recent tracks:

A Real Update

Tomorrow I will be one quarter century old.


Summer and I did the Newport cliff walk on Saturday, totaling approximately 6.5 miles (including walking back to our starting point among the wealth-drenched neighborhoods of Newport). All in all this made for a very enjoyable experience.

Approximately a week and a half ago, I went to a job fair at NYU and had an interview, which I think went well. I will have another interview this week. Keep your fingers crossed! While I was in New York, I enjoyed Julia's hospitality, as well as some delicious Ethiopian food and over the top delicious barbecue.

In fact, this weekend has featured some delicious food as well; Saturday we warmed up for our walk in Newport with my own concoction: a baby spinach-pinenut frittata with gorgonzola cream sauce (made from the gorgonzola leftover from our gorgonzola-brie-wild mushroom fondue from Valentine's Day). Saturday night I dined on duck confit from CAV and tonight will end our extravagance with a birthday (observed) dinner hopefully at Waterman Grille, which has an enticing prix fixe menu on weeknights. Delicious.

Sometime soon we will perhaps travel to Amherst, where there are dinosaurs. I don't think I knew that when I visited for undergrad...

Movies: standouts I watched between December '07 and yesterday.

• Juno, (which has lately received some critical backlash) in which Ellen Page plays a pregnant teenager with much more complexity than I think is generally recognized. Michael Cera also gives what I found to be a clever performance as the teenage father.


• No Country for Old Men, an adaptation by the Coen brothers of the spare Cormac McCarthy novel, in which McCarthy/the Coen brothers toy with some literary and cinematic conventions in presenting a bleak but captivating story.


• Michael Clayton, which is about reasons not to work for a big firm.


• The Savages, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney provide outstanding performances as not entirely successful, academically inclined siblings dealing with their aging father's senile dementia.


• Charlie Wilson's War, an interesting depiction of an underachieving U.S. Representative with loose morals, and his efforts to covertly drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan during the Cold War.


• Rabbit-Proof Fence, a wrenching story of three "half-caste" aborigine girls abducted by the Australian government in order to train them as domestic servants.


• There Will Be Blood, which has gained enough press not to demand much commentary from me (see Worlds of Fragments for an apt but uncommon stylistic note). Suffice to say that the strengths are as strong as advertised, and there are plenty of thought-provoking devices to boot!
  

Music: lately I have been listening to a lot of the following.

• Elizabeth and the Catapult [self-titled EP]which is well-worth $5.94 on iTunes. S and I saw them in Boston a few weeks ago (with Old Springs Pike) and I was sufficiently enchanted not only to buy the EP but also to listen to their tracks some 70 times since then by last.fm's count.


• Viva Voce The Heat Can Melt Your Brain, the 2004 album by this indie-rocking husband and wife duo who played The Cave at Carleton way back when.