Gravity: Alfonso Cuarón’s startling vision of a very bad day in outer space knocked my socks off.
The Past: Asghar Farhadi’s emotionally devastating look at the power of secrets and the painful struggle to overcome our own questionable decisions.
Captain Phillips: Paul Greengrass created a thrilling and harrowing sea adventure.
Mud: This unusually involving coming of age story features stunning writing and an tremendous supporting performance by Matthew McConaughey.
The Way, Way Back: This oddly nostalgic story of painful youth had tons of zip and freshness, with a knockout career highlight performance by Sam Rockwell.
Blue Jasmine: Woody Allen’s best film in years delves painfully and irresistibly into Streetcar Named Desire territory, with spectacular results.
Her: Spike Jonze film manages to be authentically weird, accessible, and romantic.
Stories We Tell. Not sure if this is a documentary or what, but it’s a weird and marvelous film about family secrets from the talented Sarah Polley
Prisoners: A story that at first seems familiar but gets stranger and stranger. Plus Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography.
Short Term 12: Simple and sincere film about second chances.
Honorable Mention: Fruitvale Station, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street; The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 42, Blancanieves, The Company You Keep, Dallas Buyers Club, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
I travel a lot for work, and I frequently find these two weird books in a drawer in my hotel room. One of them is obviously sophomoric claptrap fantasy revisionist Jewish history. The other one, however, is truly awful: the main characte…
r is a petty, jealous tyrant who disallows basic human attributes like sexuality, but who enthusiastically promotes murder, genocide, intolerance, xenophobia, and misogyny.
For a while I considered calling ahead and asking the hotel to keep these reprehensible books out of my hotel room, but then I realized, this isn’t about me. What about the children? Both books are written with a certain air of authority. What if an impressionable child, or even an adult with sub-normal critical thinking skills, were to come across these books? Think of the damage that could occur on these unsuspecting travelers!!
So now, it’s part of my public service to take these books out of the hotel the morning after I check in and dispose of them, so they can’t hurt anyone.
Sure, it’s a lot of trouble, but I have to think of the greater good here. In this small way I make the world a little safer.
I encourage all my fellow travelers who care about their fellow man to do the same.See more
Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 263 user reviews.
“Macau” is that old Portuguese colony off the coast of China. “Macaw” is a New World parrot. These are two different words which are not pronounced the same.
Also:
Nassau is a county in Long Island, New York, a city in the Bahamas, and lots of other places. NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These are two different words which are not pronounced the same.
Finally: “Novel” is not a synonym for “book” any more than “Chicken chimichanga” is a synonym for “food.” You don’t get to casually refer to a book as a “novel” to make yourself sound more sophisticated unless the book is ACTUALLY a novel.
That is all.
Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 240 user reviews.
CRANKY ALERT. I’m all for positive thinking. I’m all for pushing ourselves and encouraging each other to strive to be better. But I’m getting a little tired of the language I’m seeing a lot here on FB. Language like “only you limit what… you can achieve, ” or “you can be anything you dream.” Well, actually, you can’t. I can dream a lot of things that can never happen. I can make myself better, naturally (EVEN better).
Alex Carneiro
But I can’t make myself twenty years old. I can’t make myself genetically athletic. I can’t make myself NOT have a double bypass in my past. The sky is NOT the limit. We all have limits. To tell people they don’t is to set them up for feelings of shame when their dreams do not come true. No matter HOW hard I try, or believe, or strive, or work, I cannot look like Alexandre Marx Carneiro here. Few people can. We can all get better, but we CANNOT be *anything* we dream. That is all.
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 269 user reviews.
Note: Get ready for lots of photos of churches with pretty gold domes!
The magnificent Christ the Redeemer Cathedral. It's brand new. It replaced a swimming pool.
Slept late. Needed to! Then off to my tour of the Kremlin.
The tour didn’t start well, as it was quite hard to find the office. I was afraid I’d simply miss the tour completely. The office was hidden in a large, partially under construction office complex, and I finally got to where I was going after enlisting the help of about half of the people who worked at other business in the building.
My bad impression of the tour company was exacerbated by their near-inability to deal with payment by credit card. I don’t mind if you can only take cash, but if that’s the case, don’t make a big deal on your website that credit cards are okay.
I also made another realization a few minutes after our rather pro forma tour guide began leading us toward the Kremlin: I prefer expat American or British tourguides to native ones. Does this make me a bad person? If so, well there you have it. It’s not just the facility with English that I prefer, but it’s just that every native English speaker tour guide I’ve ever had has been livelier and more fun than the perfunctory locals.
I could barely understand our tour guide on this tour, not only because of her thick accent but because she spoke way too softly. Come on, sing out, Louise!
Anyway, even a boring tour guide couldn’t make the Kremlin boring. It’s a magnificent, ancient miniature city that’s the historic center of the Moscow. The walls have been built and rebuilt many times. It’s full of amazing churches, several of which we investigated. The interior of Orthodox Christian churches are completely covered with icons, which are religious paintings or carving depicting basic Christian symbols or subjects. They differ in importance from Western religious art in their high degree of devotional importance. In addition to inspiring and informing, they are also meant to be a focus of meditiation. This reverence for concrete images has made the Orthodox church a target from the West, as it has been equated with idolatry. The Orthodox insist that they do not worship the icons themselves. Perhaps, but let’s remember that Catholics also insist that they don’t worship Mary, and it sure seems like they do. (They do.)
Anyway, we saw beautiful icons that were as much as a thousand years old in the beautiful, gold-domed churches inside the Kremlin.
We also saw a gigantic cannon, hundreds of regular-sized cannons captured from Napolean in 1812, a huge broken bell that seems to be an actual monument to failure, President Putin’s offices, some fabulous Faberge treasures, and lots of other stuff.
I enjoyed chatting with fellow tourist Barbara who was in Moscow working like me. She was heading up some workshops for the local Avon team. We both complained about sore feet and laughingly realized we had both taken “preemptory” Advil before starting the tour. Nevertheless, poor Barbara was exhausted and didn’t make it to the end of the tour. She collapsed after the fourth church, couldn’t get up, and they had to put her down. Poor thing.
Dullest Tourguides
The chainsmoking yawn in Brussels
The soft-spoken unintelligble baboushka in Moscow
The perfunctory prefect on my first trip to the Great Wall
Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 199 user reviews.
I always feel ignorant being monolingual. Unfortunately, I really think I’m past the age where acquiring new languages comes easy. The fact is, I’ve always been fascinated by languages without having any talent for them at all.
But when I’m in somewhere as multilingual as Europe I REALLY feel ignant.
When I’m interacting with Europeans, I see two behaviors that amuse me.
People in service occupations are used to customer walking up and addressing them in any number of tongues. It’s fun to watch them mentally click on a dropdown list and pick the language they think they’ll need. They are usually correct, also, for whatever reason. I assume they always know I’m American because I look like I don’t believe in evolution by natural selection, or something like that.
The subways are empty early on weekend mornings.
The second reaction is funnier to me. That’s when I approach them and say, In my best German or French (or Russian), “I’m sorry, I don’t speak _____.” I then get this look from them. It’s not an unkind look , really… the thought bubble I imagine I see over their heads reads something like this:
“Okay, don’t scare him. Speak softly and reassuringly. Hey, Marcel! Looks like we’ve got another escapee from the Care Facility for the Victims of Profound Head Injuries. Ignatz, distract him with something shiny while I pull out my dart gun. He’s just going to hurt himself out here. The sooner we can get him back to the home, the better it will be for everyone.”
Frankly, I have trouble even imaginging what it must be like to be able to mentally juggle all those different vocabularies and gramamars and even slang. I really admire them.
///
Last night my colleagues and I went to a Jewish/Israeli restaurant. Seriously? A Jewish restaurant in Munich? The birth of the Third Reich? Why not open a nice deli in Damascus? It boggles the mind. Why, ifyou were a Jew, would you want to go anywhere NEAR Germany? For that matter, I’ve never understood why Jewish people bought Mercedes and BMWs, but that’s just me.
Oh, the food at the restaurant? Meh.
Languages I’d Be Most Interested in Learning If I Was Less Stoopid
Italian
Latin
Arabic
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 255 user reviews.
Always great to see you! You’re looking well. Why thank you, I’m well, too.
You say you have a problem you think I can help you with? Terrific. Please tell me about it.
I see. I see. Yes. I think I understand. That is indeed A Situation. And one that I am sure I can help you with.
I believe I understand The Situation. Thank you for describing it clearly. Now what shall we do about The Situation?
I see, yes. You’d like me to take Course of Action in order to help you with The Situation? Why, I’d be more than happy to help you. Course of Action is right in my wheelhouse. You’ve come to the right person to help you with this particular Situation. Thanks. I’ll get right on that. Talk to you later— what, sorry?
Oh, yes. That’s right. You tell me you have a Situation. Yes, I understand.
Yes, and you’d like me to take Course of Action. Yes, that was clear. I’ve got it. Thanks again. Well, I’d better get back to what I was doing…
[Sigh.] Yes. Yes. I promise I heard you the first two times. You have a Situation. Got it. I promise you, I got it the first two times. Yes. And you think the only sensible solution is for me to enact Course of Action. I fully agree with you. I’ve been agreeing with you for ten minutes. Yes. Now if we could just wrap this up . . .
Oh. My god. You’re starting back on the loop again. What is it that I have to do to jar you out of the loop and extricate myself from this increasinly tedious conversation?
Yes. Course of Action. I think I am going to set myself on fire now.
A Situation? Really? Yes, that is soooo fascinating. Do you happen to have anything really sharp?
///
Why does this happen? Why do people not trust that you understand the information the first couple of times they tell it to you? Why does this converstation take fifteen minutes when it should take two minutes? That’s thirteen minutes I’ll never get back.
What should be this:
Becomes this ghastly, endless loop:
Why do people do this? Do they have all day to talk about this issue? I don’t. How do we extricate ourselves from these excruciationly attenuated conversations without seeming terribly rude?
If Only There Were Polite Escapes From People Who…
…talk in endless loops
…tell endless boring stories
…tell endlless boring stories about their jobs
…make condescending judgmental statements regarding their beliefs in the supernatural
…say things like “anyhoo” and “I guess I shouldn’t kid a kidder” and “working hard? Or hardly working?” or “what can I do you for” or “bassackwards”
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 181 user reviews.
Saturday morning. Excited about my day trip to Salzburg, I hurredly showered and got ready. As I was dressing, I noticed a sound coming from the windows. A soft pattering sounds. Not an upleasing sound, yet on this particular day a decidedly unwelcome sound. With mounting dread, I pulled up the shade. Rain! Bah‼ I realized I hadn’t checked the weather for today. Maybe it’s just Munich, I said to myself, firing up the laptop. Nope. Rain in Salzburg also. Damnit!
The Fortress
So much for my plan of wearing short and a T shirt. Trying to minimize my martyr-like sighs, I pulled on jeans, a shirt and my stupid, faithful, huge green trenchcoat that has served me so well on this trip. I made my soggy way over to the main train station.
Do you recognize this fountain? HINT: Not a MALE deer, but a . . . .?
An observation: European cities don’t have the 24 hour mentality that big American cities have. People actually close their stores on Sundays, not because of archaic Blue Laws, but because, uh, they don’t want to work on Sundays. City streets in Europe are very very quiet on weekend mornings. I was practically alone in the subway on my way over to the main train station where I was to meet my tour.
D'oh!!! Ray: Me.
It was a small tour group of seven: A nice young Toronto straight couple in their 20s, a very friendly and uber- gay couple from Vegas, a sinfully handsome young Omani named Abdullah, a German woman who didn’t say ten words the entire day except for fretting over the trail of personal belongings she lost across the city of Salzburg, and your faithful correspondent.
Our tourguide was Susan, an eight months pregnant half-German, half-English sweetheart who was moonlighting while in the middle of her three-YEAR paid maternity leave from her regular job.
My new pal Abdullah
It was a lovely two-hour train ride southeast to Salzburg, city famous for salt (hence its name), Christian Doppler (yes, discover of the eponymous Effect), Mozart, and that little musical film starring who was it again? Oh, yes, I think it might have been Julie Andrews. I warned John of Toronto that, due to the campy nature of the tour, that exposure to too many of the day’s projected locations could spontaneously turn him at least temporarily homosexual. He noted the warning with good humor.
Stupid Rain!
For only three Euro, you can take a couple of potshots at the town. It's all in good fun, and it keeps the population in check.
When we got there, things were pretty gloomy for the walking tour portion of our day. I was constantly putting my camera back into its protective plastic bag between shots. We began to work our way through some of the major locations in the film. I got a shot at what I call the “Do Re Mi” fountain, the plaza where Maria sings the written-for-the-movie “I Have Confidence, ” and even a shot in the graveyard where th efamily hid from Nazis. Of course, in the film the graveyard was on a soundstage, but the event evidently actually occurred in this particular graveyard.
Leisl! Friedrich! Don't let the Nazis see you!!
Of course the city has much more to offer than just Sound of Music porno for middle-aged Americans. It’s a perfectly beautiful place, well worth a visit even if you were utterly indifferent to screen adaptations of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals.
This beautiful statue of Mary is part of a cool optical illusion. The cherubs who seem to be crowning her are actually on the exterior of the church about 60 yards behind this statue. You have to stand in the exact spot where this photo was taken to make it look like she's about to have the crown placed on her head. Those tricksy sculptors!
Happily, when the walking tour was done and our free time began, the sun came gloriously out and I headed up the funicular to the spectacular hilltop fortress with the other homos. At the top is where I managed to get my obligatory “Julie spinning on a mountaintop” photo. I then had a lovely lunch with the Mos, who are named Dave and Sing.
That Wacky Darwin
After a few minutes Abdullah joined us as well. I’m tempted to say that made us a quartet of queers, but of course I cannot be sure about Abdullah. For all I know he’s as pure, 100% straight as Ted Haggard. Abdullah, if you are reading this, I promise you I have no intention to offend, and also I freely admit that my gaydar is notoriously unreliable, particularly when the data is very likely distorted by wishful thinking. But be that as it may.
I have confidence in Julie!
He told me that, while still conservative, Oman isn’t nearly as repressiv e as Saudi Arabia and some other Islamic states. Many women wear the burka, but it’s entirely voluntary.
Abdullah works in media in Abu Dhabi (which is more liberal than Oman), and has a college degree in, of all things, English Literature. I asked him who his favorite writers in English were. He told me he preferred American writers to British writers (booyah) and that he was particularly fond of Huckleberry Finn. I said, “Believe it or not, that book is still controversial in American schools, ” which amazed him. I said it was amazing how some controversial books can stay controversial for long periods of time.
“]”]REJECTED SALZBURG PHOTO LOCATION“Take Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It’s still very controversial in America.”
Abdullah nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes, it is in my country too. People don’t like that book.”
“Really?”
This is what they used for the exterior of the Von Trapp villa in the film. It's smaller than I would have expected. The magic of the movies, huh?
“Yes. We are taught that Adam and Eve were the first people, and they had a child of each color, and that’s how all the races were made.”
I remained calm. I smiled.
Yes, as in the Effect
“Okay… you do realize that isn’t true, right?”
“I don’t know. What I told you is simply the story we are taught from the Koran.” He clearly seemed conflicted on the issue. And the more he talked, the more I understood that this isn’t a kid who’s wants to refuse to budge from the familiar thinking he grew up with. He’s done a lot of traveling, and is clearly curious about the world. We talked about other books and Dave and I insisted that he should consider trying To Kill a Mockingbird, a title he eagerly wrote down. We told him the story of Truman Capote and Harper Lee, and how many people believe Harper Lee didn’t actually write the book (I am not one of them).
The birthplace.
This July he’ll be heading to Wyoming, of all places, to do some sort of very fancy internship that he applied to more than once before getting accepted. He’s a really good guy, and we wished him well in his continuing adventures.
On the train ride back I had a nice long chat with the Toronto couple, who eventually admitted to me that they were evangelical Christians. This surprised me, simply because I don’t think of Canadians as being that evangelical. “We’re a very small community in Toronto, ” they said. They were in the middle of a three week romp across Italy, Germany, France and the UK.
The very McDonalds where Maria took the children in the movie. Remember how mad Christopher Plummer got? I loved the song! "Hurry, hurry, Gretl, hurry, finish eating your McFlurry...." etc.
Oh, Please Stop Believin’
A peek at the old city wall
Speaking of irrational belief, when I got back to Munich and said so long to my fellow tour members, I sat down to grab a quick bite and had to endure, over the loudspeaker, one more rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” I swear, this song is following me everywhere on this trip. It needs to stop. I can think of few songs which are so famous and so beloved and so enduringly popular and yet so vapid and uninteresting. I sincerely don’t get why people are so fond of that damned song. I much prefer the soulful “Lights.” Don’t you?
I was somewhat pleased with my excursion to Salzburg. It wasn’t a complete success; the weather compromised my photo opportunities. Also, since this was just a day trip, we couldn’t see some of the most important movie locations, like the gazebo and the palace used for the Von Trapp family villa. Also, the convent and the place where the family performed were not available for photos. But still, I got some fun shots, and it’s a perfectly charming, beautiful place. I’d go back in a musical-comedy heartbeat.
Well-Beloved Boring Mediocre Pop Songs
“Juke Box Hero, ” Foreigner
“Private Dancer, ” Tina Turner
“Roxanne, ” The Police
“Don’t You Want Me, ” by Human League
“Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, ” Culture Club
Every Journey hit except for “Lights”
Pachelbel’s Canon (a three hundred year old pop song that still torments us)
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 192 user reviews.
I almost got in trouble because of the Angry Email Rule last night. Happily I pulled back just enough.
The popular Jack Brussels terrier
Are you familiar with the Angry Email Rule? You should be. It could save your life. Well, maybe not, but it could save a friendship. Or your job.
Remember the last time you received an email that really pissed you off? What did you want to do immediately? Fire off a tart response, right?
Never a good idea. Never, never, never, never, never.
The Best Practice Implementation of the Angry Email Rule is: You may not press the Send button on any angry email until at least 24 hours have gone by. This is the ideal version of the rule, and the most difficult to follow.
What can help is this: WRITE the email. Let’er rip. Purge all that righteous anger right out of your spleen. Plaster the nitwit who was foolhardy enough to incur your wrath right to the wall. Take no prisoners.
les chiens qui dort
Just no pressy on the sendy button.
Give it a day.
In a day, you’ll be cooler. You can look back at what you wrote and try to sift out the actual information from the vitriol. Even better, you very likely may have new, additional information on the situation which could temper your anger further.
If you simply don’t have the strength to implement the Best Practices version of the Rule, force yourself to wait at least an hour. Even an hour can help.
Another strategy? Give yourself a few minutes to cool off, then call the person. That plan of action may sound counterintuitive, but it has worked for me. Increase your chances for success on the call by forcing yourself to spend the first part of the call listening. You just may get some of that additional information that helps inform the situation. Plus when you’re actually talking to someone, you’re probably less likely to express your anger as rashly as you might with a plastic keyboard.
Whether talking or attempting to write a calm email reply, remember the following rules:
If it’s a friend, there are only two strategies to use in writing your careful reply. First, concentrate on providing information that supports your position. Second, let the other person know how the present upsetting situation is making you feel. I know, what could be cornier, right? But it’s necessary. When you concentrate on information and how you feel, you are not making accusations or playing the mindreading game (despite how much you may believe it, you DON’T actually know another person’s motivation for doing anything, and it’s not a good plan to declare that you DO know, and that the motive was a sinister one).
Le Chien Flamboyant
If the email reply is business related, discard Strategy Two. This is business, who cares how you feel. Just provide the information.
When you NOT follow these rules, and you fire off firebomb replies that are satisfying to write, you are very likely making the situation much worse than it already was. Even more dire, you could very well be turning yourself into the bad guy in the situation. Not helpful.
How do I know all of this is true? Trust me. Juuuuuuuuust trust me.
Oh, and did I mention that Brussels was BEAUTIFUL?!?
PS This topic reminds me of the Two Big Lies That The Movies Teach Us. While I believe there is a lot of human truth that can be illuminated by the movies, sometimes the information is not just wrong, but toxically wrong. To be more specific:
The Two Big Lies Taught By American Movies
Everything movies teach girls about love is a lie.
Everything movies teach boys about anger is a lie.
In a typical American movie, the hero (usually a male person) is pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed until he just cannot take it anymore. Then he gets mad. Really mad. And in his white-hot righteous anger, he rights all the wrongs that have been plaguing his world.
This doesn’t work in real life. When you let anger inform your actions, almost 100% of the time, you make a bad situation much, much worse.
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 212 user reviews.
Today, my final day in New York, was a day of nothing but good news!
This is my favorite image that I've made with my camera so far. To see it at the best size, click on this image twice.
First, and by far the most important, my friend Rob came through his surgery with flying colors. What he had was called a vestibular schwannoma, also known as an acoustic or aural neuroma. This means a benign tumor attached to the bundle of nerves that control hearing, balance, and facial muscles on one side of the head. The surgery is very tricky, and I’m thrilled that it went well, and I’m thrilled that it’s OVER.
Rob is in a lot of pain and having some acute and persistent nausea, both of which suck. He’ll hopefully improve soon. His brother Charles is in and out of the ICU unit to visit him today. I wish I was there.
Next, my passport and Russia visa is IN MY HAND. At last, not two hours before I left for the airport. Whew, that was a close one. It would have been extremely obnoxious if it had not arrived today.
It’s my final day in New York. I cannot believe I’ve been to New York three times in the last ten months. Amazing. I always have a great time here, and this time was no exception, though I must say my commute was bit trying and the weather wasn’t very cooperative. It was great to spend time with friends, though.
In the early days of my twenties, when I had only lived in New York a couple of years, I was proud to be a New Yorker, and assumed I’d always live there. Nowadays when I visit, no matter how much fun I’m having I never, ever think: I should be living here again. I do love Los Angeles. I have now lived there almost twice as long as I lived in New York. I am a proud Angelino.
The other good news is that I scored an exit seat on the longer of the two flights today. This will make a huge difference, comfort-wise.
Steeple of Trinity Church near Ground Zero. Many famous people are buried here, including Andy Warhol, Ayn Rand, Robert Ludlum, Karl Marx, the guy who invented Muzak and Captain Kangaroo.
So. I did my final visits in the New York office, then grabbed a cab and headed for JFK airport!
Cities I’ve Lived In (Number of Separate Residences There in parenthesis)
Los Angeles, 20+ years (3)
Bryan/College Station, Texas, 12 years (5)
New York, New York, 11 years (9)
Ft. Worth, Texas, 4 years (1)
Beaumont, Texas, 2 years (1)
Austin, Texas, 3 summers (1)
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 151 user reviews.
![[REJECTED SALZBURG PHOTO LOCATION]](http://rayivey.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/true_spot_where_they_filmed_julie-300x199.jpg "true_spot_where_they_filmed_julie")
