Time Travel Temptations

I recently finished reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, and it has put time travel in my mind. The basic premise is that a man goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. But first, to test that the changes can make a difference, he tries out saving a couple of other people.

Time travel has different incarnations in pop culture, whether it be this form of changing the past (or future, let us not forget Back to the Future 2), or simply enjoying a previous time, like in Midnight in Paris, or being at its mercy, as in The Time Traveler’s Wife or the 5th season of Lost (shameless excuse for picture of Sawyer shirtless). Maybe you are sent back to save humanity, ala Terminator 2 or Twelve Monkeys. In almost every example, people who travel in time have to be aware of the Butterfly Effect of making any changes. Kill a mosquito in the Paleolithic era, and find yourself back in a present world dominated by killer bees (yes, I’m making things up, but you never know, that is the point).

So I started thinking about if I could go back in time, what tragedies I might be able to remedy, without making too much of a splash in the space-time continuum. One of my old boss’s granddaughter died in a car accident a year or so ago, a totally sober and stupid case of teenage recklessness that ended horribly. I thought how easy it would be to track down the exact place and time (because doing research before you go is important, this was discussed a number of times in King’s book), and simply warn the girl to put on her seatbelt. And because this was recent history, not very much would be changed between then and now, besides saving her friends and family a lot of grief. True, she might grow up to have a large impact on the world, but how many people do, really? Seriously, most people’s lives make very small waves in the world at large.

Now if you did target a powerful public figure’s life to change, like saving JFK or killing Hitler before the Final Solution, or telling Shakespeare to lay off the iambic pentameter, things would change a lot more radically, at least that is the theory. It’s also entirely possible that the world realigns itself, if fate does have any place in our universe.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to go from making a heroic action with my newly acquired time traveling skills, to just wanting to go back and make changes in my own life. Who hasn’t wondered if they had just chosen one thing differently at a key moment, how much different their life would be today? Or, if I just went back and invested in Apple when it first went public, or played those right lottery numbers, the temptation to use your new power for personal gain is also strong.

I know some people follow the idea that every step you’ve made has lead you to where you are today, and so every perceived misstep was actually important and worthwhile. And if you did make changes to anything, even to benefit yourself or your family, it might change a lot more than you intended. But the fact is, it only looks like a detriment if you are happy with where you are today. The idea of making a change to your whole life through one tweak to your past can just as easily look like a threat or a gift, depending on where you stand.

I won’t say exactly what I want to change, but I know where things went off the tracks for me, I know what day started me on a path that evidently led me here. And to be honest, here is neither where I ever thought nor wanted to be. So all I want to do is go back and warn my younger, oh so naive self to make a different decision. I’m pretty sure I could convince her, just by showing up looking very old (to a 16 or 17 year old), and still single and making not much money…basically, seeing me would scare the crap out of her and her teenage ideals of how her life should go, and I think that would make her stubborn smartass actually listen to me. The point being, if you change one key thing, you change any number of things that come after, and it’s sure to have a large (though not global or even national) impact.

Then again, when you start thinking of time travel as the best means of improving your situation, things are not looking terribly bright.

Damn you, Hallmark

Like many people, I’ve never had a good Valentine’s Day. I have been single for more of them than in a relationship, and when I have been in one, it was long distance a few times, and therefore spent alone anyway. The first year that I had a boyfriend at the time, I had already decided to break up with him by the time the holiday arrived, so I spent it mostly feeling guilty, and wondering why the guy I’d been dating a week was writing ‘I love you’ on the card. So now I wonder if that screwed my karma for all future occurrences of this ridiculously trumped up holiday.

Usually, I just ignore it. Not that they make that easy, with the loads of hearts and flowers and teddy bears flooding every store and commercial this time of year. You have to learn to look through them. All the same, it seems better to blur your vision than to be bitter about it.

I think the best one I ever had was in college, my boyfriend at the time and I were just getting back together, he sent me flowers, and that night his band played a show where he wrote ‘Love Sucks’ on his stomach in lipstick. Not ideal or romantic, but we actually did love each other at the time, which is more than I can say for the next year, when we did go out to dinner, and he sent flowers to the new girl he liked. I think the lesson there is that you can’t expect your expectations for a “romantic evening” to be met, or you’ll inevitably be let down.

So, if I’m ignoring it again, why am I talking about it at all? Somehow lately I’ve been infected with a soft spot for the romantic, which is a bit unnerving, as I usually keep that place sufficiently hardened to allow things to bounce off of me without leaving a bruise behind. But I found myself watching snippets of ‘Titanic’ (on all the time now because of the 100th anniversary coming up in April. And I am totally going to see it in 3-D to cry like a 16 year girl again), ‘Pretty Woman,’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ and ‘Lady and the Tramp’ (it’s out of the Disney Vault and appearing everywhere), and enjoying them rather than rolling my eyes. I am a champion eye roller, as everyone who has brought up a romantic comedy around me knows, so this is a strange development.

In part my recent break up has to play a role in making me feel vulnerable again. But I’d rather not talk about that.

In part I blame this book I’m reading, Mr. Fox, which I hadn’t expected to awaken something in me, but is written beautifully in vignette after vignette of brief but poignant tales of doomed love. “The girl tried, several times, to give her love away, but her love would not stay with the person she gave it to and snuck back to her heart without a sound.” There’s nothing like a good tragedy to get emotions stirring.

Maybe I’m just lonely. Not seeking hearts and flowers, and definitely not chocolate (never been a big fan), but the idea of curling up close with someone and breathing them in warmly sounds pretty good.

In the meantime, I’m just going to hit the gym hard and sweat off as much of this softness as I can. 
And at least I have my puppy love.

And these awesome Nick Cage Valentine cards.

Thoughts on getting older (I don't mean that old)

It’s been noted often in recent years how people put off settling down (marriage and family) until their 30s or 40s, rather than the previous norm of getting hitched soon after college. A lot of attention is paid to the extension of education into graduate degrees and the need to be financially secure before seeking to start a family. Also a lot of people site the ways in which people want to know themselves before trying to join themselves to another person. It all sounds very logical and good, so I believed all these years.


But I have to say that at 30 (egad, am I this age?) I realize that there is a lot to be said for meeting someone in college or just after and sticking with them through marriage.

By the time you get a little older, get used to living alone or with a roommate, have a job and a schedule, you find it much more difficult to join your life to someone else’s. There are little things, like putting your dishes in the dishwasher rather than the sink, how often you change the sheets or do the laundry or vacuum. If you combine local households, every one of these things becomes a compromise. And outside of the house, you may have a usual gym routine or happy hour time or dinner with friends, all that have to be adjusted in order to accommodate the routine of your partner.

And if you are not local, when you combine residences, if one of you has to move towards the other, then it’s a matter of wake up times, morning showers and routines, commutes and so forth that have to be adjusted and coordinated with another person. And then all of the normal household things on top of that. We get more set in the ways we live the older we get. I have trouble just sleeping in a bed without my 4 pillows, all of which serve a specific function. I have a friend whose husband has to change his pillow case every night. I know people who have to set the alarm for their coffee before going to bed each night. The point is, we each have our preferences and ways of getting through the day to day that become more ingrained over time, and the more time that we are left to ourselves, the deeper those seeds are sown.

Trying to align your life with someone else, who has also already figured out a fair amount of how to live theirs, is a very difficult task. It involves a degree of compromise that our government couldn’t begin to understand.

When you are in college or just graduated, you haven’t made a home for yourself yet and don’t have any set parameters. You are willing to try living different places and setting up your own home (usually apartment) in an amalgamation of how you grew up and how your roommates or partner did. You are a lot more flexible (both physically and spiritually). Over time, if you are single and form an independent lifestyle, you figure things out for yourself, create a setup that works for you, both in the home and with your free time. Most likely, you want to get involved in a relationship, but most people have no concept of how much adjustment this will entail to their day to day lives. You think of the good things, the calls and dates and sex life and person to spend holidays with. You think a lot less of altering the ways that you’re accustomed to doing things to accommodate theirs, whether this means nightly changing pillow cases or going to the gym at different hours or cooking a more substantial dinner each night or traveling a significant distance at regular intervals to be with them.

We do these things because we care and it’s what is necessary to make a relationship work, but just as the cliché says that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, it is difficult to change the ways of a slightly older and more independent person.

The point being that I am now jealous of all of those who found the person that they are happy to spend their lives with when they were young and flexible and totally unsettled. You have the best chance of any of us to make it work in the long run.

Random thoughts on a Saturday night in

When I recently ran out of TV series I wanted to Netflix, I started adding random movies, some of which I've mailed back without watching, because I'm not in the mood when then come.  But though I tend to really dislike romantic comedies, I felt compelled to do a little comparison of the two identical concept movies that came out last year, No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits (coincidentally each staring one of the stars of That70's Show).  I would have watched the latter just for Justin Timberlake, but the rom-com challenge seemed like an interesting way to go.  

So first up in the mail was No Strings Attached, and as he often seems to, Ashton Kutcher was cast as the guy who really is a romantic and wants to be the perfect boyfriend, but keeps dating bitches.  Natalie Portman (who seems like a really strange match for him I have to say.  Then again, she was less believable opposite Thor) plays the totally emotionally stunted medical intern/resident (that part wasn't very clear, particularly for a fan of House and Grey's Anatomy) who has no time or patience for dating, just wants to get laid.  Yes, it's a role reversal kind of game.  As you would expect, she is able to talk Ashton into the arrangement, but then he keeps showing up with like balloon and mix tapes, like a cat you snub who therefore becomes determined to win you over to its awesomeness.  They decide to slow it down by dating other people and have a big fight, but then she realizes she's jealous because she actually is in love with him, but by then he's been too hurt by her and thinks it's too late for them.  Enter medical emergency of a family member (I did enjoy Kevin Kline's character), our doctor character hears about it and shows up to be supportive, and everything works out finally, cue drive off into the sunset.

Friends with Benefits at least contains more of the comedy element, and further convinced me that I want to hang out with Justin Timberlake, because he seems like tons of fun, even if he is engaged to Jessica Biel and we could only be friends (I have to believe the thing about him loving Kris Kross as a kid and dressing like them is true).  So he is paired with 70's Show alum Mila Kunis, who plays her role fairly similarly to her part in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I enjoyed, so that was fine.  Also, bonus for the cameo in this one by Jason Segel, and the supporting cast including Woody Harrelson and Jenna Elfman.  So, the story begins with Mila recruiting Justin for a job in NYC, because both are bright and talented with advanced careers and the money to have huge Manhattan apartments (always a pet peeve to see as a New Yorker).  They get along great, start hanging out, and become friends.  This is all fine.  Inevitably, while hanging out one on one, they start to talk about how complicated relationships are and how great sex is, wham bam, they are in bed together.  This is actually kind of great for all the tips they give each other, the banter and comic realities of the bedroom.  They keep this up until it seems like things are getting to relationship-like and decide to date other people, and this actually goes alright.  But Mila's new guy turns out to be a jerk, and then her mom bails on her for a holiday weekend, so she goes with Justin to LA to meet his family.  They of course love her, but in trying to convince his sister they aren't a couple, Mila overhears him say awful things about her.  She flees, they stop talking, all is lost.  But wait!  Both miss each other, realize they really love each other, and because of all his fancy work contacts, Justin organized a flash mob to ambush her, and we assume they live happily ever after.

So the stories are about the same, in the way those stories always play out in the movies, but I did prefer the latter movie, which had far superior dialog and screwball comedy.

However the thing they both made me think at the end is how that is absolutely NEVER the way those kind of relationships end up.  Like many modern Gen-?-ers (this is my new term for post-X pre-Millennials) I gave the arrangement a try, because sometimes actual dating doesn't seem like a real option.  I'm waiting for someone to write this movie, because both times I did this, it ended with the guy (who I was more interested in than he was in me) meeting another girl and hastily marrying her, and then getting divorced a few years later.  Turns out these girls were kind of crazy, and the friendship part of the deal I'd had with the guys beforehand was gone very soon, either because the girl sent a fake email from the guy telling me to go screw myself, or because the guy was indelicate enough about the end of the affair that I didn't want to have anything to do with him thereafter.  

Have I said too much?  My point is this: rather than it ending with both participants realizing they actually do love each other, and you really can't just have sex without emotion, it ended with the guys finding love at first sight with someone else entirely, and now being the only people I know personally of this generation who are already divorced, and I'm not in touch with either anymore.  How does that happen twice?  Which has to be twice as likely as the movie ending actually happening.  

I'm going to check what else Netflix has in store for me tonight.

Climate Change like Crazy

As a resident of the Northeast, I'm used to a certain amount of weird weather.  Sure, you can start the day sunny and 70 and end up with a hail storm.  Rain storms pass through seemingly from nowhere, soaking everything for 5 minutes and then disappearing.  My years spent in LA didn't make me as hypersensitive to any weather as you might think, though it is nice to see forecast after forecast predicting partly cloudy and high in the 70s ad infinitum.
But if you've been paying attention these past few months, you have to admit that the weather has gotten ridiculous.  If the term Global Warming throws you off because it doesn't always seem that warm, then just admit that the climate is not what it used to be.  As evidence, here is a highlight reel from the past four months in the New York area.
In late July, we suffered an extreme heat wave.  The temperatures were in the 100s for the better part of a week, made all the worse by the high degrees of humidity.  On one of the worst days, I refused to make the descent into the hellish subways and instead walked to a bus stop, taking a break every block inside an air conditioned store to cool and dry off before continuing on.  When I made it to the bus stop, I waited inside a nearby Duane Reade until the bus pulled up.  Clearly my experience could have been worse as over 20 people died from the heat that week. 

By comparison, August seemed mild.  However toward the end of the month, things took a turn.  Within one week, we experienced an earthquake and a hurricane.  Now, the earthquake actually hit in Virginia with a magnitude of 5.8, which is pretty large for the region.  Southern Californians would have yawned and gone on with their day, but on the east coast, people were pretty freaked out.  What we felt in New York was a minor tremor, but for people not used to the ground swaying, which you feel more the higher up in a building you are, it was a major event.  In my office, it prompted heated debates about whether the proper protocol is the stand in a doorway or to hide under your desk like in Cold War Air Raid drills.  (In case you are curious, the latter is now the preferred protocol) 

Some days later, the warnings poured in about the approach of Hurricane Irene, one of the rare tropical storms actually maintaining strength as it approached the northeast.  I remember Hurricane Bob, and boarding up the windows and all the men going out with their chainsaws to clear the road afterwards.  But it was 1991 and I was young enough that I just sat inside reading until the storm passed.  This time, it was a flurry of activity, everyone go buy water and canned foods, and fill your gas tanks for your generators, and get out the flashlights.  I went out to CT the night before the impending doom of the great storm and took care of these errands.  I also filled lamps with kerosene and pots with water.  The storm itself didn't really get going until late into the night, but then it ripped through, leaving our house without power for week afterwards.  Trees were torn up and toppled onto power lines and streets flooded, though in our area nothing compared to the damage done in New Jersey and Vermont.  For New Yorkers, it was a lot of alarm for not a lot of actual catastrophe.  There were some power outages, the trains and subways stopped running for a while, but no major damage was done. 

As Fall began, the Northeast began to put itself back together.  The weather was mild, remaining pretty warm through most of October, and the leaves changed slowly without frost hurrying their transformation along.

And then, Halloween weekend, we get this snow storm.  The idea of snow this early in the season isn't entirely unheard of, though usually at this point you would expect a light dusting, not even sticking to the ground in most places.  With the temperatures for the day staying above freezing, most of us expected nothing more than an unpleasant wintry mix that would result in slush.  We did not anticipate 5-6 inches of very wet, very heavy snow piling up everywhere.  Once again, I ventured out to CT, but because of Friday Halloween celebrations, I went out on Saturday in the thick of it.  A train ride that normally takes me a little over an hour to get to my home town instead lasted for over two and a half hours, at the end of which I couldn't even get all the way to my town as service on that line was suspended.  My parents came out to pick me up, winding through various routes to find where the roads were still clear and passable.  By the time we got back home, my travel time was over five hours.  The main cause of the excessive damage was that the heavy wet snow stuck to the leaf laden branches, weighing them down until they broke off all over the place, on streets, power lines, houses, cars, train tracks, etc.  My family was lucky, and, for maybe the first time in a storm ever, didn't lose power; aside from several down trees, our property is fine.  But over 800,000 people in CT did lose power, with no clear dates of when it will be restored, all the more dangerous for the sudden cold snap.  This was actually a record setting storm, according to ABC News: “The record for snow in October for New York City is .8 inches set on Oct. 30, 1925,” said senior meteorologist Paul Walker.

When you start talking about Historic and Record Breaking weather, you have to admit that there is something unusual going on with the climate. 

So going into the end of the year, we are looking at more extreme weather, nudged on by La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation.  Sometimes I can't help thinking that people with their end of the world survival caves and cellars might be on to something.

Good luck, friends.

Trick or Treat?

So Halloween is a little over a week away, and I feel unspirited this year. I really like Halloween, I like dressing up, eating candy, our big work Halloween party, mostly cheesy scary movies, the whole thing. Not to mention yummy pumpkin flavor treats (have you had the pumpkin spice scones at Starbucks? They are almost worth the price). Yet somehow this year, I haven't gotten into the spooktacular zone. I haven't bought a costume, though I have an idea, I haven't been to any haunted houses/hayrides or Halloween: Part 27 type movies, and there are no dangerous bowls of candy sitting around the office, free to take all you want. Something is very wrong here.

So how do I make things right, in a good, scary, is that guy dressed like a clown just jumping the gun or is he really psychotic, kind of way?

My first idea is that I need to go see the re-release of Ghostbusters in theaters.  The movie is a classic, the ghosts didn't even scare me when I saw it in the 80s for the first time, but are still more believable villains than in many current horror movies, and come on, Bill Murray. I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to bring this back, but I really should take advantage, cause I ain't afraid of no ghosts (except after seeing Paranormal Activity, that scared the crap out of me).

Next up, I just found Trader Joe's new pumpkin bread and muffin mix, and I think i really should make some delicious treats, which I can bring in to help fill the void of there being no candy dishes out and about. But seriously, I could go for a twix or a kit-kat. Oh, those white chocolate kit-kats, those are awesome. Or the Hershey's cookies and cream bars, those rock. Not to mention skittles and reece's pieces. I may have to make a run to the vending machine.

 

 

 

 

 

So I guess after all of the candy and muffins I have in mind, I'll have to plan a costume accordingly (as in no midriff baring slutty anything this year.  Except possibly slutty pumpkin).  But store windows around the city are telling me that zombies are the way to go this year.  What's great about that is you can be zombie anything.  It's the ultimate easy costume, you can wear anything and add some makeup, and bam, you're a zombie.  Seriously, a simple Google search will show you that nothing is off limits, there are no specific rules.  Granted, it's not a very attractive look, it may not be a good way to pick someone up at the bar on Halloween, but my own experience is that the same way your costume goes into the back of the closet as soon as the holiday is over, anything that happens in Halloween is best left hidden away in the dark.  So bringing the scary back to your costume instead of to your morning after is really the better way to go. 

So do I feel more spirited now...not yet, but hopefully soon.  Where's a flash mob Thriller reenactment when you need one?

Fincher's Dragon Tattoo

I just discovered the gloriously cryptic Mouth-Taped-Shut site with updates on the making of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -American version, as well as other Fincher-isms.  Love it.  And the rumor is that the behind-the-scenes shots are provided by Fincher himself, so even better.  Here is a trailer for the movie, in theaters in December, which looks awesome. 

I admit that I was initially skeptical about remaking the Swedish version, which was good, though lacked a fair amount of exposition, and cut the second tier characters (Erika Berger notably) down to almost nothing.  On the other hand, when Daniel Craig plays Mikael, his appeal to women of all stations and ages makes more sense than it did in the original.  But seeing that David Fincher craftsmanship, those haunting close ups of otherwise benign objects, the sweeping shots of the house and the woods, I can see the potential this new adaptation holds. 

As I mention, Daniel Craig plays our journalist and amateur detective hero, Mikael Blomkvist.  And as our leading lady of vengeance and no mercy, Lisbeth Salander, we have Roony Mara, a thankfully almost unknown indy actress who we can see in the role without picturing every other role we remember her from.  I really liked Lisbeth in the Swedish version, tiny and tatted up, but I am curious to see what this new actress can do.  Among the rest of the cast, Christopher Plummer is always a treat, and Stellan Skarsgard (father of my favorite vampire portrayer, Alexander Skarrsgard), who is eerie in his own right, should bring the right air of actual Swedish to the mix. 

As though the director and cast weren't enough to excite us about this movie, the soundtrack Trent Reznor.  I have to say, I never feel the need to rewatch The Social Network, but I bought the soundtrack because of how good he is at setting a mood. 

Also amazeballs: rumors of a Fight Club musical, because Fincher and Palahniuk together are just that awesome.  Because if they can do it with Silence of the Lambs, why the hell not?  I see a whole song and dance number for "His name is Robert Paulson."  Also eerie background voices singing "You are not your khakis."