My Sister’s Back Yard

I grew up playing in woods like these but this weekend in Maryland I took the nephews out into the woods and it felt so great that I realized I hadn’t been in any wooded areas since I moved to boston 6 years ago. We explored for hours. More photos to come.

Bring It On, Magic Mushrooms

I’ve just returned from a 90-minute African Dance class at the Central
Square dance complex, which surprisingly did not leave me utterly
exhausted. I credit the cordyceps.

Love Of My Life

Quote of the Day

“A kiss may not be the truth, but it’s what we wish was the truth.”
       
           
            –Steve Martin
in L.A. Story

I may have hated Shopgirl but I do like Steve Martin.

Technical Problems My Ass

I desperately need to hear the Sam Cooke song “Little Girl” right now
but iTunes is claiming technical problems and not letting me download
it damnit. Lotsa money they’ve been losing the past half hour…

Thanksgiving Food

Even more than turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing, I’m looking
forward to the potato cakes the next morning. Not potato pancakes, not
latkes, but potato cakes made of leftover mashed potatoes. Has anyone
here heard of these? I think they are a backwoods West Virginia
specialty, I’ve never met anyone who has ever heard of them. But they
are divine. They are a morning-after-holiday tradition in my family, as
they must be made from leftover mashed potatoes because they must be
cold enough that you can slice them like a meatloaf, dip them in flour,
and fry ‘em up until they are crispy on the outside and soft and gooey
on the inside. Serve with bacon and eggs in place of hash browns or
fried potatoes. Yum. Try it Friday morning!

“Rude” And “Interesting” Are Not The Same Thing

In a startling reversal of international codes of conduct, I was rude to a Frenchman today. I was lugging a camera and gear and my backpack to return it to the lab, which requires a swipe-card to enter, and the Frenchman was ahead of me with his card so I was gonna let him open the door rather than drop all my gear and dig my card out. But he stops and says “Do you have a card?” I’m carrying fucking cameras from the lab, is that not enough proof for you? So I said yeah but I don’t want to dig it out with all this stuff. He didn’t understand me and said “what?” so I yelled “YES BUT I DON’T WANT TO DIG IT OUT WITH ALL THIS STUFF!” I was about to just reach past him and hit the doorbell so they would buzz us in, but before I could do that the desk attendant came over and let us both in, obviating any escalation of the international conflict.

Something A Director Doesn’t Want To Hear From Her Actor On Day Of Shoot:

“You don’t want me to memorize these lines, do you?”

My New Pickup Line

“Let’s have you, then.”

–spoken by Miranda Richardson to Gabriel Byrne in a thick cockney accent in the movie Spider, after they’ve just met at a bar and snuck off under an overpass for a quick shag

I Am THE ONE

I know Final Cut Pro.

Magic Mushrooms

I read somewhere about cordyceps, a traditional Chinese medicine that comes from mushrooms, which is supposed to be a good natural supplement to boost energy. So I went down to Harnett’s and bought some. They work. I have been feeling great. I wanted to find out a little more about these magic mushrooms, so I did a little research. All I could find was gushing testimonials on health-food web sites about how great they are, but that’s not the kind of information I wanted. So I did a Lexis Nexis search to find real information on them. And what I found out about my magic energy-boosters is so disturbing on so many levels:

“Cordyceps sinensis infects caterpillars of Thitarodes ghost moths, kills them and then fills every cavity of their bodies. In spring, the fungus sends out a stalk from its dead host to release spores. These go on to infect new victims. The cycle is not one of nature’s most pleasant quirks. But the fungus is said to boost immune function and revitalise the bodies of those who consume it.”

Ew. And if that weren’t disturbing enough, the harvesting of cordyceps is also causing environmental and economic problems:

“One of the world’s most precious environments, Bhutan’s Jigme Dorji National Park – home to tigers, snow leopards, and black-necked cranes – is being threatened by fungus hunters. The park, famed for its hot springs that attract thousands of trekkers every year, is being dug up by collectors of caterpillars infected by the fungus Cordyceps sinensis. It now sells for $ 7,000 (£3,800) a kilo, half the price of gold. It is this price rise that has triggered the crisis at Jigme Dorji, one of the few places in the world where Cordyceps is found. ‘Millions of fungus-infected caterpillars are being dug up every year,’ said Paul Cannon, of Cabi Bioscience, an intergovernmental environmental agency. ‘That is utterly unsustainable.’ Part of the problem is posed by the poachers who arrive from Tibet and take the caterpillars. The rest lies with local people who are also enthusiastically digging up infected cadavers. Experts say that if the crop collapses, which is bound to happen at its current rate of loss, then local people will have no other income, and the consequences for the region would be catastrophic. The Bhutanese government recently introduced regulations permitting only limited trade but this has failed to stop mass removal of infected caterpillars from the park. The only answer, says Cannon, is to try to establish fungal farms in villages. ‘That just might take pressure off the environment,’ he said.

And here’s why it’s so popular:

It was a relative medicinal rarity two decades ago. Then, in 1993, Chinese athletes Junxia Wang and Yunxia Qu leapt to fame when they broke world records: Wang in the 3,000m and 10,000m, and Qu in the 1,500m. Both claimed that their success was due to Cordyceps sinensis. Demand for it leapt, creating a caterpillar rush in the process. The initial impact on Jigme Dorji was sustainable, say ecologists. However, the outbreak of Sars in Hong Kong two years ago created a massive demand for the fungus.

So do I stop taking my magic mushrooms to protest the exploitation of this land and its people? And the murder of millions of innocent caterpillars?

I’ll decide once I’m done with this first bottle. But I’m not a vegetarian, so it would seem a bit hypocritical to object to the systematized murder of one species of insect and not to the equally systematized murder of cows and pigs and chickens. Whose harvesting causes equally disturbing environmental destruction.

I think I’m just freaked out that I’m eating caterpillar cancer. The words “fills every cavity” haunt me…

Hello Karma

In an effort to pay down my credit card debt, I have cut up all of my
credit cards and have been living off my debit card to FEEL THE PAIN
and get a grip on my finances. I felt the pain this week, as I’m down
to an miniscule amount until the end of the month. I was in my
apartment fretting a bit about what I would do when *poof* my doorbell
rang, it was the girl who rents my parking space, showing up to pay me early because she’s going to be out of town. Not only early, but two months’ worth because she’ll be gone until January.

Puffy Old Men

It is frustrating for most of us women that men are considered
“distinguished” as they age while women don’t get the same respect. But
lately I’ve been noticing some male actors in movies that hit a certain
point where they are no longer “distinguished,” they just look bad.
Steve Martin in Shopgirl is one. He looks puffy. Or as my companion said, “like he’s been floating in water for a few weeks.” Another is Richard Gere in Bee Season
(a terrible, terrible movie by the way–just read the book instead). He
also looked puffy and flabby. It’s not fatness–neither of them are
overweight–it’s just a sort of loose flabbiness. I guess these are men
who have forsaken plastic surgery, maybe that’s why it’s noticeable.
And now, unfortunately, I must say that the super-sexy Jean Reno has
hit that puffy point. I am watching the (terrible) French film Crimson Rivers right now, and he has the Martin-Gere middle-aged puffiness that even his supersexy voice can’t make up for. Sad.

Funnygirl

We screened the footage of my werewolf spoof last night and people laughed, which is good. But I laughed more than anyone…like uncontrollable painful laughter…embarassing. Something about viewing your own footage, your own connection to a project, makes it so much funnier–seeing someone bring your dialogue to life, their mannerisms filling out the characters you created, intensifies the humor. It’s not unlike the way new parents are so delighted with the smallest and most mundane things that their new baby can do: look, he smiled, isn’t that amazing? Um, not so much. We screened other people’s films which I found mildly amusing but which the makers were hysterical over, so I’m not alone. And I’m guessing that the more movies you make, the less intense this effect becomes.

Shopgirl

Don’t bother seeing Shopgirl. Just see Me And You And Everyone We Know instead. I think that’s what Shopgirl is
aspiring to, but ends up just a flabby hollow spineless film with
absolutely zero chemistry between any of the characters. Jason
Schwartzman is trying hard to save this sinking ship, but even his
wackiness couldn’t save it. Claire Danes and Steve Martin are
incredibly boring here, and Steve Martin is boring and puffy. I hear
the novel on which it was based is a lot wackier than the movie, but
it’s unfortunate that in the translation to the screen it lost all of
the interesting stuff.

A.O. Scott seems to think
there’s more to this film…and I wish I could agree–I would like the
film he describes. But it’s not the film I saw. Maybe the novel had all
of this, but the movie is just a lifeless blob.

My New Most Favorite Thing

Cynthiaslist

FREE: One full-length wall mirror that adds about 40 lbs. My self-image couldn’t take it any more so I bought a new one.

Suburban Amusement Park

I caught the soundcheck for Hot Hot Heat at MIT tonight while waiting
to be picked up outside Walker Memorial and I was thinking wow, if I
knew who these guys were I might be excited about this, having them all
to myself here in this big room, but since I don’t know who they are
and don’t really care for their music which sounds like a million other
indie rock bands that I once cared about it’s kind of making me feel
old instead. Then my ride arrived and we went to IKEA and bought tea
cozies. Along with the rest of Boston.

This and That

I posted my gift-copy of Napoleon Dynamite
on half.com and it sold in less than an hour. I can’t believe people
like that retarded movie so much. I also posted my gift-copy of Giant, but no nibbles yet.

Also, I got called for jury duty. I’ve been living in Cambridge 3
months. Somerville never called me. Brookline never called me. Maryland
never called me. But 3 months in Cambridge and I’m called to serve.

Also, I lowered my cholesterol by 50 points in the past year.

Bye Bye Little Girl

When dyeing my hair last night I decided to try something new and spare
the shock of gray at the corner of my forehead. In a few weeks/months
I’ll have a nice big racing stripe.