometimes I wish they would.

Or it’s possible that I am waxing nostalgic for the student I once was, and it’s more that the intensity with which I fretted over finals is casting its hue over my memories.

At any rate, I have gotten into the habit of making to-do lists and then ignoring them. It feels like an accomplishment to simply lay out everything that needs to get done or that I want to get done. When did I become an underachiever? I think the 15-year-old me would be rather ashamed. Possibly a little disgusted. Definitely disappointed. And I’m not being hard on myself here as I am wont to be — but it all of a sudden occurs to me that I do not want to let 15-year-old me down. 15-year-old me needs some assurance that life gets a fuckload better (not that my life was so horrid. But, you know, I was 15.) So what I did this morning was take out an index card (thanks, the me who made a big enough dent in her office cleaning that she found the index cards and thanks, the me who remembered where office cleaning me put said cards) and scheduled my day:

7:30: read (a review book that I wanted to finish today)
8:30: Dishes + breakfast
10:30: Office –> articles
12:30: Make marinade for steak
1:30: Work out

As I write this, it is 11:45 and I have finished the first three items on my list. I’ve even had time to take and post a few pictures, write a few emails, check up on Tumblr and Facebook. Is it because scheduling focused my mind to the point that I was more efficient than usual? Is it that I gave myself more than enough time to do all the things on my list? It only took half an hour to read the last 80 pages of my book, and I don’t know what I was thinking that making/eating breakfast and doing the dishes was going to take 2 hours, but maybe I was factoring in computer play time. I did grapple with myself over whether, at 9:45, I would go into the office to do more straightening and organizing, or whether I would muck about online until 10:30. I opted to head to the office, reminding myself that 2010 was supposed to be my Year of Getting Shit Done.

And getting all this done, especially ahead of schedule, makes me feel so accomplished and lighthearted — I recognize this phenomenon now, thanks to Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project (blogged about here). I also had “blog post” written down on my to do list — I am trying to write something every day now, and not just in short form — and I am pleased with myself that I opted to take my time surplus and use it to write this — the blog post that I hope I will go back to when I need the reminder that first, things don’t always take as much time to do as I think they do; and second, look how good I feel when I get stuff done.

(P.S. It’s now 12:25. I’m still ahead of schedule. Take that, Monday.)

No related posts.

Abandon hope, all ye who haven’t seen this week’s episode. Like last week, I’ll start with some BS about last week’s episode, so don’t look down, and hit “n” now.

What I forgot to mention in last week’s super-lengthy post on “What Kate Did”: Jack and Dogan have an brief, quiet conversation in which Dogan explains that he does not speak English in order to keep himself at a distance from his followers — a buffer, for when he gives them orders they don’t like. Specifically, he says, “I have to remain separate from the people I’m in charge of.”

At the end of that horrible horrible Season 3 episode, we learn that the Chinese characters tattooed on Jack’s arm mean “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.”

Similar, wouldn’t you say? Way to justify the bad episode, Lost people.

Onward. In scattered fashion.

1. Locke-centric episodes are always good, aren’t they? And “Sideways World” (as I guess it is officially known) Locke is in such better shape than Original World Locke. How great was it to see Helen? And they’re getting married!

2. Helen suggests eloping and says “we’ll just get my parents, and your dad” — so does that mean that things are OK with Cooper? Is Sideways Locke in the wheelchair for a reason other than his dad pushed him out a window? He still must’ve been conned out of a kidney because he and Helen meet at that anger management group — although again, maybe this is another sort of destiny issue when they’re supposed to have always met each other so they meet under different circumstances, but that’s all speculation.

3. Hurley’s streak as luckiest man alive continues when his Hummer does NOT get scratched by Locke’s wheelchair ramp. Excellent callback to Season 1, in which we learn that Hurley owns a box company.

4. And Hurley tells Locke that things are going to work out, sounding very similar to Jacob at the moment Locke falls from the 8th floor window.

5. When Rose tells Locke about living with cancer, and accepting that there are things that she can’t do, I was reminded of their conversation on the island, after one of the (many) times Locke’s legs are hurt (I think it’s when the blast door of the hatch falls on him?) when she tells Locke conspiratorially that they both know that his leg will heal faster than Jack told him it would.

6. As nice as it was to see Helen and Rose, it was hilarious to see Ben. As a European history teacher! Complaining about the other teachers not making coffee when it needs to be made!

7. Locke’s alarm clock made the hatch noise. NICE.

On the island:

1. Seeing things from Smokey’s POV was pretty rad. I still want to know how a man became able to shift into smoke form.

2. The kid: A young Jacob? Why would he appear as a youngster, though? Was he brought to the island as a kid? Or has he risen from the ashes? Or is this kid someone completely new? Locke can see him but Richard can’t. And Sawyer could see him. I think this has something to do with candidacy.

3. Why would Richard not be a candidate? Maybe because he was brought to the island in chains; that is, his path was not made up of free will choices in the same way that all the choices the Oceanic Flight 815 people’s were. And all of the candidates, with the possible exception of Jin, have seen people who are meant to be dead or otherwise could not possibly be where they are. Jack sees his dad, Hurley sees everyone, Sayid sees Walt way back in Season 2. Sun does see Christian after coming back to the island. On the other hand, all of these people with the exception of Sun have time-skipped.

3a. Or maybe Richard’s not a candidate because he’s got a different sort of job. (See note about Ilana, below)

4. All the candidates had corresponding numbers, and those numbers were THE numbers. Whatever that means. Curious: we don’t see Kate’s name. Curiouser: One of the Others, back in Season 3, had complained that “Shephard wasn’t on Jacob’s list.” Two possibilities: 1) The Shephard referred to in the cave isn’t Jack. 2) The names in the cave aren’t Jacob’s list.

5. I caught “Littleton” as a name on the ceiling, with “313″ next to it. Also “Mattingly” and “Domingo” and “O’Toole” and “Jones” — Mattingly and Jones were names on the uniforms that some of the Others, including Charles Widmore, were wearing when they captured Juliet, Sawyer, and Faraday in Season 4. Curious, indeed. I am also pretty sure but not 100% sure that I saw “Chang” written down. Pierre, or Miles?

6. It’s possible that Frank is a candidate, according to the end of last season. On their way to the temple, Bram asks Ilana why Frank’s even with them, and she says that he may be important, and he says “You think he’s a candidate?” And she doesn’t answer. Ilana is on some sort of mission for Jacob; she’s also one of the few people on the island that Jacob did NOT touch — he visits her, but wears gloves, like he’s going out of his way to not touch her. I wonder if Ilana = the new (or a failsafe) Richard? As in, not a candidate, but essential to the protection of the island?

7. This issue of candidacy is one of those answers that prompt new questions, and while I’d hoped that this final season would have fewer of these in favor of more straightforward answers, I realize that it’s still early in the season. But according to Not-Locke, everyone was brought to the island because they are candidates for taking over the position of Island Protector. He doesn’t believe the island is anything special — such a change from Locke when he was alive, and the only thing that mattered was protecting the island. I think this is our cue to not trust anything he’s saying — CLEARLY the island is special.

8. And trust, instead, how flipped out and terrified Richard is. Richard tells Sawyer that Not-Locke is planning on killing everyone on the island, I think through manipulating them into killing each other, the same way he got Ben to kill Jacob — because as the young kid who may be Jacob said, “You know the rules. You can’t kill him.” I think he means that Not-Locke can’t kill all the candidates himself. Why would he want to kill all of them? So that Jacob won’t have a successor, and Not-Locke wins the game.

8a. Not-Locke tells Richard, “Come with me, and I’ll explain everything.” Sounds a lot like the Devil tempting Eve with the fruit of knowledge. (Please let there be more to this than a biblical analogy. That said, it may behoove us to (re)read Paradise Lost.)

9. Not-Locke throwing the white stone into the ocean: “inside joke.” HEH.

10. I would not have pegged Sawyer as a Stooges fan. But I guess that’s appropriate. (“Search and Destroy?” SUBTLE.) And I loved that Sawyer knew right away that Not-Locke wasn’t Locke. How many times has Sawyer followed Locke somewhere during the course of this show? I can think of “The Brig” in particular — another case in which Locke manipulates Sawyer into doing something — but I think there are more instances.

11. “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”

No related posts.

Here’s how I found out about Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project: I saw that she was following me on the Twitter. I noticed straight away that she’s a real person — I think Twitterers know what I mean, but I define a real person as someone who uses Twitter for honest reasons, by which I mean they’re not going to spam me about weight loss programs immediately after I post something about having eaten an entire pint of ice cream (NB: I have never posted such a thing, which is not to say that I haven’t eaten an entire pint of ice cream) or how to get cheap cat meds after I post something about Scout’s health issues, and they don’t have a name like bambee20103 accompanied by a crude avatar and a tinyURL link to some porn site. Real people also post more than just links — they engage with others. And I don’t get followed by many real people. So I always check out the real people who follow me, and I noted that Gretchen Rubin has a blog called The Happiness Project, which coordinates with the book she’s written, and so I figured that she was following me as some sort of marketing/publicity thing, which I had no problem with at all, but I didn’t feel compelled to follow back. (Because I’m still not clear on why anyone who doesn’t know me would be at all interested in what I write on a daily basis, and while this is assuredly a hang-up of mine, it does seem to be supported by the fact that I haven’t been followed by a real person in about a month — thanks, Norma! Also, if someone is following more than let’s say 500 people, there’s no way at all that my sporadic posts are going to get noticed unless I @-them. Gretchen Rubin is following over 9000 people. She has no idea who I am. So I didn’t feel bad about not following her back — Twitter still is, for the most part, a place for me to chat among friends. ANYWAY.)

A month or two later The Happiness Project popped up on my radar again, though I don’t remember how or why. It was the beginning of the year, I was thinking about 2010 resolutions, and on a whim I ordered it. I think I was drawn to the “Clean my closets” part of the subtitle — any push in that direction is welcome. A few days later, I saw my friend Stephanie was going to attend an event for the book, so I emailed her to ask whether the book was really all that feel-good self-helpy, because I’m not really into books like that. Stephanie said that she’d been following Gretchen’s blog for a while and linked to a few posts that resonated with her. And they resonated with me, too — especially this one, on drift: “the decision you make by not deciding, or by making a decision that unleashes consequences for which you don’t take responsibility.” Yes, I kept saying silently. Yes. Me too. Happy and relieved that my impulse purchase had just been validated, I resolved to read The Happiness Project as soon as I could.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this book is life-changing. I could feel myself shift while reading it, could hear my mind expand (it’s a pleasing sort of stretchy sound). Gretchen Rubin is a wonderful writer. I imagine she writes the way she talks, and she has a high level of self-awareness made me instantly warm to her. She’s very clear from the beginning, and throughout the book, that she wasn’t really writing a self-help book, that everyone’s happiness projects would look different, that what worked for her wouldn’t necessarily work for someone else, for me. And yet I kept dogearring pages to return to because her ideas made so much sense to me. She’s also very cognizant of the negative reactions she could get — and did get — to the project, namely that she was already happy, that she lived a very comfortable life, that she had pretty much everything she already needed. She addresses all this in the beginning. I appreciated the level of self-reflection she brought to her narrative. I knew that I was on her side right away, after she recounted an experience at a cocktail party in which she told an acquaintance what she was doing and he immediately started dismissing it, and I wanted to reach into the book and give him a good upside the head slap. (She relates a few similar encounters, each one causing me to shake my head both at the rudeness of the response and at the way so many people seemed to be so sneeringly dismissive of happiness in general. I mean, why? Because it’s basic? Because it’s a warm-fuzzy sort of thing? I mean, something that’s been pondered and weighed and researched and examined from Plato’s time on can’t possibly be unimportant.)

Her sister points out that she’s going about this highly subjective, personal, intuitive experience in a completely systematic way — with charts and notes and fairly rigid organization (every month is dedicated to a specific resolution) and extensive research (the scholar in me was so pleased with that). Again, I love this. Totally the way I would tackle something — though my tendency is far more to make lists and then ignore them. But I think the act of list-making is important in itself, regardless of how thorough the follow-through is. I mean, yeah, obviously it’s not enough to make a list of things that need to get done if you’re not going to do them. But the mental process of checking in with yourself, taking the time to organize your thoughts and to-do’s, I think this is valuable work.

And yet, although she had all this surface organization, there’s still the sense that she spent the year throwing a lot of stuff at the wall to see what would stick. She chronicles experiments that didn’t work so well in addition to the ones that did. She discusses that initial burst of enthusiasm for something new that eventually erodes. There is a certain amount of chaos at work during her year, whether it comes in the form of unexpected bad news, or days in which all resolutions are chucked out the window. This is also extremely important. Days like that happen. It doesn’t mean you FAIL. In fact, the important work is the trial-and-error stuff, the process, the willingness to try stuff out — that’s where the happiness lies. (She discusses something called the arrival fallacy. This is one of my dogearred pages, because I am absolutely victim to it: “As soon as X happens, I will be happy.” Guess what? It’s not true.)

I am generally a happy person. I go through bouts where I am less than cheerful, and I have certainly had dark moments — well, dark months, many of them, stacked on top of each other — but for the most part I am happy. The point, she says, is not to GET happy. The point is to better recognize that you ARE, and to use that to achieve a greater sense of happiness. It’s all too easy to get caught up in daily minutia, and like Gretchen, I often go from point A to point B and then have NO RECOLLECTION of how I did so because my mind is off thinking about other things — usually worrying about other things. There is a lot I have to be grateful for, but there are also areas of my life that could use a little polish. Halfway through the book I started to be more mindful of my bad habits, or manners, or avoidance techniques, and now that I’ve finished it I’m ready to embark on my own set of experiments.

I heartily recommend the book and blog to everyone. Speaking as someone who struggles with a short temper and less-than-productive ways of dealing with stress and anxiety, I found the ideas put forth in this book extremely helpful — in particular, letting go of the need for explicit praise, the gold stars, from friends and family (and in my case, The Internet). Acknowledging that maybe you don’t like doing certain things that you think you’re supposed to like doing (for me? Yoga. Shocking, I know, but there it is. I keep saying I should go to yoga classes but I don’t — that’s my first clue. Being in a group of people I don’t know while trying to achieve some sort of mind-body synthesis seems contradictory and counter-productive. That’s just me, though — I know plenty of people for whom yoga has been transformative and amazing). Some of them are a little scary to contemplate, which indicates a need to examine them more closely. I’m thinking in particular of finally getting to the point where I can say out loud what it is that I want to do with my life. Because deep inside I do know. But I’m afraid of it and what it entails, and I’m deathly afraid of failing at it. So that? THAT I need to work on. Starting . . . well, I started two days ago. (Could you tell?)

(P.S. I’m following Gretchen Rubin on the Twitter now.)

No related posts.