How to Live Through a Week of Tragedy

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You can’t remember so many bad things ever happening in such a short amount of time. Information keeps coming in about the bombing at the marathon and the people who were killed and wounded. All of your friends who were at the marathon (it is not an exaggeration to say that EVERYONE in Boston knows someone who was there) are uninjured, but the stories of people who were hurt are hard to hear. You remember how when events with mass casualties happened in the past, you tried to think of who you knew who could have been hurt—on September 11th, your cousin who often flew from Boston to LA, and when the shooting in Arizona happened, your friend who lived in Tucson. You had to wait to hear if those people were okay.

Now it’s your turn. You’re the one people are trying to get in touch with to make sure you’re okay. You’re the one getting texts from your parents, sister, aunts, cousins, friend who’s on vacation, friend in Seattle, friend in DC. It’s not some distant event that you’re mildly disturbed by and think about occasionally—it’s here. It’s your city, your people.

And despite the acts of kindness that are reassuring you of the goodness of people out there, this week of tragedy keeps getting worse. Poisoned letters are sent to President Obama and a Mississippi senator. A plant explodes in Texas, killing and injuring dozens of people. The bill for background checks on guns fails in the Senate, which makes you so angry you’re afraid to talk about it for fear of saying something you’ll regret. Something else in your own world that you don’t want to talk about publicly—something not on par with everything else but still pretty awful— also happens this week.

You don’t think things could get worse…and then they do.

*             *             *

Before you go to bed Thursday night, you hear that an MIT police officer has been shot, then that he was killed. You’ve seen the photos the FBI released of the two suspects and note that there’s nothing distinctive about either of them—they could be anyone. You wonder, before you go to bed, if this shooting is related to the bombings or if it’s yet another unrelated tragedy in a terrible week.

Friday morning, when you finally drag yourself out of bed after hitting snooze several times and start to get dressed, it occurs to you to check the news and see what the latest is on the bombing suspects, so you pick up your new iPhone.

You don’t make it to the news. Your phone has blown up with text messages and voicemails almost as numerous as they were on Monday after the bombing. Dazed, you check the computer and try to make sense out of the hell that’s broken loose while you were asleep. Your office is closed. The T has shut down. Cambridge is one of several cities and towns on lockdown. You’re not supposed to leave the house.

You stumble downstairs and turn on the TV, bringing your laptop with you and trying to get yourself up to speed. They think the suspect is in Watertown, not very close to you, but who really knows? You see pictures the news crew has from around the city. Boston, on a workday when people are normally rushing around and doing their day-to-day thing, looks post-apocalyptic. This, oddly, is just as scary as anything else.

Your fright turns to impatience when you realize that it might be awhile before they catch the guy. The news starts repeating the same things they’ve already said. You go to the back porch to read the paper. You answer work emails from your customers, who all live out of state and have probably forgotten where you live. You talk to your parents, who are flying home from their vacation in Florida. You have a long chain of text messages going with three friends, and your discussion of the news coverage is interspersed with talk of guys, one friend’s cat, and the Geek Squad at Best Buy. You get annoyed when you realize that you barely have any food in the house and can’t even order takeout because businesses are all closed. You get more annoyed when you realize what a nice day it is and how great it would be for running but you’re now stuck inside because of some murderous assholes. Then you feel guilty for being so annoyed at little inconveniences when everyone you know survived the bombing unscathed and so many other people can’t say that.

Around 6:30 they hold a news conference where they tell people the lockdown is over but the suspect has not yet been apprehended. You’re still nervous but dying to get out of the house, and since the T’s running again, you and your friends start making plans for drinks and dessert. As you’re getting ready to go out, you see something happening on the TV. It’s clear now that they’ve found the guy, and you and your friends immediately postpone your plans. You keep texting each other new things that you hear. You keep on watching until finally it’s over and the suspect is captured.

On Saturday, you get up, get dressed, and head out for the plans you didn’t get to last night. You drink multiple glasses of wine at lunch and buy cupcakes from a bakery. You and your friends head into the city and see the makeshift memorial set up on Boylston Street. Several blocks are still shut down. There are some adorable therapy dogs over by the memorial that you and your friends pet. The dogs look tired—like everyone else, they’ve had a long week.

Saturday night you sleep for twelve hours straight.

 

*             *             *

So much goes through your mind this week. While you don’t know any victims personally, little connections keep startling you. Jeff Bauman is from your hometown and was two years behind you at your high school. Patrick Downes graduated from BC a year ahead of you, and many of your friends know him. Sean Collier lived near you, on a street your roommate walks the dog down every day. They’re jolting details, but you have to keep reminding yourself that it wouldn’t be any less tragic if it had happened to people who come from some place you’ve never heard of. You know it will be hard to remember this the next time something tragic happens somewhere that’s not here.

You try to piece together the bits of information you keep hearing about these two brothers, everything their friends and relatives say, trying to make sense of what could have led them to do this before ultimately concluding that you never will, because dropping bombs on a crowd of people at a marathon will never make any sense.

Humor is one of the only things keeping you sane. You’ve always liked The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but you usually only tune in after some kind of major current event, like to see what Jon Stewart has to say about the presidential election. But this week, watching Comedy Central is getting you through the day. And aside from every other awesome thing they do this week, their Boston tributes are especially gratifying. This clip from Colbert manages to be hilarious while also getting Boston exactly right.

[hulu id=pi5tsuwrierrkrzc3_8vyq width=512]

You feel profound gratitude for everyone who helped put an end to the manhunt that dominated Friday. You’re horrified when you think about the guy who found the suspect hiding in his boat and how scary that must have been.

You wonder how long it will be before Hollywood makes a movie out of all this.

You stop talking in the second person.

                                                    *             *             *

There are so many ways a person can use the word “love,” so I need to get across what I mean when I say I love Boston. A lot of people say they love their hometown but still roll their eyes at it, as if their love is like the love they’d have for a parent who means well but doesn’t understand them at all, like Emily on Gilmore Girls. But Boston, for me, is not Emily Gilmore—it’s Lorelai Gilmore, the mom you can’t believe you were lucky enough to be born to. Boston may have been the city I fell into because it’s so close to where I grew up, but that’s not why I stay here. I stay here because there’s no city in the world I could ever love more.

I love that it’s full of colleges and therefore full of people who are here for education, people who are intelligent, people with ambition, people who want to go on to do great things. I love that it’s so easy to get around on foot. I love the passion people have for sports teams—one of my fondest memories of college was watching the whole city erupt in happiness after the Sox won the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years. I love that people who are liberal and open-minded are the rule rather than the exception here. I love that so many big moments in American history occurred here. I love that so many funny people grew up here—Amy Poehler, Steve Carell, Conan O’Brien, Mindy Kaling, just to name a few. I love that Boston inspired movies like Good Will Hunting and The Departed. I love that we have good seafood. I love walking down Newbury Street, getting a cannoli in the North End, taking a ferry to the Boston Harbor Islands, spending an afternoon at the Museum of Science or the Aquarium or the MFA. I love that we have independent bookstores and artsy little movie theaters. I love that it’s not far from the ocean or the mountains. I love that you don’t need a car to live here. I love that we have four distinct seasons, unlike so many other parts of the country. I love that it’s such a foodie city that I feel like my list of restaurants to try will never end. I love the view as I’m going over the river on the Red Line. I love the Boston Globe. I love that the local furniture companies keep trying to outdo each other with their TV commercials. I love that our medical care is among the best in the world—I know multiple people who might not have survived some scary health issues if not for the excellent medical care they received here. I love that the people here respect each other’s space but won’t hesitate to help someone in need—a quality on display in all its glory this week.

“This is our fucking city,” Big Papi so eloquently put it at the Sox game on Saturday. And it’s MY fucking city, too. I have no desire to live anywhere but the Boston area for the rest of my life, and it’s too bad it took a week of tragedy to remind me why.

A Plea for Help

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I don’t normally do this kind of thing- I likely never will again- but Internet, I need your help.

On May 4, I will be running in this 9K race: the Red Sox Runto Home Base. It supports the Home Base Foundation, which raises money for veterans with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. It also supports the development of new treatments for TBI and PTSD and works to lessen the stigma of seeking treatment for these conditions. You can find out more about the Home Base Foundation here:

http://www.runtohomebase.org/what-is-the-home-base-program

This is a great cause that I hope you will consider supporting. Consider this:

This is an organization that’s doing a lot of great things to help veterans and their families, and I think we can all agree that no one should have to suffer from the pain of TBI and PTSD.

I must raise $1,000 by 5 PM on April 29, 2013.

As of today, April 15, I’ve raised $120.

Here is the link through which you can donate.

You can also donate by check- information here.

Please help me make this goal! You don’t need to be a veteran, or be related to a veteran, or know a veteran, or know me, for that matter. Every little bit counts, and every little bit is going to help relieve someone’s suffering.

Thank you in advance, from the bottom of my heart.

For Boston

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It hasn’t really sunk in yet that the bombing all over the news and the pictures that look like a war zone are from something that happened here, in my city, at a race that many people I know were running or watching and that I’ve attended myself multiple times. My friends, as far as I know, are all unharmed, but many other people can’t say the same.

I grew up watching the Boston Marathon. Marathon Monday is always on Patriots Day, a holiday commemorating the start of the American Revolution that falls on the third Monday of April and is only celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine. (My dad, a native of Lexington, where the Revolution started, thought Patriots Day was second to Christmas when he was growing up. He wants it to be a national holiday, but this was definitely not the way we’d prefer for the rest of the country to find out about it.) It’s always during school vacation, since Massachusetts public schools get the week of Patriots Day off. In college, we always had the day off because BC is at Mile 21 of the marathon, and people would start drinking early, put on their summer clothes, and cheer on their friends who were running, many of whom were running it for BC’s Campus School. My first two years out of college, I lived just about at the top of Heartbreak Hill, and I could see the runners going by from my bedroom window. My sister ran for the Campus School a few years ago, and my parents and aunt and I went to watch her at the finish line.

I tell you all this just to get across that everyone in the Boston area has some kind of association with the Boston Marathon—these are just mine. It’s a huge part of living here. Every Bostonian who wasn’t on the marathon route today knew someone who was. It’s not only a state holiday but it’s a day that’s supposed to be fun, joyous, and full of personal triumph, and a day we share with runners and their families from around the world.

I can’t begin to imagine the horror that the victims and their families are going through right now or how awful it must have been to be there when the explosions happened. And I think it might actually be worse for Bostonians who aren’t in Boston right now—like I said, it’s school vacation week, so a lot of people are on vacation, including my parents.

Bostonians can sometimes get a bad rap, for reasons that are somewhat deserved—we’re reserved and unfriendly, our sports fans are obnoxious, we put lawn chairs in parking spaces after snowstorms and then fight over them. But the silver lining of tragedies like this one is that they bring out the best in people, and I am really heartened by the stories I’ve heard about people rushing to help at the scene, running right from the finish line to donate blood, and offering housing to runners who, due to the crime scene being sorted out, no longer have a place to stay. (They’re now saying they have enough blood donations, but that it would help to have more donors in coming weeks, so consider doing that!)

Right now, we don’t know who did this or why. We do know that the response was swift and that, as President Obama said today, “Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people.”

I’ve never lived anywhere but the Boston area and I never will. I have so much love for this city—and despite our reputation, today proved that there’s also plenty of love inthis city.

Pray for the victims and for the city, everyone.

On Faith

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The cursor is patiently blinking at me as I try to figure out how to write this post. But I WILL write it. Inspired by this post at Busted Halo, I’m going to do my best to fast from being private about faith today. But I am changing the date on this post so that it won’t show up on the front page, and I’ll change it back to the correct date later on.

I am Catholic, and I do go to church. I really enjoy the church I go to, which caters to the more progressive flavor of Catholics, and I’m trying to get more involved there. I read a lot of blogs that are mostly or partly about Christianity, but there are a multitude of reasons that mine isn’t one of them. For one thing, I’m from New England, where religion isn’t discussed openly as much as I’m told it is in other parts of the country, and for another, I’m Catholic, and Catholics are, in general, pretty reserved when it comes to expressions of faith. My beliefs are a work in progress, so I often feel like posting too much about them would be like posting the rough draft of a story or something. And also, since I do so rarely discuss religious issues here and I know I have readers who believe all kinds of different things, I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. But in this post, I’m going to have to take that risk.

Why am I still Catholic? I’ve often had a hard time finding the words to explain, and people who dislike the Catholic Church are often very vocal about it. And I am obviously not okay with the sexual abuse cover-ups, their positions on gay marriage and birth control, and the lack of female priests. But here’s what it boils down to for me:

                -I believe everything that Catholics profess to believe in the Nicene Creed. And there is not a word in that creed about any of the more controversial doctrinal points—homosexuality, birth control, or even the pope and priests. I struggle a bit with the concept of the Trinity, but to simplify it, I came to believe in God through reason, Jesus through history, and the Holy Spirit through experience.

                -The negative things people hear in the news about the church, like this recent issue with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, are terrible, but they do not reflect my personal experience. We all know someone who makes the rest of us look bad, but most of the religious Catholics I know are very warm, open-minded, welcoming people. There are many, many good priests in the Church as well as good laypeople serving the Church in their way—in a nutshell, there are more Stephen Colberts out there than Rick Santorums. I also went to a Jesuit college, and Jesuits are awesome—a liberal-leaning order of priests very focused on educating the whole person. While there were certainly a lot of religious disputes at my school, for the most part, it was very focused on social justice and on loving and caring for others. And the community at my church is wonderful, and I love that it exists. If Catholicism is going to grow and change, I think it will do so with the help of people who love the Church but want to see it evolve.

                -I think, also, that people like me, who never knew pre-Vatican II Catholicism, find it easier to reconcile disagreeing with church leaders and remaining part of the Church because priests, to us, do not have the same power they once did. I’ve always viewed the people in the pews as more important than the men in the pulpit.

                -Would I ever change denominations? As of right now, no. I’ve been working on a project (that’s taken me way longer than I intended it to) where I visit many churches of other denominations, and it’s been really interesting and eye-opening. At this point, I can tell you that Catholicism is still what I am most comfortable with, and I will post about the project when I finally finish it.

                -I find a lot of beauty in the message behind Christianity- redemption through love. People get so caught up in particulars—often, bizarrely fixated on sex—that they forget that what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And regardless of what else in the Bible or in Christian tradition is right or wrong, I think we can all agree on love.

That’s what I believe at this moment in time. Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll look back at this post and marvel at how my beliefs have changed in some way. I certainly can’t guarantee that that won’t happen. And there is plenty I don’t know and may never know, like the true nature of God, how prayer works (if at all), how much of the Bible is true and if the books that weren’t included in it should have been, etc.

But the “love your neighbor” part will never change. You obviously don’t have to be religious to believe in that idea, but it does take on a new meaning when viewed through the life of Jesus. And currently, it’s something that I’m struggling with in my own life—it’s been dawning on me lately that there’s not nearly enough service to others in my life, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to change that. It’s the other, lesser-known, and probably more painful kind of Catholic guilt.

So, that’s me being open about faith. When I wrote this posta few years ago, I said that I wished people felt freer to speak openly about what they believe or don’t believe, but I haven’t been doing much to change that. I sincerely hope this post didn’t make anyone uncomfortable, as it’s different from my usual style, but I also hope that more people will take the time to speak thoughtfully and respectfully about their own beliefs or lack thereof.

Let’s end things on a lighter note- with David Sedaris’s brilliant and hilarious Easter story “Jesus Shaves.” “He nice, the Jesus.” Happy Easter!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UagpFoguoUY]

The Katie-Has-Bad-Taste Post

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I’m about to tell you some of my unpopular opinions, but I have a feeling this isn’t one of them: I hate icebreakers. You know, those let’s-go-around-the-room-and-get-to-know-each-other exercises that people do at the beginning of a meeting or event. But if you must do an icebreaker, here are two that are actually kind of interesting to think about: things you like that no one else seems to, and things you don’t like that everyone else does.
You guys, if you’ve been paying attention, already know some of my likes and dislikes in both categories. I love Celine Dion. I hate Arrested Development. And here’s where I give you a multitude of other reasons to think less of me.
Things I Like That No One Else Does
Domino’s Pizza
So apparently, it’s a commonly accepted opinion that Domino’s sucks. I…don’t know why. I really like Domino’s. It’s actually my favorite of the big pizza chains. Their cheesy bread is amazing.
Seafood
With all my weird food quirks, which I’ll get to in “Things I Hate that No One Else Does,” I do love seafood. And because I’m from New England, my standards for seafood are high.
Facebook
It’s become trendy lately to say that you hate Facebook and love Twitter. I’m the complete opposite. I still really love Facebook. Sure, some people are annoying on it, but there’s nothing else that lets me keep up-to-date on people. And someone as nosy as me really needs that kind of tool. Hiding people on your newsfeed solves most Facebook problems anyway. I have an acquaintance who’s a fan of the Tea Party, and while I have her blocked on my newsfeed, every once in awhile I’ll check to see what crazy, conservative, teabagger, “Poor people are lazy and selfish but I love Jesus!” thing she’s posted on her wall today. And you know what? I like looking at pictures of people’s babies. Babies are cute. 
I do draw the line at gushing over your significant other, though. Don’t do that.
The Da Vinci Code
Like, not love. I liked The Da Vinci Code, as in I read it once and found it enjoyable and saw the movie when it came out. It’s nowhere near a favorite. But I will defend it because I don’t think it deserves any bit of the backlash it’s gotten over the years. No, it’s not the best-written book in the world. Yes, it’s sometimes overly dramatic and far-fetched.  Yes, there are some factual inaccuracies. But it’s not as if this was intended to be some kind of award-winning masterpiece. It’s just a thriller. It’s unusual in that it’s a thriller about religion and art, and that it became such a blockbuster hit, but it’s still just a thriller. Plus, considering how little people read nowadays, I’m not terribly picky about which specific books are keeping the publishing industry going. I have no desire to read Twilightor Fifty Shades of Grey, but if you want to buy them, go for it.
Megan Fox
Not as an actress, mind you. I’ve only heard bad things about her acting, but never having seen any of her movies, I can neither confirm nor deny that. However, her interviews are awesome. She just so clearly does not give a shit about what anyone thinks. She knows exactly what her image is and what people think of her, and a lot of times she makes good points. This comment she made on young celebrities who had private pictures leaked to the Internet was great, and something I wish more people would say publicly.
Cheap Light Beer
Not only do I like Bud Light and Miller Light, I like them better than what most people consider “good” beer. And if I enjoy the taste of something with fewer calories, why the hell wouldn’t I drink it?
Phone Calls
Hating phone calls is a thing with our generation, but not with me. I hate texting for anything more complicated than, “I’m here. Where are you?” And for my friends who live out of town, I’d much rather catch up with them over the phone. Not to mention that phone calls are a huge part of my job- I’d be kind of screwed if I hated the phone.
Things I HateThat No One Else Does
Twitter
I still don’t like Twitter. And not for lack of trying, believe me.
Concerts
I love music. I do not, for the most part, love concerts. The forest, for me, is not usually visible amid the trees. If they’re in small venues, you have to stand, and I hate standing. You have to wait through crappy opening bands. You never know whether to sing along or dance or what and try to figure out what looks the least awkward. Your hearing is shot when it’s over, and most of the time you end up thinking the artist sounds better on the CD. These days, it would take a pretty amazing concert for me to pay money for a ticket.
Tom Brady
This is blasphemous in New England (probably not so much in other parts of the country), but I can’t stand this guy. It started with the whole dumping-pregnant-girlfriend-for-a-supermodel thing, and it seems like ever since then, everything he’s done has just been irritating. He comes off as smug and faux-gracious in interviews, the same reason so many people criticize Anne Hathaway. He had that awful grown-out hair for awhile. He’s a spokesman for Uggs. Fucking Uggs. Yes, he is a great quarterback, undeniably. He just bugs the hell out of me as a person.
Kathy Griffin
Now, she annoys me on absolutely every level. I’m honestly kind of mystified at how popular she is. I’ve never found one word out of her mouth remotely funny, and she has that awful voice.
Spinning
I like yoga, Zumba, boot camp, pilates, etc. But I absolutely loathed spinning when I tried it. I didn’t even get that I-just-got-a-great-workout feeling when it was over—I was just sore and miserable. I hear so many people talk about how great spin class is, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why.
Stand-Up Comedy
I can’t put my finger on why, but although I love things that are funny, I don’t generally put stand-up comedy, by anyone, into that category. Maybe because it feels like you HAVE to laugh at everything, even if it’s not that funny. In any case, I’d rather stay home and watch sitcoms than go to a comedy club.
Burgers, Rice (except in sushi), Any Kind of Noodles, Coffee, Jelly, Cold Cuts…
I’m such a picky eater. I don’t like burgers (or most sandwiches with meat), cold cuts, rice when it’s not in sushi, noodles (I’ll eat pasta if there’s nothing else around, but I’m not crazy about it), bacon (ditto), jelly, coffee (always thought I’d get to like coffee when I got older- I never did), and plenty of other things. I don’t put milk on my cereal and don’t usually put salad dressing on my salad. I wish there was a convenient term to explain my weird food quirks. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, lactose intolerant, allergic, dieting…people get those things. But my food issues just make me weird.
What do you like/hate that no one else does?

Wanderlust

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My wanderlust is kicking in, big time.

With today being St. Patrick’s Day, I feel it stronger than ever.

I have a whole list of travel goals on this blog. I’ve made very little progress on it, especially on those that are outside the country.

I’d never left the country until a few years ago, and that’s still the only foreign place I’ve traveled.

I’ve never been to Europe.

I really want to go.

Specifically, I really want to go to England and Ireland. I mentioned it on this post I wrote at the beginning of the year.

Last night I started crying when it dawned on me how hard it might be to make that happen. It sounds so stupid- the very definition of a first-world problem- but maybe it’s just a symbol of all the other things in my life I’m trying so hard to change but am having trouble with. I’m trying to find love, I’m trying to lose weight, I’m trying to get published…but so much is out of my control.

People, both in real life and in the blogosphere, always say things like, “Just get up and go! Do it while you’re young! You’ll regret not taking these kinds of chances when you’re older!”

If only it were that simple.

If only I knew that it would be the right financial decision and that I wouldn’t need to give anything else up to go.

If only I could work out the logistics of it.

If only I knew that my friends could go with me. (And I know someone is going to suggest just going by myself or on a group tour, but I don’t want to do that. I like traveling by myself if I’m going someplace like New York, but to do Europe I’d only enjoy it with people I’m already close to.)

I’ve always been the kind of person who will regret the things she did rather than the things she didn’t do. Until recently, most of my regrets were things I’d done, and I felt grateful for the risks I hadn’t taken. In college, one of my friend was asked when the last time he’d taken a risk was, and he replied,”Well, I’ve never seen the back of a police car, so I think not taking risks is working for me.” I tended to agree with him.

It’s only recently that I’ve started to regret things I haven’t done- and not seizing opportunities to travel is a major one.

For a really long time, I had no desire to see the world at all. I remember when I told a friend that, she said, “That’s sad,” as if there was something wrong with me. But I just didn’t feel like it was an experience I needed. I was happy where I was.

But I can pinpoint the exact moment when it started to change. My friend was telling me about how a friend of hers had just come back from a semester abroad and was having trouble re-adjusting to the US, partly because it frustrated her that no one else seemed to think about how much else was out there in the world.

When I heard that story, I just thought, “Well…that’s me.” And just like that, I changed my mind.

It always kind of made me roll my eyes when I heard people talk about how much traveling changed them. You saw the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China and suddenly you’re a new person? People on online dating sites do it all the time- I talked about it here– and I still really feel like traveling is not, and should not be, some kind of badge of honor. I don’t understand how a vacation could change someone that much.

But maybe I could understand it.

So much of my life, so much of what makes me different from other people, is what I haven’t done rather than what I have. I feel like my lack of experiences- in love, in travel- are what make me stand out rather than what I have experienced.

In fact, maybe I’m talking about love as much as I’m talking about travel here.

Even so, I am craving someplace new to go, outside anything I’ve ever experienced so far.

I hope I can make it happen as soon as possible.

Katie Recommends: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

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Jane Austen, 200 years after the publication of Pride and Prejudice, is still everywhere in popular culture. Even though her books are all set in a time and place that we can only imagine, the characters are people we can recognize in our own worlds, and the emotions and romances in them are timeless.

Clueless did a modern retelling of Emma, and now The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is doing the same thing with Pride and Prejudice—but in a much more interesting way. It’s a web series consisting of several three- to seven-minute YouTube videos, purportedly the video diaries of Lizzie, in this version a twenty-four-year-old grad student studying mass communications. This Lizzie, wonderfully played by Ashley Clements, lives somewhere in California with her family: her Southern-accented mother, who like the Mrs. Bennet of P&P is desperate to see her daughters married with babies; her laconic father; her older sister Jane, an unfailingly sweet fashion merchandizer; and her younger sister Lydia, the twenty-year-old wild child of the family. (Mary, in this version, is their cousin, and Kitty is literally a kitty.) Lizzie’s best friend Charlotte edits her videos for her and sometimes appears on camera. (Side note: for awhile the commercial at the beginning of every video was that stupid Pepsi commercial with Sofia Vergara at a wedding. That commercial doesn’t even make sense! Did she crash a wedding just to get Pepsi? She didn’t have an easier way of getting some soda?)

Here’s the first episode:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs]

Plot-wise, the story stays pretty true to the plot of Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie meets Darcy at a wedding and takes an instant dislike to him, while Jane meets the equivalent of Mr. Bingley, here a med student named “Bing Lee.” Some conversations unfold in front of the camera, but a lot of others are reenacted with costume theater. Lizzie’s parents and, later, Catherine de Bourgh (who is here a venture capitalist who has invested in Mr. Collins’s digital media company) never appear on camera and are hilariously portrayed by Lizzie with token costumes. Lizzie also imitates other characters from the show, and Ashley Clements is pretty brilliant at it. The most recent episode (#96) has a lot of impressions in it (but don’t watch it out of order—you won’t appreciate her imitations if you haven’t seen the rest of the show!).  Darcy, in fact, doesn’t appear on camera until 60 episodes in, but prior to that, we see plenty of conversations with him through Lizzie’s reenactments—where, of course, her titular prejudice takes over. But after he does appear on camera (and, spoiler alert, is quite attractive), we see Lizzie start to fall in love with him in spite of herself.

Once the show got going, the producers started a few spinoffs. Lydia, played by the very talented Mary Kate Wiles, starts her own vlogs. Lydia is pretty unlikeable in P&P, but here she is hilarious. Those vlogs eventually take a dark turn as the modern equivalent of the Wickham scandal looms, and we see Lydia, who’d been an energetic little firecracker for the whole series, reveal her insecurities. (Wickham, in this version, is a swim coach with killer abs.) There are also videos with Charlotte’s sister Maria documenting her internship at Mr. Collins’s company as well as a series with Darcy’s sister Gigi demonstrating a product called Domino from Darcy’s company, Pemberley Digital. All of these spinoffs play into the overall plot, and you can follow the whole story in order here.

And aside from that, this show is really a transmedia triumph. The characters all have Twitter accounts and talk to each other there (you can check this list to follow all of the characters in the LBD universe) as well as Tumblr pages, and Jane is on Pinterest. And recently, Gigi Darcy did this in-character interview with Leaky News.

There are a lot of awesome moments throughout the series. In Episode 69, Lizzie takes a break and Lydia and Jane take over. Lydia giggles hysterically over “69,” while Jane, uncharacteristically, does a spot-on impression of Lydia…and then immediately apologizes. In Episode 83, Lizzie and Darcy flirt and Lizzie manages to convince him to participate in some costume theater, with really entertaining results. But like I said, watch the whole thing in order!

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is unfortunately ending in two weeks with their 100thepisode (well, 100th of the main show, not counting the spinoffs), so you’ll have to do a lot of catching up if you haven’t seen it yet. But if you like Pride and Prejudice, you absolutely should.

Song of the Moment: “Set the Fire to the Third Bar”

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I first heard this song by Snow Patrol and Martha Wainwright a couple of months ago at a party, and it’s been haunting me since I started listening to it on Spotify this weekend. There’s something kind of hypnotic about it.

Certain lyrics from this song have taken up residence in my brain and won’t leave. But they’re interesting houseguests:

I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I’ve found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science

And after I have traveled so far
We’d set the fire to the third bar
We’d share each other like an island
Until, exhausted, close our eyelids

If Wikipedia is to be believed, “setting the fire to the third bar” means turning the heat up, I assume metaphorically in this case. The lyrics are full of imagery about fire and warmth as opposed to cold, and although it’s now March and spring is supposedly on its way, it’s flurrying as I write this. So this seems like an appropriate song for this time of year.

Have a listen. I’m actually not crazy about this music video, though- it’s not how I picture the song in my head. Damn you for not reading my mind, music video director!

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfa9yxCpWoA]

2012 Movies

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This makes three posts in a row about movies. What can I say? I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately.

2012 was a great year for movies. I saw quite a few excellent movies in the past year. I told you a bit about what I thought of some of them in my Oscar post, but here’s a more in-depth look.

The Sessions

Wow, I did not expect to like this movie as much as I did. But I was shocked to find myself in tears at the end of the movie, which is based on a true story. John Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, a writer who survives in an iron lung after being paralyzed as a child by polio. Since his physical condition makes sex extremely difficult, he hires Cheryl Cohen-Greene (Helen Hunt), a married mother who works as a sex surrogate. Ty Burr’s review in the Boston Globe points out, rightly, that there are a million ways it could have gone wrong and that the premise sounds like a bad joke. What makes the movie work is the great work of John Hawkes (I am shocked that he didn’t get an Oscar nomination) and the compassion the script has for Mark.

One really refreshing thing is the treatment of religion. Mark is a devout Catholic who consults with his priest (William H. Macy) before hiring Cheryl. While the priest mulls over the morality of it, he ultimately concludes that God will give him a pass on the sex-outside-of-marriage part. It’s really unusual in the movies to see a clergy member, particularly a Catholic priest, demonstrating empathy instead of judgment, and I greatly appreciated it.

My one big issue with the film? Helen Hunt’s terrible Boston accent. (It takes place in California, but Cheryl is originally from Salem.) Her performance is great other than that, but it’s an especially noticeable problem since she keeps talking to a guy named Mark.

Silver Linings Playbook

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I loved this movie.

Bradley Cooper’s had such a weird career path. I didn’t watch Alias much, but I remember him as Sydney’s sweet-but-dorky friend Will. Ten years later, he’d reinvented himself as a studly leading man, and now with this movie, he’s made himself into a serious actor who, I hope, will be given more challenging parts in the future. He plays Pat, a man with bipolar disorder and anger management problems who’s just gotten out of a mental institution. He landed there after beating up the man his wife Nikki was cheating on him with. Now he’s lost his teaching job, is living with his parents (Robert DeNiro and Jackie Weaver), and is obsessed with getting back together with Nikki, who has filed a restraining order against him. When he meets his friend’s widowed sister-in-law, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who has a lot of issues of her own, he lets her into his life, reluctantly at first. He agrees to be her partner in a dance competition if she’ll deliver a letter he wrote to Nikki. But as they spend more time together, we see Pat’s priorities changing and both Pat and Tiffany’s issues improving. Meanwhile, Pat’s obsessive-compulsive father is trying to make money by betting on Philadelphia Eagles games.

One thing I really appreciated is how it portrays mental illness and psychiatric drugs—realistically, Pat, who isn’t taking his meds at the beginning of the movie, does see an improvement in his symptoms but not an end to all his issues once he starts taking them regularly and seeing a therapist. Also, the acting is superb all around. Bradley Cooper captures Pat’s insanity so well that you don’t even think about how hot he is. And not to get all hipster about it, but I loved Jennifer Lawrence before The Hunger Games—specifically, since Winter’s Bone—and she does not disappoint. I want to be Jennifer Lawrence when I grow up…even though she’s younger than me.

Speaking of which, that’s actually my one issue with the movie—J. Law looks waaaaay too young to be playing Tiffany. She says at one point that she was married for three years, and although I don’t think they said how long her husband had been dead, I think it was at least a year—was she, like, sixteen when she got married? Bradley Cooper even said recently, while denying rumors that the two of them are dating in real life, something like, “I could be her dad!” But Lawrence is such a good actress that it’s not too bothersome.

Argo

I can’t think about this movie without shaking my head in disgust over Ben Affleck not being nominated for Best Director. This is based on the true story of the Canadian Caper, where the CIA freed six Americans in the Iranian hostage crisis who’d escaped to the Canadian ambassador’s house by disguising them as a film crew, although there are some liberties taken for dramatic effect. It says a lot about how well-done it is that even though history tells us how the movie will end, I was still nervous watching it!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

This is a weird movie. Not bad, but weird. It takes place in a bayou community called The Bathtub cut off by a levee from the rest of the world. A little girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) lives in a little wooden house by herself, while her ailing, sometimes harsh father lives in another one next door. A storm is moving in and threatening to destroy everything. Oh, and there are these creatures called Aurochs that come out of the melting polar icecaps running around.

Yeah, I told you it was weird. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. But I can tell you for certain that Wallis is adorable and very talented, and hopefully she’ll be in a lot more movies in the future.

Life of Pi

Another movie I liked more than I thought I would. All I knew about it before I saw it was kid-on-boat-with-tiger, but there’s a lot more to it than that. There’s what we see of the kid, nicknamed Pi, and his life with his family in India before he is shipwrecked with the tiger. There’s the framing device, the adult Pi telling his story to a writer. There are parallels drawn to religion, which I always find interesting, and there’s the possibility that the tiger is metaphorical. But aside from the writing, this movie is just gorgeous visually, even though most of it was created by CGI.

Lincoln

I did like this movie, but it did not, by any means, knock my socks off or blow me away or have me jumping out of my chair or any other idiomatic phrase conveying supreme enjoyment. It is very well-acted—Daniel Day-Lewis does a great job bringing a historical figure we’re all familiar with to life. But while it’s about a major event, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery, the road to that passage was paved with a lot of partisan bickering, not unlike Congress today. At times, it seems like the movie is just a succession of long, poignant speeches. And while I can certainly admire the direction and acting in this movie, it didn’t move me, and a movie about something as big as the abolition of slavery really should.

Pitch Perfect

One of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time. How has there never been a movie about college a cappella until this one? I do have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by most of the music, but it’s funny and unpredictable enough (well, as unpredictable as a comedy can be) to make up for that…and for the fact that everyone looks way older than 18-22. Weren’t Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson just playing older characters in Up in the Air and Bridesmaids, respectively?

The Hunger Games

I’ve heard very little criticism of the adoption of this book to the screen, and given what a big following the book series has, that’s a huge compliment. Jennifer Lawrence is perfect as Katniss (actually, I probably could have ended at “Jennifer Lawrence is perfect”), the movie is very well-cast in general, and it mostly stays faithful to the book. I liked the first book in this series but wasn’t as crazy about the second two, but I am interested to see how the movie adaptations of Catching Fire and Mockingjaygo.

Moonrise Kingdom

I had never seen anything by Wes Anderson before this, but I LOVED this movie. It takes place on a fictional island in New England in 1965, where Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman), two misunderstood twelve-year-olds who have been pen pals for a year, decide to run away together. While much about it is surreal—a gigantic treehouse at Sam’s scouting camp teeters precariously in a very narrow tree, Sam gets struck by lightning but springs back up unharmed almost immediately—it’s also very sweet in its depiction of young love. That they care about each other in an innocent, pre-teen way doesn’t diminish their relationship. And aside from being very funny, it’s also appealing in the way that it captures the feel of spending summer on the New England coast.

The Dark Knight Rises

I am not a superhero-movie person, so it says something that I like these movies enough to see them in the theater without anyone making me. The last installment in this series was, frankly, a bit too long, but not bad. The Dark Knight actually made me think with the questions it raised at the movie’s end, but when this one ended, I kind of shrugged and said, “Huh. Not bad,” and then went home to walk Juno.

The Master

Ehh…this was a decent movie, but I kind of doubt that anyone who saw it loved it. It takes place in 1950, and Joaquin Phoenix plays an alcoholic veteran with PTSD who falls in with a cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose religion is a thinly-veiled version of Scientology. It’s definitely interesting, but feels unfinished—like the writer decided to make a movie about L. Ron Hubbard but couldn’t think of a good enough plot, or at least a good enough ending.

Flight

Interesting character study of a movie. Denzel Washington plays an alcoholic pilot who, despite discreetly consuming vodka orange juice in flight, manages to land a malfunctioning plane with the loss of only six lives. Initially hailed as a hero, he becomes desperate to preserve his reputation as his intoxication comes to light. Washington is great as a morally ambiguous man whose actions keep us guessing up until the end, and Kelly Reilly adds a lot as a heroin addict he meets and bonds with in the hospital.

Zero Dark Thirty

Intense and very well-done. Jessica Chastain is excellent as a CIA agent named Maya (reportedly based on a real person) who dedicates her whole career to finding Osama Bin Laden. It’s nine years of false leads, missed tips, bad information, and tragedy (Maya survives the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott and loses friends in the Camp Chapman attack) before she finally tracks down Bin Laden’s compound. While the movie doesn’t hit us over the head of this, it’s clear that she also faces struggles being heard as a woman working with a lot of men. Even with her assertion that she’s 100 percent certain that Bin Laden is in the compound, it takes a long time for any action to be taken. For over four months, Maya writes the number of days it’s been since they found the compound in dry erase marker on her boss’s office window. In one awesome scene, she’s told to step back as the CIA chief briefs everyone on the compound. When he asks her who she is, she’s quick with the response: “I’m the motherfucker who found this place!” We don’t get much background on Maya—she’s single and a workaholic, but the movie doesn’t focus on it—but Maya’s dazed reaction upon seeing Bin Laden’s corpse, and then her silent tears upon leaving Pakistan in a private plane, speak volumes.

Amour

Quiet, elegant, devastating. And very effective. It’s about Anne and Georges, an elderly married couple in Paris, dealing with Anne’s stroke and subsequent decline in health. While the inciting incident—Anne suddenly going silent during breakfast one morning—is shown, and very well-done, a lot of the big moments happen off-screen. Unlike so many movies nominated for Oscars, it’s not about anything big like fighting terrorism or ending slavery, but about something that people around the world go through every day, and about the small ways that love shows itself.

Django Unchained

I’m not a big Tarantino fan, so I wasn’t excited to see this movie, but I liked it much more than I expected to. However, while it was mostly enjoyable, it was also a lot longer than necessary and not something I thought about once it was over. Jamie Foxx is Django, a former slave traveling with German bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) helping him kill people and trying to find his wife Broomhilda. It’s entertaining, and kind of amazing that Tarantino can still think of new ways to show blood spatter, but one thing that really bugged me was how little personality Broomhilda had. Especially since Django’s want to reunite with her is what propels most of the plot.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I adore this book—in fact, when I first read it at age 19, I went on and on about it in my journal. I was really excited to hear that the book’s author, Stephen Chbosky, was writing and directing the movie as well. I was very pleased with it. Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson as Sam, and Ezra Miller as Patrick were all great—although I definitely never would have imagined that the same actress would play both Sam and Hermione Granger! The book is so much about Charlie’s inner life that I did feel like some of it was lost in translation to the screen, and there’s a lot less about his family in the movie. But those are minor quibbles—this was a great movie.

Oscar Thoughts and Predictions

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I love awards shows. I really do. I’ve been an awards show junkie since middle school. The Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the SAG Awards, and of course the Oscars are big television events for me. I DVR not just the ceremonies, but the red carpet on E!. I buy the issue of People that comes out after the Oscars, showing everyone all dressed up. I check off the winners as the awards are given, and I try to make predictions and see whether I’m right.

Every year before the Oscars, the two Boston Globe film critics list, for each category, who should win, who will win, who was robbed, and who shouldn’t be in the category. I think it’s coming out tomorrow.

This year, I’m doing my own version of that post. It was a great year for movies, so I’m especially excited this year. I’ve seen all of the movies nominated for Best Picture and all but one of the movies that have acting nominations, so here are my thoughts on this year’s Oscars.

Best Picture

Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty

 

Should win: Les Mis. Duh. I will admit that I am a bit biased.

 

Will win: I’m going to go with Lincoln. It’s rare for Best Picture and Best Director to be split and even rarer for a movie to win Best Picture when the director wasn’t nominated. So that rules out Les Mis, Argo, and Zero Dark Thirty, although I would have said that all three of them had good shots before the nominations came out. Lincoln was nowhere near my favorite of the nominated movies, but seeing as it has the most nominations, I’d say it has the best shot at winning. I don’t think Best Picture has been this wide open in years.

 

Was robbed: Moonrise Kingdom! WTF? That was such a great movie. I can’t believe Best Original Screenplay was its only nomination. I also would have nominated The Sessions, a really underrated movie that I found deeply touching. (Uh…no pun intended.)

 

Shouldn’t be here: All nine movies are good movies that I enjoyed, which doesn’t always happen. If I had to drop one, it would be Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was decent but very weird and, for the most part, overrated.

 

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

 

Should win: Hugh Jackman, and that’s not just my Les Misbias speaking. Although, like I said, he doesn’t sing the role as well as most of the stage Valjeans, he does an amazing job carrying the whole movie while embodying a complex, heroic character and singing live on camera.

 

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis. I think what Jackman accomplished was harder, but Day-Lewis does a great job capturing the essence of a historical icon. He’d definitely be my second choice.

 

Was robbed: John Hawkes for The Sessions. He plays a man in an iron lung who hires a sex surrogate to help him lose his virginity, and it’s an incredibly appealing, moving performance. I didn’t expect to like that movie as much as I did, and he was a big reason why.

 

Shouldn’t be here: They were all pretty good, actually. If I really had to pick one to drop from this category, I’d say Joaquin. Although it is nice to see him move on from that whole fake-rapping-career fiasco.

 

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts, The Impossible

 

Should win: J. Law wins at life and should be my new best friend, but while I really wanted to say her, I think I have to go with Jessica Chastain, who was just riveting in Zero Dark Thirty. She’s the very smart, driven CIA agent who has to fight to be heard but whose hard work eventually leads to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. She clearly has lots of emotions pouring through her, but she never overplays the role. The scene where they’re briefing everyone on the compound and the CIA director looks at her and asks who she is, as if seeing her for the first time, and she retorts, “I’m the motherfucker who found this place!” was awesome.

 

Will win: Toss-up between Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain, two actresses whose career trajectories have really shot up in the last couple of years. I would be fine with either of them winning.

 

Was robbed: Hmm…I don’t know. I can’t really think of anyone, actually!

 

Shouldn’t be here: Hard to say. I haven’t seen The Impossible, so I have no idea about Naomi Watts. The other four should definitely be here, though.

 

Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin, Argo

Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

 

Should win: This isn’t a category I have a strong opinion about, but I’m actually going to go to with a less popular choice. I thought Robert DeNiro was pretty great in Silver Linings Playbook, although at this point in his career he certainly doesn’t need any more awards.

 

Will win: Tough call, but I’m going to say Tommy Lee Jones. Every single nominee in this category already has an Oscar, which is another reason I don’t care much about who wins.

 

Was robbed: Eddie Redmayne! If you can make me like and sympathize with a character I didn’t think I could ever like, you definitely deserve an Oscar nomination.

 

Shouldn’t be here: Alan Arkin. He was good comic relief in Argo, but nothing Oscar-worthy.

 

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Master

Sally Field, Lincoln

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

 

Should win: Anne Hathaway. No one else in this category comes remotely close. If I really had to pick a second choice, I’d say Sally Field.

 

Will win: I will be shocked if anyone other than Hathaway wins. She’s won basically every other Best Supporting Actress award this year.

 

Was robbed: SAMANTHA BARKS. Arrgh! My standards for Eponine were pretty high, and she surpassed them. She actually DOES come remotely close to Anne Hathaway.

 

Shouldn’t be here: Amy Adams and Jacki Weaver. I feel like the Academy got it in their heads that they need to nominate Amy Adams for every movie she’s in—she was great in Junebug but just average in Doubt, The Fighter, and now The Master. Also, a pet peeve of mine with this category is how many roles nominated for Best Supporting Actress are “wife-of” roles for characters defined almost solely by their relationship to the leading man. This year, Amy Adams and Sally Field are nominated for “wife-of” roles and Jacki Weaver, who definitely didn’t impress me as much as everyone else in Silver Linings Playbook, is a “mother-of.” And Helen Hunt, like so many actors do, totally butchered the Boston accent in The Sessions. Basically, they should have just handed Hathaway the award and not bothered with everyone else.

 

Best Director

Michael Haneke, Amour

Ang Lee, Life of Pi

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Stephen Spielberg, Lincoln

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

 

Should win: Honestly? Ben Affleck should win, but he inexplicably wasn’t nominated. I don’t know if the Academy’s still holding a grudge over Giglior what, but hopefully he’s satisfied with winning basically every other award out there. I don’t have a strong preference among the actual nominees.

 

Will win: Since I think Lincoln’s going to win Best Picture, probably Spielberg.

 

Was robbed: Ben Affleck, Tom Hooper, Kathryn Bigelow. Seriously, it’s like they threw the Best Picture nominees in a hat and randomly picked five to nominate for Best Director. I’ve heard criticism of Hooper’s directing of Les Mis, so although I’m disappointed that he wasn’t nominated, I’m not surprised. But Kathryn Bigelow? She won for The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty is a much better movie.

 

Shouldn’t be here: Michael Haneke.

What do all of you think? Who would you say should win, will win, was robbed, and shouldn’t be here for all of these categories this year?