yet another blog?

Matt Ruff's <u>Set This House in Order</u> follows the self discovery of Andy Gage, who was born in 1965 and murdered in an extraordinary way by his step-father. This spiritual death of Andy Gage caused his mind to splinter into multiple personalities..

More than a hundred other souls share an imaginary house inside his head, struggling to maintain an orderly coexistence, but you get to know a few of the souls very well.

Enter co-worker Penny Driver. She is also a multiple personality who's not 100% aware of the number of personalities she has. When her other personalities ask Andy for help, he reluctantly agrees, only to set his own orderly life into turmoil as he discovers the truth about his life, his death and his rebirth.

The main thing that struck me about this book is that it felt different than a lot of the fiction that is currently out there. It's not an easy piece to read, certainly. But what's more is that Ruff really puts a lot into character development. Consider that two of his characters are really, at least, exhibiting characteristics of five different characters.

However. There's always one. The plot was amazing for the first 3/4 of the book but the wrap up felt a bit forced, frantic and neat. Not neat in that it was a "happy" ending; it was a proper ending to this book, certainly.

Do I recommend this book? Absolutely, even if only for characterization alone. So many authors these days do not give enough attention to the importance of character building. Pacing issues aside, the book is well worth  your while.

Gwyneth Paltrow as a mathematician? The idea was a bit of a stretch for me, but after watching this film, Paltrow, Hopkins and Gyllenhaal could walk on the moon and I'd believe it. The result is powerful and the question of madness vs genius is very compelling.

I've been wanting to see this movie for awhile now. There's no tidy ending. It's a snapshot of a difficult time in the lives of brilliant people.

I've tried to watch High Fidelity so many times and most often, I turn the movie off because I get so bored by it.

I read the book by Nick Hornby in hopes that if I knew what was going to happen, it'd make the movie worth watching. I enjoyed the book!

I made it almost all the way through!

It's still a very talky movie. I still don't like it much.

I didn't put up any of the YouTube videos I found mainly because they are fairly disturbing to watch. Without that sort of warning, I'm not apt to point anyone to the videos at all, even the clips of them. But if you search for the title of this documentary, believe me, you will find a 10 minute synopsis of Spike Lee's HBO Documentary, When The Levees Broke.

It's divided into four acts.

Act I: (some observations as I'm watching)

Residents of the lower Ninth Ward state that they heard and felt explosions from where the levees failed. In the past, it's been rumored that levees had been blown up in order to save the commercial heart of the city. Some Ninth Ward residents feel that they were blown up in order to save those areas with high property value.

Interviewing people who are speaking of their loved ones in the past tense make for difficult tv watching. In particular, there's a man, probably in his 40s, who discusses the rescue efforts and how his mother died, sitting in a wheelchair, waiting for a bus. What he had to do with her body was horrible to think about. When he left, four days later, she was still there, exposed to the elements.

The Royal Canadian Mounties from Vancouver beat the federal government to New Orleans.

Hard up people helping other hard up people is probably the most powerful thing I have seen so far.

Act II:

Pick up points were advertised on the radios stating that if they went to places on I-10 and other highways, they'd be rescued. Some people were there for five to six days before being picked up.

Jefferson Parish's bridge was blocked with people with guns, not allowing any refugees from the storm into their parish. Of course, there are people who say it never happened, and others who say that it did.

Children attacking people driving in cars with pipes, people being shot at while they walked down the streets, looting, police officers, not just every day citizens, doing their part taking DVDs and whatnot from WalMart.

I can't even begin to imagine the stress the police chief (Compass, I believe) was under, or any other police officer for that matter.

The difference between LBJ and Hurricane Betsey in '65 and GWB and Hurricane Katrina of '05 is that LJB was *there*with the people within two days. Striking.

50,000 people at the convention center were there for five days before anyone "knew" they were there. In Indonesia, after the tsunami, they had food dropped within two days.

The National Guard, five days later, get the city back in order, evacuating the Superdome.

When people were evacuating, they had no idea where they were going. Some wound up in Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, New York, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina ... families were scattered everywhere.

Act III:

People who are scattered throughout the country would want to come home but they have nothing to come home to. Some people return to what used to be their homes and break down.

Children are acting out. Post traumatic stress disorder effects most people who have lived through this.

Obituaries in a town that lost many of its residents are running at a rate of 30% more than before the hurricane.

Do you remember those reports of a child's body found in the rubble in the lower 9th ward? Her mother is interviewed and portions of the funeral shown. It's heartbreaking.

Act IV:

There are some houses that are marked as checked, but the iron bars on the doors and windows are intact. How did they check?

Mardi Gras t-shirts: "FEMA's action plan: run motherfucker, run!"

They've removed the equivalent to 25 WTC disasters, and they're only at 70% cleaned up as of the filming.

Where's the progress?

A student goes home to check on his mother and the house in early October. The tag spray painted on the side of the home said it was searched and no bodies were found. But all three doors were locked. He broke in, called 911 and they showed up. They found her under a refrigerator.

Families would go to check on a family member's house, think that they had evacuated but had not heard from them and then they'd find the bodies.

The levees failed at a Category 2 storm at best, since Katrina skirted NO to the east.

Some parts of the levees were only 10 feet in the ground instead of 17 feet. If the levees were topped, they'd fail from below as well. You can't sue the Army Corps of Engineers.

Wynton Marsalis said it best. He says that the government's response to Katrina is a signature moment in that you can't ignore what you're seeing. You can't turn away from what happened and what went so wrong.

I'm not one to complain about film violence. However, 300 just about sent me over the edge.

I was bored more than once during the film. I don't know why I didn't turn it off like the other four times I started to watch it, but I felt the need to get it over with and see what was so great about it.

So, the Spartans have great chests and their ladies are tough. The Persians wear funny masks and ... yeah. I just don't see what was so wonderful about it!

Someone explain it?

A rough and vulgar truck driver with an 8th grade education, Teri Horton, walks into a thrift shop to buy a special something for a friend who has been down in the dumps. For reasons I don't understand, she sees this huge, and according to her, hideous painting and has to have it for her friend. The thrift shop keeper didn't even look up when asked how much it was. "$8", to which Teri balked. She walked out of that store with a potential Pollock painting under her arm and tossed it into the back of her pickup truck. Unfortunately, the painting didn't even fit into the friend's trailer, so Teri was stuck with it. When she tried to sell it at a yard sale, a local art teacher tipped Teri off that she may have something worth keeping in that ugly painting. It could be a Jackson Pollock!

The art world scoffs that this woman may have stumbled across an authentic Pollock painting in the way she did. Through forensic testing and fingerprint finding, some believe that this truly is a Pollock painting while others think it's a great knockoff backed by a spitfire woman who hated the very painting she is so passionate about.

Without the proper paperwork showing ownership that goes directly back to the artist himself, the painting is just about worthless in the art world's eyes. However, forensics tell a different story.

If real, the painting would be worth $50M. Teri turned down offers of $9M because she is convinced of its authenticity.

What do you think?


(and now I have the urge to rent Pollock again. Love that movie! Love the artist!)

Tom Perrotta's novel, Little Children was adapted to screenplay, making a fantastic movie about the dirt beneath the suburban polish. Kate Winslet plays Sarah, a highly educated stay at home mom who doesn't fit in with the soccer moms she finds herself sitting with at the local playground. Sarah doesn't quite identify with Mary Ann, who has a four year old on the fast track to Harvard or the Tuesday night at 9pm scheduled sexual encounter with her husband.

Enter Brad (Patrick Wilson), the soccer mom's fantasy man; in fact, they call him The Prom King. He's a stay at home dad while he studies to take the bar exam (his wife, played by Jennifer Connolly, pushes him to take it a third time after failing twice). Sarah and Brad become friends as their children play and swim together. This, of course, blossoms into more.

Part of Brad's push to bring back his golden years includes a night football league with some local police, including ex-cop, Larry. Larry acts as a one man organization to harass recently released sex offender, Ronnie (superbly played by Jackie Earle Haley), to move out of his mother's home and ultimately out of their neighborhood.

Perrotta's novel really touched me in that the characters were beautiful, real and very very flawed. To write a book that feels effortless is difficult and Perrotta did this. The movie was a good representation of his effort.

I just finished watching My Life In Pink.

I decided to netflix his movie, mainly due to subject matter and the fact that it won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

First off, I'm surprised by the R rating in that there's no sex, no violence and very little swearing. An R rating based on subject matter is just insane.

Ludovic is a 7 year old boy who is convinced that he's a girl trapped in a boy's body. It's heartbreaking to see how cruel his classmates are, but even more so to see how the neighborhood adults look at him in disdain.

The cruel bits are contrasted with fantasy sequences in which Ludovic lives his life just as he wants.

By the end, the contrast between the way Ludovic's parents treat his gender identity crisis and the new neighbors treat the way their daughter shuns dresses is hopeful and sad all at once. Ludovic has moved into the phase of self loathing.

My brain is moving in directions I unfortunately don't have time to get into right now, but include how people who aren't among the majority of the population, be it sexual preference or gender identity often go through a period of self  hatred and desperate attempts to be what makes other people comfortable. Knowing a few people who have gone through this, I watched this moving thinking about the difficulties Ludovic would have in his teenaged years.

Did I like it? Yes.