An Open Letter to the Male Parental Unit

Dad, I know that you read this blog. I know it because the Internet is not as anonymous as you think it is. What especially irks me is that you read it compulsively, but not openly. You do it in the clandestine corners of your office, and you won’t admit to it.

Well, now you see. I don’t converse with middle-aged pedophiles. I don’t trade in illegal substances. I don’t make money selling porn. I don’t plan criminal activities. And I don’t need to be monitored by you.

You probably think that I am closed off and aloof in person, and you want to “get to know” me better by peeking at my online ramblings. It doesn’t work that way. My Internet persona is vastly different from my real one, and if you think I’m losing touch with reality, let me assure you that I am only too painfully aware of reality and my part in it.

My blog is only a Polaroid snapshot: you get to see my face, but you only see one face, one pose, one angle. What is lost in translation is flesh and blood and soul. Yes, a photo of me is clearer than a fuzzy silhouette, but it is also more deceptive. You may think you know me, but what you know is a meticulously constructed façade that mimics, but never perfectly depicts me. I’m sure you understand how the Internet unites us across a physical distance but drives us apart on the emotional plane.

I ask that you respect me as a daughter, as a fellow human being, and stop reading because I ask you to. I seek a freedom to express without the stifling presence of a vigilante looking over my shoulder with every word. I ask you allow me that as I could easily pack up or kill this place altogether. I don’t want to play virtual hide-and-seek with you because it is annoying,frustrating and above all, it is for children.

P.S. Flippant attempts at being witty on the blog should not be interpreted as accurate psychological markers. See what I mean in saying the blog is deceptive? I only write about film so much because it’s easier; it’s less messy than real life. Filmmakers have already done the hardest job of distilling life into a tangible medium, and it’s easier to write about film than life in the same way it’s easier to eat French fries than raw potatoes. Just because I eat more French fries doesn’t mean I think it’s healthy.

Thoreau Lives at the Brattle Gym!

The summer's been going swell. I've sweated 10 liters of salty liquid, fixed my brother's light saber 5 times, and moved 200 lbs of laminate flooring into the basement. The numbers don't tell the complete story, but my summer's been going swell.

Saturday brought the first day of Brattle volunteering and an opportunity to explore Harvard Square. As many times as I've been there--I even used to live in Cambridge--I've never actually explored the place. I had never wandered into foreign language book shops, never walked down the stairs to obscure basement CD stores named Twisted Village, never touched every single bead at Beadworks. Lunch, however, was an obscenely expensive sandwich split with Steff and the pigeons at Au Bon Pain. (Scary coincidence: I saw my English project stalkee again.) After a stroll through the Harvard campus, I almost want to go to Harvard, just to soak in that ambience and explore all those remaining nooks and crannies.

As for the volunteering, it must be the best-paid, most laid-back volunteer job I have ever taken. Not only is the work minimal, but I also get to watch free movies, eat/drink free food, and get free movie passes. Plus I got to meet the director of the film--pretty cool!

Some weekend web surfing led me to a rabid Wes Anderson fan site. When I say rabid, I mean RABID. I think I've found my people with them, but the girls (I'm guessing) there were obsessive to a point that far surpasses even my obsessiveness. Point? Dude looks really good in black and white.

I spent most of Sunday bonding with my family at Walden Pond. My mom, brother, and I took a hike around the pond and saw what was left of Thoreau's famed cabin. The term "what was left" is applied very loosely here because, quite frankly, nothing is left. It was simply a pile of rocks assembled as a memorial and then a plaque marking a stone of Thoreau's house. Disappointing, Thoreau, disappointing. You should have built your cabin better.

Today, I started summer gym. There seems to be an excessive number of students this year so we didn't get to pick our classes. :( I got stuck with my elementary gym teacher who is surprisingly hardcore. Oh why did I pay $150 just so I could write a paper for gym class? Sigh.

Filmic Update: The Squid and the 28 Secretaries Inside

As I predicted, Netflix and movie-watching have taken over my life. I present you proof of my existence:

The Squid and the Whale (Baumbach, 2005)
So painful it’s funny; so funny it’s painful. The Squid and the Whale is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical take on his parent’s divorce is brimming with pointed barbs, bravely mocking the very intellectual audience that the film appeals to. The opening sequence of the family tennis match perfectly establishes the family dynamic in a matter of minutes—older son Walt and pompous dad Bernard vs. younger son Owen and mother Joan. This intimate, character-driven dramedy cuts a clear slice of life with its keen insight and sharp wit. It’s one of those movies that make loving movies worthwhile. A

P.S. I don’t understand why people keep comparing The Squid and the Whale with The Royal Tenenbaums. As much as I adore Wes Anderson, he can have all of his funky costumes, anamorphic lens, and big budgets, but he has yet to touch the poignancy of Squid’s biting realism.

28 Days Later (Boyle, 2003)
Honestly, I’m not usually one for zombie movies—schlock horror has never appealed to me beyond “Let’s get scared for Halloween.” But 28 Days Later, directed by the genre-hopping Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, is a genuine fright that electrified me for two hours. The gritty DV gives the film an eerie realism, especially during the shots of an empty London. Cillian Murphy’s blue eyes reflect the startling terror that permeates this multi-layered film. B+

Secretary (Shainberg, 2002)
Love with a kinky twist—that’s the premise of the dark S&M comedy Secretary. Maggie Gyllenhaal gamely turns into the shy Lee Holloway, who returns from a stint at the mental institution to work for James Spader’s domineering lawyer Mr. Grey. Secretary is an office romance that works out better than it should, picking up the dark and the funny but never passing judgment. It’s a bit too bare bones, but the inspired art design and costumes give it a wholly original weight. B

The Sea Inside (Amenábar, 2004)
Melodrama is at tricky genre, and director Alejandro Amenábar fails to temper the melodrama of The Sea Inside into a good movie. About quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro’s struggle to die with dignity, the film hardly focuses on the psychology of the man himself, instead settling to manufacture drama out of Ramón’s surrounding friends and family. Some stunning cinematography hardly makes up for the inert and lifeless direction. D+

I Heart Huckabees (Russell, 2004)

Tell me the significance of this coincidence: I’ve watched 3 random movies recently—Shopgirl, Rushmore, and now I Heart Huckabees—all featuring actor Jason Schwartzman. And in all three movies, Schwartzman has played a lovable schmuck with bad hair and less-than-desirable professions.

The lovable schmuck played by Schwartman in I Heart Huckabees, Albert Markovski, also stumbles on a puzzling coincidence. After meeting a tall African man at three chance encounters, Albert decides to take his case to Jaffe & Jaffe (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman), a husband and wife team of existential detectives.

Existential what? Yes, detectives. This is where we know that David O. Russell’s soup and nuts existential comedy I Heart Huckabees is as just as well soupy and nutty. As the existential detectives pry into Albert to find the meaning of his life, we see his quixotic quest to save a swamp from the evil denizens of Huckabee’s, a Wal-Mart like corporate bulldozer. Along the way, the script also throws in a depressed firefighter lecturing on the evils of petroleum (Mark Wahlberg), a French philosopher/sexpot (Fanny Ardant) Huckabee’s golden boy and Albert’s nemesis Brad Stand (Jude Law), and his ditzy girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), who also happens to Huckabee’s spokeswoman.

The characters’ tangential importance in Albert’s life is well…tangential, but they’re here because, as Jaffe and Jaffe claims, “Everything is connected.” Too bad this disparate movie itself can’t figure out exactly how they’re connected. Add in monkey sex in the mud, whacking faces with balls, an Amish bonnet, (deliberately) cheesy special effects, and here we have a movie drowning in the kitchen sink.

Only Jude Law and Naomi Watts manage to stay half afloat in this messy puddle. As Jaffe and Jaffe continue their poking, Brad’s life begins spiraling downward, much to Albert’s schadenfraudelicious delight. Even with a shoddy American accent and a bad dye job, not to mention fake breasts and a long blonde wig in one scene, Law exudes enough charisma to almost give this movie a reason to exist. Watts provides the only other perk in this otherwise dull comedy as the hopelessly ditzy Dawn, who turns on the frump after an encounter with Jaffe and Jaffe. “You can’t deal with the infinite nature of my existence,” shouts Dawn in an Amish bonnet and overalls. “Yes, I can…Wait, what do you mean” answers Brad. The titter tat between this seemingly golden couple is the only comedy find you’re going to mine at Huckabees.

There are some other cheap laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of the situations, but none of the wit you would expect from such a highbrow concept. Or maybe those lightning fast one-liners were witty, but they are thrown out with such blasé that they hardly lingered in the air. Huckabees is light on characters and heavy on philosophy, or at least the name-dropping of it. But for a movie about philosophy, it sure doesn’t provoke much thought.
I
n keeping with its peek-a-boo narrative, Huckabees doesn’t tell us the meaning of life; it doesn’t even tell us the meaning of Albert’s coincidence. As for my coincidence of watching Jason Schwartman films, let’s just say there is no significance, just as I Heart Huckabees has none either. But perhaps Russell wanted to make an inane and absurd comedy about the inanity and absurdity of philosophical musings. In that case: Bravo, you’ve made a good point. Now make a good movie.

Summer Bitchin'

Hah, life has depressed into another one of those summer lulls. My body has been taken hostage by a full bout of inert forces, turning me into a lumpy potato. Ambulatory matters become ones of exertion. Funny how I used to feel that summer days dragged on and on because now I look back each night and think, "Where did my day go?" The clock ticks and the pendulum swings as I sit aimlessly browsing the Internet.

Having received my report card, I can finally cleanse my hands of junior year--a year mostly unremarkable now that I think about it. It didn't kill me, nor tickle me, nor amuse me. It was just there. To my utmost surprise, I managed to scrape an A- in English, a feat I had previously deemed impossible. My dad looked at my report card and gave a look of relief, "You haven't gotten any B's ever, right?" Whatever, I get the distinct feeling that my dad knows my grades much better than I do.

A pile of library DVDs, 5 boxes high, sits next to my bed away from the prying eyes of my parents. Sigh, how will I ever get through them and still be content with reality? Netflix is being really shitty about logging my returned DVDs; I beginning to experience that wonderful thing called "throttling." I need to give them a bitch call once I find their phantom customer service number.

AP Psych class slides deeper and deeper into oblivion and uselessness. For my next assignment, I'm supposed to give on example of why I am in to the Genital Stage of Freud's psychosexual development. Why is CTY telling us, a assembled group of geeks and nerds, to spill our sex lives?