I once had to watch a movie called The Rundown, all by my defenseless selfie, and review it as part of a job application process. (To be a film reviewer.) It put me off the term for seemingly ever.
Except today I have a lot to report, such that I can’t go into detail about anything and need to substitute pithy remarks in a web-friendly list. Is that, in fact, a rundown?
Anywayz:
1) Back from Monterey. Note to travelers: The Holiday Inn Express at Monterey Bay is not, as I should have known by the prominent and pretentious employment of “at,” in Monterey. There is a drive involved. Happily, a short drive.
Highlight of the trip: penguin-feeding at the aquarium! Highlight of the penguin feeding at the aquarium: A kid in the audience asks how to tell male from female. Presenter says: a) Males are often bigger; b) The females lay eggs; and c) Males have black namebands, females white. Belly laugh!
Also-ran: Happy, lazy time at the beach. The empty-ish, pristine-ish one in Seaside, NOT Monterey. Take that, Actual Place We Meant To Go.
2) Babies. Funny, sweet, and a smidge mind-exploding. Namibians, you rocked it. I think, if given the choice of the four destinations and a this-lifetime do-over, John might choose Namibia. I’m going with San Francisco. Good thing! As I am already here. Ish.
(I prefer Berkeley anyway. Speaking of which, there is a scene in the movie that takes place TWO BLOCKS from our house. It’s the one where Hattie face-plants in the sand at the playground.)
3) The Ask. Is the problem with the hapless, hilarious, failure-at-everything narrator that there’s nowhere to go but a) sentimentality in awakening to responsibility or b) down? I think I’ve now read enough of these books to know that there is never a satisfying payoff. But oh, the first 50 pages! I was nearly screaming with laughter.
4) And another question: Is there anyone who can balance irony with sincerity quite so perfectly as Jonathan Franzen? Or maybe, is there anyone who can balance them at all, other than Jonathan Franzen?
I am in love with his latest story, such that I have launched into a third-time reread of The Corrections, one of my favorite novels of all time. Oh, my little (big) Corrections, we have been apart for far too long. (Although the preamble might be a touch overwritten. Shh! Don’t tell Jonathan!)
5) I finished Season 3 of Mad Men. While I don’t always love it, I am always interested, and I did adore the finale with a pulsing passion not evinced since the Season 2 finale of The Office. And the recent Berkeley Rep musical. But nothing else! Thank the fates and furies that my Personal Cable Liaison and Friend Forever Vicky will record Season 4 as it airs, so I don’t have to wait for the DVD.
6) Three weeks until Wipeout. It seems to be calling itself “Reality TV’s guiltiest pleasure.” A thousand times no! There’s so much that’s guiltier—and not much that’s as pleasurable. It’s more like, “Reality TV’s pleasuriest guilt.” Or maybe: “The highest pleasure-to-guilt ratio in summer 2010 major-network reality TV programming.”
And you wonder why I get the big bucks for copywriting.
Consider yourself rundowned.