500 Days of Summer

So one of the advantages of unemployment is that you can consume a lot of pop-culture. Sure I spend a lot of my time applying to various and sundry jobs (most recent job application, to be a trivia factoid writer, yes, getting this would be the culmination of a life long dream) and since New Year's working out (um, so OnDemand there are exercise videos for absolute FREE which blew my mind to begin with, and I've been doing the Jillian Michaels metabolism boost video and let me just say I have a newfound appreciation for the contestants on the Biggest Loser.)

But I digress. My point is I can watch a lot of TV, read a lot, watch movies, etc. And this past weekend I rented 500 Days of Summer. It was light and funny, beautiful and sad, just a perfect movie concoction, a fairy tale flipped over to reveal something far more strange and honest. As the narrator states at the beginning, it's a story about love, but not a love story. I think there are just so many crap romantic movies coming out these days. I mean did you see the trailer for that Ugly Truth movie with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler? Or that atrocious, setting feminism back by about 75 years Bride Wars (Ann Hathaway, I expect better from you).

Love stories have lost their dignity and grace. They've become cartoons and barely disguised rip-off's of each other. And no one in these movies has any kind of human trait. So imagine the breath of fresh air that is 500 Days of Summer. And that's what the movie feels like, fresh air, something fluid and new and utterly charming. It's both a throwback and oh so modern, a movie of our time but a movie of all times, which is really what all great movies should be. I won't give away too much of the plot but I highly recommend you see it for yourself.

I love Zooey Deschanel, but this film really belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He's the film's leading man, and he fills that role so wonderfully. It wasn't until I watched this movie that I realize what our generation lacks, a leading man that fills the gap that lies between Michael Cera and Vin Diesel or the Rock or whatever muscles McGee currently fills the Action leading man role. Joseph Goron-Levitt isn't a man with a capital M or a man-child ala Seth Rogen. He's simply a man, funny and sweet and genuine, masculine without being intimidating, charming without being an overgrown teenager. There's a grace about him, a balletic kind of effortlessness to the way he talks and moves. And if you had told me ten years ago I would be saying all of this about that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, I would have told you you were nuts.

 

And if you still aren't convinced, there are full on musical style dance numbers, French film parodies, and one of the most awesome uses of a split screen I have ever seen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character goes to a party and on one side of the screen is reality and the other side is his expectations). Anyone who has ever gone to a party in their 20s with high and unrealistic hopes will completely relate.

So basically I really loved this movie. And I can promise you it will be unlike any of the romantic comedies you've seen this year. And that's a really, really, good thing.

Loving Big Love

I was trying to describe Big Love to my mom the other day. "Isn't that the show about polygamists?" she asked, in a dissaproving tone. "Yes," I replied, but... And then I found myself struggling with the words to defend these characters. They were polygamists, but they were multifaceted and loving and sad and beautiful. I was defending a fictionaly portrayal of a lifestyle I find in real life repulsive. And my God, doesn't that just define great television, hell, doesnt that define great art? To take a character or a lifestyle or a religion even, that in any real world setting you would judge, and then make you want to defend it all, make you fall hopelessly in love.

I've fallen head over heels into the world of  HBO's Big Love. Like last season's Anna, despite my intial reservations about these wacky, polygamy loving Mormons, I've been unable to keep myself away from their world. Oh, and what a world it is. There's something positively Shakespearean about the story of Bill and his three wives, a family hanging somewhere in the middle of the modern (and at least in this show, corrupted) Mormon church and the ultra-fundamentalist Mormom compound run, at least until last's night's episode, by the false and super creepy prophet, Roman Grant. There are Big with a capital B issues raised in Big Love, life and death and God and religion and family, and how all of these things can intertwine and alternately heal and destroy, sustain and isolate.

And then suspended amongst all of these things is the rather ordinary love present in the main family, despite their completely unordinary lifestyle. When they're not trying to bring people up on murder charges or finding dead fathers in the freezer, these people, despite their aversion to alchohol and curse words and well, the whole polygamy thing, are poignantly normal. They bicker and they squabble and they do dishes and watch the kids and they love each other in the painful, confusing ways families do. And you want to judge these characters, you really, really do, but like I said before, you just find yourself rooting for them. You root for sweet, spunky Margene and calm but cracking underneath the surface Barb. And Nikki, who has become my absolute favorite character. She's childish and selfish and mean (one of my favorite moments of Season 3, Nikki tellling a newly blonde Margene that her hair makes her look like a "complete whore"). But there are these moments when she's human and vulnerable, and you realize how much was taken from her, how the same religion that provides her with faith and love has also taken away so much of her childhood and innocence.

And in the end, that's kind of what Big Love is about. More than being a show about polygamy or Mormonism, it's a show about the dual nature of religion, the blessing and the curse of it. So much of these characters' lives are decided by how they interpret God. So much love comes from their God, just as so much hatred and exploitation does as well. It's that interpretation of love that Big Love wants to explore, and whether or not anyone, any church, or any government has a right to tell someone that his or her interpretation is wrong. Here in the real world it's so easy to say that of course someone or some church or some government can tell polygamists that they are wrong. Here in the real world it's so easy to judge. And I am by no means defending or supporting polygamy. But that's the beauty of Big Love. Because ultimately I want to defend these characters.

Whether it's the mobsters of the Sopranos or the alcoholic, violent Tommy Gavin on Rescue Me, great television makes us care about morally qustionable or just plain morally reprehensible characters. Big Love is great television. The story is great (did I mention that whole Shakesperean aspect because I mean really, what other TV drama gives you power struggles and questions of usurpation and mothers trying to kill sons and sons trying to kill fathers?). The acting is great. The opening credits are even great! I just can't help myself. I love these crazy Mormons. And I can't wait to see what happens next.

frustrated

I cannot write another cover letter. I cannot send in more clips. I cannot update my resume yet again. I cannot write another sample blog post. I cannot scroll through job postings anymore, click on another promising looking "entry level" job posting only to see that this entry level job requires 3 YEARS of specifically related experience, knowledge of over 100 various new media programs I've never even heard of, 20 published clips, the ability to come up with a working Middle East peace solution, fluency in 17 lanugages including Sanskrit and Latin, some past experience as a fighter pilot and of course, an ability to converse directly with God. I cannot write one more of these pathetic letters to a potential employer, begging them to take me on, listing all of the reasons I deserve to work for them for so little money that I still wouldn't be able to move out of my parent's house or get a dog or you know, go to the dentist.

Today, right now, I cannot do any of these things. Just thinking about them makes me want to scream loud enough so that my neighbors might call the cops. Right now I am so frustrated and tired of checking my email every hour just hoping that one of the dozens of odd jobs I've applied for will have gotten back to me.

Right now I'm feeling sorry for myself. I'm cursing my English degree for appearing to mean absolutely squat in the real world. I'm cursing the fact that I was born in this generation and that there are just no jobs out there for anyone, much less a journalist. I'm cursing the fact that I can't even get unpaid internships. Do you know what a blow to someone's ego that is? To in the first place have to beg and crawl on your knees and throw yourself at an organizations feet just so that you can work full time for them, to work as hard as any of their other employees for absolutely FREE, with no benefits. It's beyond humiliating. I know there are other professions that have unpaid internships, but they are just so pervasive in journalism that you wonder why any magazine has paid employees at all. Because clearly there are just hundreds upon hundreds of graduates willing to enter into what might be the only still legal form of indentured servitude. You work for four years towards a degree so that you can work for free? And I have the good fortune (and kind parents) to not have any student loans to pay off. What about all of those would be journalists who do have loans, who want so badly to write for a career, who worked so hard to get that degree, who took on jobs to pay for housing
through college, who are buried in debt now, only to realize that the only jobs that exist out there don't even pay?

So this is how I feel right now. Tomorrow morning I will hopefully wake up and exit right out of this pity party. I will realize that there are plenty of people out there working at fast food restaurants and as temps who hate their jobs, but who have no choice but to get up in the morning and deal with it. I will realize what a luxury it even is that I can sit on my butt at my parents house, not working, waiting to find a job in writing, in the field that I love. I am lucky and spoiled in a hundred different ways.

But just for a moment I want to throw a fit and scream and cry over the fact that despite how much I want this, despite how hard I've worked for it, I am just stuck, and that it is a very real possibility that I will be stuck for some time.

So for anyone reading this who has ever applied for so many jobs that you actually lose track of the jobs you've applied for, who could recite word for word your latest cover letter, who sometimes just want to dispense with all the begging and tell this would be employer that they would be LUCKY to have you instead of the other way around, I know you feel my pain.

And that is why I am going to go and pour myself a huge glass of Pinot Grigio, wallow for a little while, so that tomorrow I can suck it up and start all over again.

For three days this week, I helped my sister and her husband take care of this little munchkin, my beautiful niece Lemma,

And I came to one very deifnitive conclusion; having children is perhaps the most insane thing people can do. I say this as someone who has for years now claimed to want FIVE kids. You see, I've been a babysitter and a nanny for over half my life now. I thought I knew something about kids. Sure they can be a little rambumctious, but they go to bed pretty early. At least you get a break at night right? But I'd never taken care of a newborn before. After just two nights spent in an apartment with a newborn, I now know I knew absolutely nothing about infants.

These little 8 pound creatures will dominate a household. You can have three fully grown adults, and the tiny, 8 pound baby will win every single time. The adults don't even have a fighting chance. Sure, babies this age really only have three needs, to be dry, to be fed, and to sleep a lot. But the thing you don't realize is that all three of those needs have to be met almost CONSTANTLY. There's no lag time where the baby is just chilling. Either the baby is hungry or the baby has just pooped (and my GOD I had no idea babies pooped that often, how is it even physically possible that in this tiny little 8 pound body there is that much POOP?, and yes it is my goal to say poop as often as possible in this post) I nannied for a one year old and I thought I understand the whole no verbal communication thing. But at least in one year olds there are other signs other than shrieking and flailing to tell you what they want. They can point or rub their eyes or reach for stuff. But tiny little newborns have none of those abilities. And did I mention the fact that you apparently give up sleep when you decide to have a baby? I had no idea that sleep was something you could just give up, like alcohol or Diet Coke or cheese. But from what I gathered that's just part of the deal.

How have people been doing this since the beginning of time? How did one generation not just go, umm, guys, about that whole baby thing. Do we really want to be held hostage by a tiny army of newborns? What's so great about that whole procreation thing anyway?

But just as I was beginning to swear off childbirth, just as I was starting to think that there must be some sort of parent amnesia that allows people to have more than one child (sweet Jesus to think of that Duggar woman who has 19!), I saw the way my sleep deprived, still tired from that whole 30 plus hours of childbirth thing, sister looked at her daughter. And that my friends, is the very reason for unconditional love. If not for that whole unconditional love thing babies across the world would be thrown out of windows on a regular basis. Because without that love there's no way you could do it. There's no way you could give up sleep and showering and your old life and throw yourself completely at the mercy of something that poops that often.

perfection

Michael Cera, Jersey shore edition