Bye-bye, Another Year

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man (or woman) who has lived out another year in its entirety must deserve some genuine acknowledgement — a  pat on the back, a Hallmark card, vacations taken, champagnes popped. Around this time every year, I always feel this sense of self-assured entitlement, this pungent albeit unspoken satisfaction, permeating the wintry air.

It befuddled me, as this all-pervasive feeling appears to have little to do with the Christmas carols and variegated tree lights. It simply says, we’ve made it for another year, and for that we deserve some credit.

Or do we? Recently, it dawned on me that this end-of-the-year satisfaction, in essence, is not unlike the moment when you finally squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, or pull out that lone trash bag from that jumbo pack you bought from Costco. O that sweet little relief, the sense of completion because we did not skip a single beat; we finished it up — an entire year! Of course, we’ll, in all likelihood, replace it with a toothpaste or trash bags of exactly the same brand; or, with another year –let’s face it — closely resembling the previous one, which is at least statistically true. But these mile markers offer much-needed structure and conclusiveness to help us cope with the amorphous chaos of life.

As life does not lend itself to much completeness — it’s ever evolving, metamorphosing, regurgitating, ever demolishing and rebuilding. New problems emerge the moment old problems disappear; and every time you feel convinced you got it all figured out, life has an ingenious way of demonstrating that you haven’t. It sometimes feels like a Sisyphean task, frustrating the heck out of us expecting to move on to the next hill, not knowing that it’s all part of an entwined, snarling, continuously moving mass.

But our sorry little human brains cannot comprehend it. We desire structure and order: a beginning and an end, some well-delineated trajectory, the idea of wrapping it up and moving on. Thus we invented these chronological markers such as the New Year, when we tie up the past year with a bow and celebrate our accomplishments.

For most of us, accomplishments did not involve anything trail-blazing, mind-blowing, war-ending, cancer-curing. We might have learned some small lessons that could help us achieve a slightly more healthy, productive year ahead. (So, next time one decides to finally get her act together and clean up the clutter around the house, she wouldn’t start with the wine cabinet. You know, things like that.) Yet chances are that we’ll carry ourselves intact into the next year, flaws and peccadilloes in tow.

So pretty much all we did in the past year was manage to show up, every day, for 365 consecutive days. But before you swoop into existential angst, let me assure you that you have earned a round of applause for it all: for showing up every morning — climbing out of bed, getting dressed, eating your leafy vegetables, picking up after your dog; for showing up in the office for an honest day’s work (or pretending to work); for showing up in the classroom, while the students would rather be playing FarmVille than learn about postmodern post-structuralist reconstructionist feminism literature; for showing up in meetings and conferences where people oozing self-confidence strategized the future of the universe; for showing up in dull receptions and trying to make small talks with strangers despite you having graduated from the Bridget Jones’ School of Social Awkwardness and all; for showing up in the most stupid Halloween party dressed as a milk-maid; for showing up in myriad airports, world-weary and soul-sick; for showing up in the dentist’s chair, wishing that you hadn’t.

But you did. We all did (with the rare exceptions of the Mark Madoffs among us — peace with their souls). And that ought to count for something, right? After all, as Woody Allen rightfully remarked, eighty percent of success is showing up. Because, without all the showing up, we wouldn’t have stumbled upon those sparkling, delicious, make-it-all-worthwhile moments: a perfect cup of Cappuccino on a rainy day, a little act of kindness from a stranger, a lovely banter between friends, a child’s laughter, a lovers’ kiss. We would never have known.

So here’s a toast to us all.

First Snow



“It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.” –Carl Jung

Love & Other Drugs (2010)

Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a dashy and charismatic go-getter that exploits his charm at every turn in his personal life (with serial seductions and conquests) as well as in his work as a pharmaceutical salesman, slickly peddling Xanax, Zoloft and, later, Viagra into the hands of ethically ambivalent doctors and their dewy-eyed secretaries. An underachiever in his family filled with MDs, he is also emotionally constricted and deeply insecure, choosing a fast-lane approach to life and always taking the easy way out while secretly sabotaging every chance at veering away from his shallow, empty existence.

That is, until he meets Maggie (Anne Hathaway). She is beautiful, talented, fiercely independent and as attachment-phobic as he is. Plus, she also has early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Despite the red flags screaming all over the screen (Go away! Un-friend! Run for your life!!), the two plunge into plenty of passionate sex, before they have to, reluctantly and even painfully, confront the fact that the intimacy they share is beyond the mere physical.

So the movie seems to have all the right ingredients to make it work. The plot line offers a solid premise for character development. The backdrop of the cut-throat world of pharmaceutical sales and the broader health care ecosystem is also original and potentially captivating. (The script is based on the book “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman” by Jamie Reidy, a frank, fast-paced, fascinating account reminiscent of Thank You for Smoking and The Boiler Room.) Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal are insanely good-looking actors who also happen to act well.

Despite all these fine ingredients, the director Edward Zwick managed to botch the entree, because he is like the chef who couldn’t quite make up his mind what to make:

— Should it be a social satire that offers a honest, non-judgmental glimpse into the pharmaceutical marketing practices, the symbiotic relationship between doctors, the Big Pharma, HMOs and regulators, and the complex social and moral consequences of this multibillion-dollar business?

— Should it be an emotional drama about the physical and emotional toll that Parkinson’s and other degenerative neurological diseases take on the patients and their families, and the commitment and love required to take on this doomed battle for life’s dignity?

— Should it just be another meet-cute romantic comedy with its melodrama and a vanilla resolution? Or, maybe a frat-boy slapstick with crass jokes and grossed-out scenes that only appeal to teenage boys (hints: fat butts, pajama parties, and Viagra side-effects)? Or, is it supposed to be soft porn, given the ample amount of nudity and sex depicted in the movie, which is uncommon for a major-studio production?

It seems that the movie suffers the same condition as its protagonist: it chooses to take the path of least resistance whenever possible and never makes a stand what it wants to become: Warm and fuzzy? Hot and steamy? Cool and sarcastic? Or, OMG & LOL? It bounced back and forth between all the aforementioned themes and genres, scratching the surface on each and sending the audience itching for more, and just stopped short of satisfying any expectation in a coherent manner. In other words, the movie can use a dose of Ritalin for its ADHD.

Bottom Line: A sadly missed opportunity at being a classic. But, frankly, as potpourri entertainment goes, you can certainly do worse than this!

Popularity Contest

The American Music Awards show, aired on ABC on Sunday Night, is proof that fame, or popularity, is God’s merciful gift to those lacking any redeemable talent (the merciful part is debatable, though).

Miley Cyrus managed to deliver a bland, contrived rendition of the ballad “Love and Forgiveness”, donning a winkled black gown as if she had just climbed out of a seventeenth-century sarcophagus.

Katy Perry, on the other hand, stuck to her usual combustible, cleavage-revealing self with “Firework,” offering flashy eponymous stage effects but only hitting half of the high notes. Her vocal is truly horrendous — her manager should advise her against singing live ever again.

Ke$ha, with her trying-too-hard bad-girl persona, is as unbearable as usual. During a most bizarre performance, she raised a guitar with a big crossed-out “HATE” on the back and emphatically smashed it to bits. Wow, I think I’ve seen that act before, and it even has a name — it’s called IRONY.

Taylor Swift, usually a satisfying vocalist, sang a very forgettable song about regret and loss — emotions that she clearly has not fathomed. Train was also disappointing with “Hey Soul Sister” and “Marry Me”. I’ve always liked the band’s thoughtful, melodious groove. But they’ve grown more and more sentimental, effeminate and predictable over the years. The song “Marry Me” feels like it was written with the sole purpose of being played at every wedding in the next twenty years. Oh my friends, please spare me.

There are some rare moments of much-needed relief. Pink injected some excitement into the mishmash of mediocre performances  with an energetic “Raise Your Glass”. But that left me missing the sensibility and vulnerability of her earlier songs such as “Family Portrait” and “Vietnam”.

As for the awards, most are just absurd — Rihanna won the Best R&B/Soul Female over Alicia Keys? Give me a break. And the biggest award, the Artist of the Year, went to the 16-year-old Youtube-phenomenon-turned-pop-star Justin Bieber. Which says a lot about the voting demographic. Unlike the Grammy’s, which are voted by a panel of “experts”, the American Music Awards are an unabashed popularity contest based on online voting. And when you invest power in the texting fingers of teenage girls, you’ll end up with precisely a 16-year-old Youtube-phenomenon-turned-pop-star What’s-His-Name, cutesy and no substance. It scares me to think that the same mechanism can make Sarah Palin President of the United States in 2012. (Maybe that’s what the end-of-the-world omen has been about…) After all, democracy is a device that ensures that we shall be governed by no better than we deserve.

The highlight of the night, it turned out, was the closing performance by New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys. What can I say? Once a boy band, always a boy band. I listened to them when I was a teenager. And they still know how to party!

Sex and the City 2 (Or, “Much Abu Dhabi about Nothing”)

Once upon a time, four single girls — Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha — formed a beautiful friendship on the magic island of Manhattan that tided each other through the thick and thin of a woman’s life: relationships, careers, money, family, motherhood, and, alas, fashion. We — the avowed SATC fans — laughed and wept with them every step of the way, as we saw facets of our own lives reflected in the joys and struggles of the characters, and always rooted for them — loading up on the DVDs, emulating their cocktail choices and sartorial tastes, soaking in the ubiquitous product placements, and even making the lackluster first Sex and the City (2008) movie a box-office blast (grossing over $400 million worldwide).In retribution, we now got “Sex and the City 2”, a witless, tasteless knock-off of the original HBO series. [I have to warn you that the following review may contain plot spoilers — so stop here if you have planned to view the movie — but I’m not sure the movie has any plot to begin with, so I guess we’re fine.]

While the first movie at least attempted at some resemblance of a plot (it concocted a lavishly planned yet predictably aborted wedding, where Mr. Big got cold feet and left Carrie at the altar, and, after much melodrama, the couple kissing and reconciling at the end), the current sequel has abandoned such pretense altogether and decided instead to let the narrative be purely driven by a mandatory change of costumes every five minutes. Sure, the women are all expensively gussied up (many of the clothes look tacky, vulgar, and flammable to me rather than chic and classy, or it is just me having no appreciation for high fashion??). But they come across as such uninteresting, and even annoying individuals, completely devoid of intelligence, charisma, or kindness — Or, maybe they’ve always been the shallow, self-obsessed, materialistic bimbos — it’s just the big screen magnifying their character flaws, or the fact that they’ve outlived the social license of acting in a certain way 12 years after the SATC franchise begun.

By now, the four women are all in their middle age (Samantha is in her early 50s and the other three are in mid- to late-40s.) But, contrary to what their weary looks suggest, they have not grown a tad from their younger selves, at least not psychologically. Carrie is still the insecure, neurotic drama-queen that she was. Only now, marriage has become her new theater — every triviality (such as Mr. Big’s penchant for black and white movies, or his preferring to stay home with restaurant take-out rather than to go out clubbing on a Monday night) becomes a smoking signal for a surefire decline into marital boredom and demise. So she continues to obsess and fuss, even though she’s gotten the man of her dream and lives in a luxurious Manhattan apartment that looks like an interior designer’s wet dream.

This epitomizes the premise of SATC2: the women whining about the inconsequential problems of their rich, privileged lives. Miranda is still the know-it-all control freak that she was, complaining about a male-chauvinistic pig of a boss in her law firm (wouldn’t you expect a less shallow treatment of the workplace challenges for professional women?). Charlotte laments the difficulties of motherhood despite the fact that she does not have to work AND that she has a loving and supportive husband AND that she has a full-time nanny. As I squirmed and writhed in my seat during this 2.5-hour movie (but I felt even much older by the end, believe me), my heart frequently went out to the poor husbands of these women who seem utterly incapable of living in peace with themselves, let alone with another person.

The most pathetic among them, still, is the one who is single: Samantha — oh you know Samantha — remains the sex-crazed diva who now pops 40-odd hormonal pills every day in a battle against menopause and even aging itself. In one scene that happens in the Middle Eastern emirate of Abu Dhabi (a most perplexing location choice by the Writer/Director Michael Patrick King; not only because the city in “Sex and the City” means New York City but also because these women look ridiculously out of the place — like letting a Chihuahua run loose in the wild — when uprooted from their natural habitat of Manhattan), Samantha tries to seduce a wealthy Scandinavian businessman by insinuating a certain act via a hookha pipe. That’s when it dawned on me that SATC has completely lost it. If the handsome multimillionaire wants a 20-something escort, wouldn’t you think that he’ll just get a 20-something escort? If he finds a middle-age woman attractive, it’s unlikely about her maximally exposed cleavage and sexual innuendos; rather, it’s probably because of her wit, grace, and self-assured charm.

These qualities remain elusive in Carrie and her girlfriends. And that’s precisely what went wrong with SATC2. I have no doubt that the movie will do well at the box office thanks to the fans’ goodwill. In fact, this very author has watched the movie twice, despite the mental waterboarding she had to endure each time, out of solidarity with two different groups of girlfriends (right, that’s the kind of loyal friend that she is). But HBO and Time Warner (parent of New Line Cinema) have by now milked the cow dry. Nothing short of killing off these hideous women (shouldn’t be too hard, huh, given their 5-inch stilettos and general mental instability?) would again get us into the theaters.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

Despite the awesomeness of the movie, a caveat is in order: if movies have to carry warning labels as prescription drugs do, the voice-over on its TV commercial has to go like this:

“This movie is not for everyone. Potential side effects may include dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, hypertension, and cardiac arrhythmia. People who suffer from depression, panic attacks, or other mental illness symptoms should not watch this movie. Also, do not view this movie if you are not yet weaned from socially indoctrinated constructs such as patriotism, heroism, and monolithic morality as this movie may be disruptive to your self-contained world view. If the knots tightened in your stomach during watching the movie last longer than four hours, consult a health care professional or pound a pillow.”

The movie, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, traces the daily life of a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq. The three-man team is tasked with the dangerous mission of detecting, defusing and, if needed, detonating, I.E.Ds (improvised explosive devises) in the enemy territories.

The Hurt Locker opens in a spellbinding sequence: the superb use of handheld camera, the haphazard cinematographic angels and heavy-breathlike pacing precisely capture the atmosphere of the war zone. You feel like you’re there, embedded with the combat team, sitting in the back of their Humvee, breathing in the hallucinogenic desert heat, rumbling along the streets of Baghdad, where every casual passersby could suddenly turn a menacing enemy, detonating a bomb that blows you into bits and splinters. From that moment on, everything feels personal. The emotions are raw, visceral, and core-shaking. Hitchcock once said that if there is a bomb under the table and it explodes, it is action; if there’s a bomb under the table and people play cards, it’s suspense. The Hurt Locker, as it turns out, is an adrenaline-drenched mixture of action and suspense — every action is suspenseful, and every suspense is fully earned.

Despite its backdrop of the Iraq war, it is not a political movie, or even a movie first and foremost about wars. It is a human story — a study of characters, so to speak — revealing the subtle and complex human motives and emotions under a specific circumstance, which happens to be war.

The most fascinating member of the team is Staff Sgt. William James (played splendidly by Jeremy Renner). Unlike his teammates Specialist Eldridge, who, tortured by panic and fear, only wants to finish the job and go home in one piece, and Sgt. Sanborn, who is a stoic professional soldier who insists on protocols and rules, James is one of a kind, a “wild card”: he defuses deadly bombs with the precision, care and ecstasy of an artist molding clay into a masterpiece; he doesn’t play by the book, he improvises; he thrives on danger and often puts his team in severe peril. He’s the ultimate soldier, in the sense that he is not driven by honors or medals or any external social artifacts; instead, he is driven by the pure exhilaration that lies beneath the thin shell of terror. He is a man who turns fear into genius and ruins into poetry. The war offers him a theater where he excels while the mundane life does not. In a very telling scene in the movie, James, back home after his rotation in Iraq, stands in front of hundreds of breakfast cereals on a supermarket shelf, lost, confused, paralyzed, unable to decide — a hamstrung version of the man who so aptly made life-death decisions in split seconds.

Great filmmaking is defined by great storytelling: to tell a story so we can understand its characters as human beings beyond the labels and judgments that we as a society are all too adept in dispensing. The movie perturbs our preconceived notions about wars and soldiers on so many levels: no black-and-white moral clarity, no victories or trophies; it is not even a tragedy in the Greek sense where you’d expect a cathartic, revelational ending. It is heavy vodka, bottled and sealed, take-it-or-leave-it style. I have to admire Kathryn Bigelow’s determination to tell the story her way, the audience’s comfort zone be damned. After my years of frustration with the Academy of Motion Pictures, hats off to it for her well-deserved Best Picture and Best Director (and Directress?) Oscars.

A Power Tool for Gals

Of course I’m talking about a vibrating mascara. What else could it be? 

For the unenlightened gender among you, mascara is an integral part of a woman’s life — if she only has 30 seconds to put on some makeup before rushing out the door in the morning, she would put on mascara alone. (So next time you see a girl with luxurious long lashes and think she’s born with it — remember what your friend Jackie told you: it’s Maybelline.)

But what distinguishes this mascara, called “Maybelline Pulse Perfection”, is that it has a small built-in motor engine, so when you touch a button, it delivers 7000 vibrations per minute, which promises efficient separation, lengthening, and curling of the lashes. The operating word here is “efficient” — because who wouldn’t want a motor engine to accomplish what you so painfully have to do yourself? I found myself liking this pulsating mascara a lot so thought it would be fun to share.

Oh I almost forgot to add that, according to the newly released yet already much-maligned FTC guidelines for bloggers, I must disclose any money or freebie received for my product reviews, or pay a $11,000 fine. Not that I’m such a popular blogger that companies line up outside my door and wrestle with each other to curry favor with me — unless my 11 readers yesterday were Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and 9 Saudi princes, any investment in bribing me would result in a very negative ROI. But I did get this mascara quite serendipitously and supposedly for free, and that took quite a story to explain.

This past summer, I attended a consortium hosted by L’Oreal at their New York City headquarters, where they invited a bunch of management academics to sit around and talk about their assorted brands such as L’Oreal, Maybelline, Yves Saint Laurent, Garnier and Lancome. And this Maybelline Pulsating Mascara was in the goodie bag I received as a thank-you gift, which also contained miscellaneous bottles of shampoos, hair balms, body lotions and such.

Of course I was more than thrilled to receive this treasure-packed bag. Not to mention that last time I was invited to a Google conference on its Mountain View campus, all I walked away with was a Gmail account.

But as the Zen master often warns, “don’t judge good or bad too quickly”, an unforeseen problem soon arose: the next leg of my trip was to fly from NYC to Salt Lake City. Of course there was no way I could pack this pandemonium of toiletries into a quart-size, clear plastic zip-top bag as required by the TSA, so my only option was to check it in with the United Airlines at a price of $20.

(By the way, is there any constitutional law attorney who happens to be reading this blog? I have a business proposal: we can file a lawsuit against TSA and major airlines as co-conspirators in sex discrimination. Our argument before the Supreme Court justices would go like this: there is a much higher chance that women have to exceed that quart-size limit in toiletries and therefore compelled to check in their bags with the airlines, who ruthlessly take advantage of this by charging exorbitant luggage fees — consequently, women on average are forced to pay more than men for air travel. Can’t you see how it promises to be a precedent-setting, career-making, money-grabbing case in anti-discrimination laws? Who cares about firefighters in New Haven anyway?)

Sorry about the digression — I guess my work lately has made me a bit litigious. But the bottom line was that I had to pay $40 round-trip for a bag of  “freebies” that I would not otherwise pay $40 for at CVS.

Hence the irony. The Economist in me wants to quote Milton Friedman, who said “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. But the Writer in me wants to quote Sebastian Horsley, who said, “the difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money always costs a lot less.”

The coolest thing about truth, I feel, is that, rather than a boring fact or dogma set in stone, it is a mutable, oftentimes all-encompassing structure with a sly sense of humor: in this case, you can Ctrl+F “sex” and replace it with “waterproof mascara”, and it still holds water!

Hmm, thanks to the FTC, now the disclaimer can be so much more fun than the product review itself.

Beautiful People

I came to the office to get some work done on Saturday and stepped into a costume party of the new first-year class outside the building. It was a beautiful day — clean, light, magical, the transition of seasons palpable in the air. On this particular day, you can smell the exuberance of youth, too.

To the contrary of popular beliefs, glowingly healthy, good-looking young people don’t usually make appealing photography subjects. My teacher used to say, if you really have to photograph people, go for little children and really, really old people. I couldn’t understand the rationale behind it. But the method has face validity: flipping through any travel brochure or National Geographic-style magazine, you’ll indeed find that those two demographic groups are most often represented, and they often make the most impressive images. But why?

Over the years the answer slowly came to me. Little children and the elderly possess the gift of completely immersing themselves in the present moment — they can be perfectly aligned with the Here and Now, which renders them an integral part of their natural surroundings and activities. And nothing less than that can make a great picture. Often, seeing into their eyes, you feel you almost meet their souls. Susan Sontag once said that to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability. And that revelation is what gives both the photographer and the viewer a sense of communion.

Young people, on the other hand, are often too self-conscious and occupied with their conceptualized self identity to be completely aligned with the present moment. For instance, they may appear to be fully engrossed in a conversation, but their minds are wandering elsewhere: either searching for the next smart thing to say, or checking their mental Blackberrys for the next stimulus, or being hijacked by an endless stream of thoughts, memories and fantasies. As a result, it is quite typical that in a photograph they often look oddly removed from the surroundings or whatever they appear to be doing. The integrity and authenticity of the moment falls apart. Just look at one of those ubiquitous dentists’ ads portraying an attractive Caucasian woman smiling ten sparkling white teeth. She looks as unreal as her staged smile as her porcelain teeth. Pictures of young people, even if unstaged, have the tendency to fall into the same trap: too self-conscious, too tense, hiding more than revealing. The challenge for the photographer, then, is to capture those rare moments when a subject is completely relaxed, unguarded and spontaneous, momentarily lost in the stream of time, lost (or, paradoxically, present) at a place called Here and Now, and then you’ll see their true self shining through, in all its quintessential humanness. And that, is what gives a photo — or life itself — true vitality.

Garden

I grabbed my dust-ridden camera today and shot these flowers in my garden and my neighbors’ gardens. I’ve been watching them for the entire summer, usually sitting on the porch after my daily run, and they taught me so much about how to live a life that’s all about the free and creative expression of the timeless and boundless essence of Life, with beauty, uniqueness, and grace. So before they disappear before my eyes, being absorbed into the ever-moving pendulum of time, I took these images in their memory. 

“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”  — William Blake “Auguries of Innocence”

Why Netflix Knows Me Better Than My Mother

No, that’s not completely true. What I was trying to say is that Netflix knows me better than my mother, my best friend, and my OB/GYN combined.

I’ve been subscribing to Netflix’s service for a few years. Based on what movies I have rent in the past and how I rated them, Netflix makes guesses on what movies I would like and use it to customize its movie recommendations, through a statistical technique called “collaborative filtering.” The general premise behind this is — and ironically, this is exactly what I do for a living — that each consumer, rather than an individual with unique, idiosyncratic tastes and preferences, is merely a mundane collection of data points to be mathematically analyzed, precisely targeted, and relentlessly exploited, all in the name of better serving you, Ma’am.

So through the years Netflix has been assiduously refining its bets given more and more data points from me. In the beginning, it would make generic suggestions such as “Dramas” or “Critically Acclaimed Movies.” Now they are more detailed and nuanced. And as you know, the devil’s all in the details. So instead of “Dramas”, it would recommend “Witty Dramas with a Strong Female Lead” for Dear Jackie. Do you see the difference? It’s like the difference between having “Potato Salad” and having “Potato Salad with Pickled Pearl Onions and Garden Dill with Squire Hill Farm’s Ameraucana Hen egg Emulsion”, i.e., the potato salad you pay $26 for at Per Se! “Thrillers”? That’s too vague. It should be”Romantic Crime Thrillers”.  “Foreign Movies”? No. We believe that Jackie only likes “Dark Foreign Movies”. Wait, that isn’t fair. Have YOU ever seen a Foreign Film that Isn’t Dark? A “Foreign Slapstick”, like a Swedish Ben Stiller or an Iranian version of “American Pie”? Apparently only American movies are blessed with the Eternal Sunshine of the Idiotic Mind.

But I have to admit that, overall, the psychological profile depicted below fits the suspect. Who needs a therapist any more?

So, my friends, I’ve bared my soul for you all to see. Take pity. Or go ahead and take advantage of me.    

 

So You Think You Can Eat?

No I’m not pitching a new reality TV show about competitive eating. I got the idea for this post after watching the movie “Julie and Julia “. But this post isn’t about the movie — although it’s a fantastic movie I’d recommend with all my heart, not the least because every screen minute with Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her husband, Paul) together is such a delight and  privilege to watch — but it is because seeing Julia Child’s immense, dynamite, larger-than-life passion for food totally amazed me because I’ve been losing interest in food over the past months.

That may sound like an insane statement, but my behavior is solidly rational, to the extent that a cost-benefit analysis is rational: while I certainly derive pleasure from eating good food, such benefit usually pales in comparison with the cost of shopping for food, preparing it, cooking it, and cleaning up the inevitable mess. Such benefit is often even outweighed by the inconvenience of having to pick up a restaurant take-out. What I mean by cost is, of course, opportunity cost. Granted that I am not single-handedly resuscitating the U.S. health care system or playing beer pong with the Obamas at Martha’s Vineyard, I do feel that I could dedicate the food-prep time to more productive pursuits, such as working, reading a good book, star-gazing, bubble-bathing, sleep-walking, or wasting a perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk.

Not that I haven’t tried. A couple of weeks ago I made a great discovery in my local grocery store. A line of frozen entrees called Ethnic Gourmet. Absolutely fabulous stuff with such varieties as Chicken Biryani, Chicken Tandoori with Spinach, and Pad Thai with Tofu. You just take the packet out of the freezer, throw it in the microwave (and imagine that an Indian or Thai chef lives there with the sole life purpose of pleasing you), and five minutes later you have your exotic tasty dinner!

The only problem with this whimsical mini-chef is that, after a few days, my body felt loaded with salt that I was thinking of changing my name to Morton.

So I have since reverted to the tried-and-true routine of eating whatever is left in the kitchen cabinet and making occasional minimum-effort concoctions such as “scrambled eggs with silken tofu and sweet peas”.

While I’m perfectly happy and content to stay this way forever — or at least until I feel like changing my mind, or physiologically impossible, whichever comes first  — it got me thinking about something more profound, which is the evolutionary perverseness of treating eating as a nuisance. How could the genes associated with it have survived the harsh eon of natural selection? Or, if you don’t believe in evolution, as the rest of the 81% of the Americans, such disposition still shall not exist if God had practiced Six Sigma quality control. Someone who ever possessed such a trait should have been eliminated for the betterment of the human race, together with someone who still gets lost in her office building after three years, or someone who could not parallel-park between two cars and gave up the spot, which was immediately and disdainfully occupied by a pickup truck, or someone who spends more time searching for her cell phone than actually using it (Apple’s next blockbuster release? iStrap. A device that straps your iPhone to your body 24/7. Literally.) Such people should be theoretically extinct from an evolutionary viewpoint– especially when they are the same person. Oh isn’t life a miracle?

So far there are only a couple of minor unforeseen consequences of my voluntary food embargo. The first one is that I might have lost a few pounds. And friends and colleagues are all “Poor Jackie, have you been losing weight?” “Not by choice at least. Well you know I’ve been training for the New York Marathon,” I would reply to everyone who asks. Except my boss, to whom I would say, “Oh. I’m fine, Paul. Just too much work lately.”

But the kind people of Upper Valley wouldn’t just let me be. Suddenly my email box is filled with all kinds of invitations to lunches and dinners, at which the desserts are always strategically positioned so no one could reach them but me. Maybe it’s all in my wild imagination. But you can never be sure how the subconscious operates. And this invitation card sitting on my desk to a “pig roast church fundraiser” this Saturday is certainly real. And how could I ever conjure up such a thing as a “pig roast church fundraiser”?

The second consequence, which I didn’t realize until I read a paper recently, is based on the well-documented phenomenon that people who go into a grocery store when hungry tend to buy more. And the effect goes beyond food. Some kind of overcompensatory mechanism for sensory deprivation. This might explain why I’ve bought so much stuff lately. For most people living alone, the delight of going home after work every day is defined by the sight of your dog faithfully waiting by the front door and then going all gaga over you as if you were the Pope or the Dalai Lama. For me, it’s the sweet sight of that perfectly packed, UPS-delivered corrugated cardboard package from Neiman Marcus quietly waiting for me on the front porch.

No, my friends, as of now, I don’t accept unsolicited advice or donated food. You can redirect your canned food to the local homeless shelter. As for the unsolicited advice, start your own blog, jeez!

 

 

Blue Moon

Blue Moon

It was getting dark
The nocturnal creatures loomed from the thick forest
with their bloodshot eyes and bloodthirsty antenna
And ceaselessly chased by a big bearded man with a heavy metal club,
I was short of breath and came to the edge of a vast ruin
perched precariously on an abyss of darkness
like a dumbfounded bird awaiting a thunderbolt

There I saw the Blue Moon
the Mother of Beauty for eternity
Who said, it is but that little mental prison of yours
the Grand Cathedral of Illusions, Delusions, and False Expectations
So, fear no more, my child: 
Leap, and the net will be there; the Truth is —
(But they say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t)
a mountain top overlooking the emerald lakes
glimmering in the charmed fragrance of the sagebrush
and the cool moist winds rustling
through the tall lodgepole pines — a corollary of courage, really.
(But who am I to negotiate with Fate, or Her personal assistant?)
Feeling the heavy, chilling breath of Despair closing in on me,
I threw myself in the air,

And, sure enough —
Woke up, in warm embracing sunlight
smelling coffee and bacon from the kitchen.

(a poem from a dream)

To Kill a Wall Street Journal

Did you ever have to ask to buy less from a business and be told “no” even if you’re willing to pay the current price? And then they tell you, actually there might be an alternative for you to buy less, but you have to pay more than you’re paying now? 

Yeah. Luckily for me, I got to witness this today. Exhibit A of Perverse Pricing Practices.

It started with my long overdue action to cancel the physical delivery of the Wall Street Journal. I’ve found myself spending more and more time perusing the Journal’s website rather than reading the print copies. On most days, the print newspaper goes directly from my mailbox to my recycle bin. I cannot bear to think about all the wasted energy, labor, slaughtered trees and elevated landfills as a result of making, mailing, delivering, recycling and eventually decomposing these papers. So I made a mental note to cancel the delivery of the print paper, once and for all.

Should be easy, don’t you think? In an age of infinite consumer choices and options — you can order a grande-size Cappuccino from Starbucks with double-shot espresso, soy-based milk, extra foam, and hazelnut-flavored syrup added — you would expect that changing from a print/online combo to an online-only subscription should not require much more than checking or unchecking a box online, right?

Turned out wrong. After fumbling around on their website for such a solution in vain, I called their toll free number, and explained to a customer service rep my request to stop receiving the print paper while maintaining my access to online edition. As I spoke, I imagined that he would say with glee and relief, “No problem! I can do it for you right NOW!” After all, I’m saving money for them (reducing their marginal cost of servicing me to virtually zero) and not even asking for a price cut.

But he said there was no way he could do it, the reason being that I have a Students account (for which I’m qualified as a quote-unquote Educator, also covered under the category). “So the account entitles you to both the print and the online editions of the Journal.” he said matter-of-factly. Is that an explanation at all? I’m not talking about what I’m entitled to – I’m talking about what I want, which, apparently inconceivable to him, is less than what I’m entitled to.

Some explanations are just hilariously ridiculous. Like the cardboard sign hung on the door of the dry-cleaner that I frequent: “Closed on Wednesday due to The Economy.” As if the linkage between the temporary closure of a tiny dry cleaner and the throbbing heart of this colossal monster called The Economy were beyond self-evident. Like my imaginary email auto-reply: “Out of the Office due to Modern Man’s Existential Dilemma”. Hello?

Anyway, after much clarification from both sides, it became clear that there is technically no way to stop receiving the physical paper while retaining the online access. A possible alternative, he said, is that I cancel this account and get a regular online-only subscription, at $103 a year. Which is more than what I pay now for the print-online combo. Incredible, isn’t it?

So I politely asked to speak to his manager. The lady introduced herself to me as a “supervisor”, which immediately sank my heart because clearly her role was to supervise those manning the phones rather than to revise the pricing mechanism (let alone the business model) at the Wall Street Journal. So I was not surprised when she gave me the same answer as before.

I was tempted to offer her a free lecture on product customization, optimal pricing, or the environmental consequences of frivolous production and consumption. Or how consumers’ shifting media consumption patterns (i.e., tomorrow the print newspapers would be what the audio cassettes are today) would demand a fresh new business model for the newspapers and their failure to adapt quickly and radically enough has brought them to the near defunct place where they are now. But I knew it’s useless to say anything. Under today’s mazz-like corporate structure with thinly sliced departmentalization, asking her to change anything would be like asking your toe to scratch your ear. But I still concluded the conversation by making a kind suggestion, in the vague hope that it could be passed on to the decision-makers (maybe she would date the marketing director some day and mention this bizarre phone call from a nutty customer).

So, unable to kill it, I’m still holding on to (or, if you will, recycling) the print newspaper. It just occurred to me that there’s another solution: if any of you have the free time to read a physical copy of the Journal (although if you’re reading this, you probably have too much time), I can have the thing delivered to you instead!

Soldiers and Lovers

 

Google "French Military Victories" and try "I’m Feeling Lucky" 🙂

And the Oscar Goes to… the Dog?

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony is only a day away. For many years I’ve stood steadfastly as an apostle of the Oscars despite years of disappointments (see here and here) as fine subtle filmmaking kept giving way to glitz and schmaltz in the Best Picture’s category (e.g., The Pianist lost to Chicago in 2003, Mystic River lost to Lord of the Rings in 2004, Brokeback Mountain to Crash in 2006, just to name a few) .

Much as I have reconciled myself to this unrequited love with the Academy, this year I’m sensing a particularly dangerous threat. This is a line that must not be crossed. Ok. Let me spell it out: Don’t let Slumdog Millionaire win the Best Picture — Dear Academy, this is as far as I can retreat on the Western Front.

This doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the movie. On the contrary, like most people, I enjoyed every minute watching the 2-hour movie while I was at it. The main plot is rather formulaic: boy meets girl (in this case, in the poverty-stricken slums of Mumbai), girl snatched away from boy (first by a brutal begging syndicate and then an abusive Mafia boss), boy rises to the challenge of his destiny (here by contesting in the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”), and finally boy and girl are happily united (conveniently, he also gets a million dollars to take care of the “ever after” part).

If this were a Western version of the formula, it could not possibly have earned 10 Oscar nominations. So the real trick lies in the background of the story, which depicts a panorama of India’s urban lower-class life: the squalor and poverty of its slums, sectarian violence, child exploitation, organized crimes, police brutality. Danny Boyle is undeniably a sensualist director: every scene is saturated in light and color and edited in a seamless pace, but despite all the cinematographic felicity, a sense of profound sorrow and grief lingers on your mind as you watch the young Jamal, the protagonist, struggles to survive in a dangerous city of millions in an unsympathetic universe.

But in the end it’s just another cliche rags-to-riches story, with an improbable fairy-tale-ish plot, and two cardboard-like main characters who are solely characterized by their puppy love for each other. The incongruity between the weight of its background and the frivolity of its theme is staggering. So that’s why, after I spent two hours watching this feel-good movie and walked out of the theater, a bad after-taste akin to a gnawing hangover suddenly took over.

So much effort for so little purpose! It feels like playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on a grand Steinway next to an ice cream truck to help sell Vanilla Millis. Or treading on a thorn-paved, travail-laden pilgrimage only to find out that the final destination is Disneyland. Well, you get the idea.

So, dear Academy, please for once exercise your good judgment and let the Slumdog just be a dog.