In which I sound embarrassingly like a PR flack and exhort you all to find a UPN affiliate, any UPN affiliate, near you

Okay.

Right now, everyone knows that the two best TV shows no one is watching are Arrested Development and Veronica Mars, right?

Well, if Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and two freaking Emmys for Best Comedy can't help Arrested Development, nothing I say can make a difference.

But really, as much as I like Arrested Development, I LOVE Veronica Mars. Imagine if Nancy Drew were a new millenial teen, and her lawyer father had been disgraced. Now imagine that Ned Nickerson's sister was Nancy's best friend, and had been brutally murdered, and Nancy's father thought Ned's father had done it (and that Nancy's mom was only NEWLY missing, in the wake of the scandal). And imagine that Cedar Heights was rife, RIFE I say, with class tension, secrets and scandal. And imagine the whole thing as written by the Buffy staff at height of their inventive powers of dialog and characterization. You are probably getting at least a hint of why I love this show.

Veronica Mars is the high school show all high school shows want to be, with archetypal characters who still feel real rather than stereotypical, insanely melodramatic storylines that still seem organic and believable, and even adult characters who have real lives and functions other than to be the Peanuts-esque "mwah mhwah mhaw mwaaaaaw" voice in the background of the teens' lives.

In the world of Veronica Mars, there are few easy answers and even happy endings are delineated in shades of gray. Seemingly throwaway characters come back and become more integral to the storyline, and relatively major characters can fall by the wayside... literally. Last night's second season premiere carried through on the promise of the first season, making clear that there would be no idyllic storybook ending now that we know who murdered Lilly Kane. Every mystery solved opens a fresh set of wounds, and no matter how much she wants to go back to her "normal" life pre-best-friend's-murder, Veronica is now even more in the thick of things than she was before. But despite the show's extremely dark undertones, both the sunny Californian visuals and the snappy, witty dialog make it a joy to watch. Veronica's life could be played as dismal noir, and the narration gives us the sense that she knows it but will be damned if she's going to let the bastards get her down. Like Buffy, she deals with shitty situations matter-of-factly and with an eye toward making her small corner of the world a better place not just for her and her friends, but also for those weaker than herself. Unlike Buffy, she doesn't whine about it.

Speaking of Buffy, no less a TV luminary than Joss Whedon recently posted a note on his official website extolling the virtues of Veronica Mars... and if you think I sound effusive, Mr. Whedon sounded like an obsessed 13-year-old girl talking about Orlando Bloom's hair.

So, in summary.... Veronica Mars! Watch it! Now!

Movie Review: Everything Is Illuminated

I confess, I haven't read the book.

This is fairly odd, as I've been making an effort to read the current Best New Novels from Promising Bright Young Things more or less since I graduated from college, and Jonathan Safran Foer's book was a clear holder of that status, having garnered glowing reviews not only from official Arbiters of Culture, but also from some of my most trusted friends. However, the furor happened after I'd read an excerpt in the New Yorker's New Fiction issue, and for some reason said excerpt had bugged me. I got it, I appreciated why people would dig it, but I felt like he was trying too hard to beat us all over the head with linguistic brilliance.

This is a large part of why I went to see the movie with almost no expectations, other than that it would probably be a nicely-made indie film.

I DID have an expectation that Eugene Hutz, who plays Alex, the malapropistic Ukrainian tour guide- cum- translator- cum- narrator of the film, would be portraying a character something like that of his stage persona as the lead singer of Gogol Bordello. Gogol Bordello is probably one of my three favorite live acts of all time, though you would have to pay me a decent amount of money to listen to more than one of their recorded albums in a row. The best way I can describe them is that they're like an Eastern European version of the Pogues, but with a more carnivalesque stage show. Film buffs might get a better sense of things if I say a Gogol Bordello show is like being sucked into the party scene in a Kusterica film. Whatever your pop culture analogy, I have never been in a situation where a gathering of people more instantly turned into a big happy party, with the possible exception of Wesleyan University's Spring Fling 1994, when P-Funk took the stage- but that was already a party (just ask the band member in the wedding dress who'd been doing keg stands on the hill). Hutz himself is an insanely (both literally and figuratively) charismatic presence, the kind of guy you feel like you wouldn't ever want to DATE, but would be psyched to spend a night on the town in the company of, just to see where you ended up... as long as you didn't have to do anything the next day but sleep off the vodka coma. Hutz's stage presence and his NYC rep as a DJ made me expect that his portrayal of Alex would be similarly over-the-top, the performative equivalent of the book's verbal pyrotechnics, and thus a tad on the wearisome if not annoying side.

I could not have been more wrong.

Hutz is almost unrecognizable in the movie, appearing not only a good decade younger than his actual age (30ish), but also displaying a befuddledly introspective essential sweetness of character that is only shakily concealed by post-Communist hip-hop-loving bravado. It's a phenomenal performance, one that I would have assumed was more or less "found art" had I never seen the man in another context. I suspect that Hutz will not receive the recognition he deserves, because much of the character's deepest emotions are intentionally underplayed, but if there were any justice in the world, he would be nominated for at least a SAG award, if not an Oscar.

The movie itself begins in a familiar-feeling wacky foreign picaresque vein, featuring Elijah Wood as "Jonathan Safran Foer," a young Jewish New Yorker who is coming to the Ukraine in search of his family's past. He is clearly drawn as an eccentric, and is accepted by his family as a "collector" who stores mementos of his and their lives in plastic bags and tacks them to a wall. His appearance underscores this eccentricity, as he dresses in a neat black suit, slicks back his hair, and wears enormous glasses through which his eyes are magnified nearly to the point of monstrosity. This affectation, which seems intitially merely to signal a certain sort of mid-90's indie film sensibility, ends up telegraphing something deeper when it is finally stripped away toward the end of the film.

In fact, most of what at first seems overly familiar and perhaps a bit precious in the first half of the movie ends up providing a stronger emotional resonance when the story comes to a close. What seems like aimless meandering, both within the journey the characters are taking and in the delineation of the characters themselves, turns out to be a specific set of signposts on a map that we viewers are only able to read once we've seen the final destination. From the characters themselves to the journey they take to the implications what they find and even the very landscapes through which they move, the film starts off wackily prosaic and finds its way toward the beautiful and/or profound.

I don't want to say too much about the film, because I think it's better for having been seen without expectation. I also don't want to oversell it... it's not the Greatest Movie I've Ever Seen, it's just a well-told story that develops more interestingly and provocatively than I expected it to, and ends up being ultimately more moving than it initially seems it will have any right to. I was enormously and pleasantly surprised by how moving and interesting I found the second half of this movie, and have been left with enough questions that I now think I have to read the book. Damn it.

In which there is much shopping and I am bemused and bewildered, if not bewitched.

So, Saturday morning, Ben, Shosho, and I got up early to hie us off to the hinterlands of the west side for Wally's Liquors' tent sale, which I had proposed after viewing their sale price for Chateau D'Yquem. The sale started at 9 AM on Saturday, and, as we confirmed our plans at 1:30 AM that very same Saturday, I was a bit worried I'd miss my opportunity to score what I had decided would be a necessary component of a wedding gift, as we made plans to depart at 9, rather than to arrive at 9. Delays in the form of my needing to get gas and Ben's needing to get coffee left me a bit twitchy until we actually entered the maze-like confines of the tent sale and I got my hands on the Sauternes. We arrived around ten, to the sight of enormous lines of shopping carts snaking out the side of the tent, and I, at least, had to steel myself with a deep breath before diving in.

As I was still savoring my cuban coffee and guava pastry, the sight of a wine-tasting table filled me with rather less joy than it ordinarily would, even at such an early hour (especially since one of the wines they'd put out for tasting was an Au Bon Climat pinot noir, one of the hits of Henry and Jessica's wine tasting a few weeks back). In any event, I scored my D'Yquem, Shosh scored a shopping cart, and we all took turns manning said cart both in the store and in line. By the time we were ready to check out, an hour or so after we'd arrived, the D'Yquem was all but gone, so our early morning was not in vain.

Oddly, as we waited at the end of the line, a random Wally's stock guy came up and grabbed us and said the line was better inside, then quickly wheeled our cart through the tent sale and the back room of the store itself, putting us in a line of five people, instead of 25. We were most pleased.

Afterward, we went to the cheese store of Beverly Hills, where I basically bought the greatest cheese hits from H and J's tasting. All I need say is: YUM.

The real highlight of the day, at least from a who-the-hell-can-SAY-what's-up-with-culture standpoint, came when we went to the Dior boutique on Rodeo Drive. Now, there are moments in all three of our lives when we do not look entirely out of place in those surroundings, but this was not one of those moments. We looked just like the Eastsiders we are, and sounded like it, what with talk of sex and heroin (when one's friends work in public health, conversations turn R-rated pretty damn fast without even trying). The ladies in Dior couldn't have been nicer, however, giving Shosho a silk-bound hardcover catalog of their jewelry collection, as they no longe rhad the one-of-a-kind ring she'd wanted to show us, and smiling benignly as we gawked at and made snarky comments regarding the display case full of skull rings.

Yes.

Skull rings.

Of the exact style one would find in Chicago's Alley complex of alterna/goth merchandise, or on the finger of many a Metallica fan in 1990.

Made of platinum.

With diamond teeth.

I mean, I understand that somehow proper Edwardian Gorey-esque goth style is very IN this season and all (though I still find it disconcerting to see it in Bebe), and that Hot Topic has been successfully commodifying dissent and peddling it to the well-washed masses for quite a while, but what? the? hell??

There are some things that will just never look right to me on the body of a Beverly Hills or Laguna Beach princess, and, quite frankly, skull rings and bias-cut corset-backed black velvet skirts are two of them.

And it's never even been my subculture to feel proprietary about! What on earth must the aging die-hard Cure and Bauhaus fans be thinking??

In which there is activity occurring Behind the Scenes, a stealth movie review, stealthier jam-eating, and a magical sight I may never see again.

So.

I am not dead! I know you were all concerned. Nor have I abandoned this blog. In fact, there are a good 25 place-holder posts stored here in my account waiting to be completed, edited, and posted. I THINK that they will post up BEFORE this post, in "date created" order rather than "date posted" order, but we shall see.

Now.

The other night, I went to see Tim Burton's Corpse Bride at the Grove with Shosho, Ben, Peter, and Michelle. Shosho and I met up before the show and went over to Morels, an Epcot-style French bistro which can either suck or be delicious depending on how carefully one orders. Its main redeeming quality is its extensive cheese list, from which one can design one's own cheese sampler. Sadly, they have no olives, fruits, nuts, honey, or other accompaniment to their cheeses, merely toasted slices of baguette which are unceremoniously piled atop the cheeses. Knowing this, however, I decided, to Shosho's amusement, to run over to Crate and Barrel in search of quince paste. I found no quince paste (Jess pointed out that had I ventured further afield, to Sur La Table, I would likely have been succesful in this quest), but I did find some Stonewall Kitchens sour cherry jam, which served the purpose nicely. We had Epoisses, a hard raw sheep's milk, an aged Gruyere, Cabrales, and a goat's milk brie that was tasty but not as exciting as the other four. Since Morels also has a decent selection of wines by the glass, I was quite happy with our impromptu dinner.

We all enjoyed the movie, though the biggest spike of excitement was for the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire trailer, which was genuinely and surprisingly thrilling. Ben, being an adult in literary sensibility and not mere chronology, was a bit alarmed by the glee with which the rest of us received it, but, frankly, so was I (though awfully glad to have partners in my demented fangirl glee). Apparently my days of total geekdom are not over, no matter how many pairs of designer shoes I own. I always wanted a secret identity, I just didn't think it would be on such a prosaic level as that of conflicting consumer cultures.

Anyway, I don't have that much to say about Corpse Bride; the animation was lovely, the set designs beautiful, the puppets grotesquely appealing, and the music all good fun. I would be inclined to say that if you like Tim Burton in general, you will like this as well, but it may be too on-the-nose for die-hard Burtonites, and may in fact be better appreciated by those with a less exacting interest in his ouevre. Despite the grotesqueries involved, it's very much a kids' movie, with the same narrative sense of adult relationships shown in a film like Shrek. Though the identity of the villain was no surprise (nor was the film's switch from its pallid, though lovely, pallette of grey tones in the land of the living to the vibrant (ahem, "living") color of the world of the Dead), I thought the movie managed to create a genuinely poignant tension from its main love triangle, and its resolution was actually lyrical and rather moving.

After the movie, we sat at one of the Grove's many sidewalk cafe/bars, as the boys and Michelle had arrived only in time for the movie and none of us had really gotten a chance to chat. For you non-Angelenos, the Grove is an open-air mall that strives to be upscale and classically designed, with vaguely Italianate building designs along a wide central boulevard. It has a tram, and a "dancing" (that is, occasionally lit and opera-blasting in time to sprays of water)fountain at its center. Thus, when I thought I saw a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye, I assumed (in a "what fresh hell is this?" sort of way) that it was just part of the Grove's general penchant for decorative and pyrotechnic melodrama.

In fact, it was not.

It was LIGHTNING. Which I determined only after the fourth or fifth such flash was accompanied by a not-terribly-delicate-at-ALL sound of THUNDER. And then it began to RAIN, really HARD.

This is the rough weather equivalent of a snowstorm in Minnesota in June (I don't say May, since I recall THAT event's happening at least twice just in my jr. high to post-college years). Or, perhaps more accurately, a 68 degree day in the middle of January. It is not so completely outside the realm of possibility as to make one look over one's shoulder for approaching swarms of locusts, but it is Decidedly Odd, in a town which rarely has thunderstorms even in the rainy season, and almost never has rain outside the rainy season at all. September? Not the rainy season. September is the holy-mother-of-god-why-is-it-so-muggy-and-hot-and-smoggy-and-why-oh-why-do-I-not-live-in-a-place-with-proper-SEASONS season, followed shortly by October's wow-now-it's-REALLY-hot-and-muggy-and-the-rest-of-the-country's-hills-are-aflame-with-one-of-nature's-most-dependably-glorious-displays-while-OUR-hills-are-merely-AFLAME season. December-March is really the rainy season, and the thunderstorms, when they show up at all, seem to primarily show up in March (at least in the 8 years I've been here).

Anyway. We made our way back to the parking garage, just as the rain stopped. Or paused, as it started to rain again, lightly, when I was about halfway home.

And then the magic happened.

I should set this all up by noting that I am out of wiper fluid, and have been for a while, and have not replaced it because a)one doesn't tend to need it all that often out here b)the auto store near my house only sells a horrible green kind that I vowed to never buy again and c)for some reason the last 5 gas stations I've stopped at do not carry it (probably so homeless men won't try to be industrious). So, I've been keeping my windows clean by squeegeeing them when I get gas. Yes, I know, not great form. Shush. The point is...

When I turned on my wipers, my windshield was initially a bit blurry, as it is when it first deals with a splash of liquid. As it cleared, however, I realized that some strange combination of whatever film remained on the glass and the way the wipers were distributing the water over/under/within it was creating a dazzling light show (well, okay, I realized this after looking out my driver's side window and seeing no such thing; my original thought was that some of the "wild" mushrooms in my post-movie soup may have in fact been "magic"). Ordinarily, the rain/dark/water will create a slight blurring arround oncoming headlights, streetlights, or what have you. Instead, my windshield created around every light source a maypole ribbon tracer, of width varying by size and source of light, arcing across the length and width of the glass and moving in syncronized and occasionally syncopated dances as I made my way across town. It was possibly the most spectacular light show I've ever seen. From the thin red early-80's-science-museum-laser lines of distant stop lights to the vibrant intersections of pink and gold swaths created by the neon lights in the Thai Town strip of Hollywood Boulevard, the spectacle these reflections (or refractions?) created almost made me feel like I was looking into another dimension, or seeing our own through non-human eyes.

It's a damn good thing there wasn't much traffic, because I was WAAAAY more interested in gaping at the shiny pretty light matrices than I was in paying scrupulous attention to the road itself.

It was one of the coolest and most random things I've ever had the privilege of seeing, and I doubt I will again, as the thunderstorm set in properly by the morning, and my windshield was properly clean by the time I drove to work.