Category: North America

Nothing More to C.

Uh-oh. My subway line of choice — the A/C — is taken out by a control room fire…and the C may be down for several years(!) Looks like I’ll be whispering of escapades on the D train for some time to come. Update: The MTA revises their prognosis…looks like it’ll take months to fix, not years. Update 2: Make that days — the C is already up and running again…false alarm.

Isiahed.

After what looks to be a season-killing losing streak (9 of 10 games) for the Knicks, Lenny Wilkens gets the boot. (Ok, ok, he “resigned”…yeah, right.) For now, Knicks stalwart Herb Williams is in charge, but both Larry Brown and Phil Jackson are already waiting in the wings, and it seems clear Herb’s tenure will be a short one.

I dunno. Sure, there were several mental mistakes made in recent games by the coaching staff…but let’s face it: The Knicks are a bad (and badly-constructed) team. Without a single front-line player who merits a double-team in the post, our offense is basically reduced to hoping two of our three perimeter shooters (Marbury, Crawford, Houston) have a good game. That’s not going to win a championship, no matter who’s coaching. It wouldn’t even get us in the playoffs if the Atlantic Division wasn’t so terrible across the board. To my mind, Lenny was made the scapegoat for an unwinnable situation.

The Fil-A-gonath!

Long have I desired to look upon upon the waffle fries of old. Just before the holidays, I’d heard from a few Carolinians in and about the city that, yes, there was in fact one Chick-Fil-A in Gotham. And, sure enough, this morning I found it, in NYU’s Weinstein Hall at the northeast corner of Washington Square Park. (Alas, it was closed until Tuesday, when the new NYU term starts — and it looks like there may be intermittent security attempting to keep displaced non-NYU Southerners like me away from the quality chicken products.)

The Grapes of Wretchedness.

Lost in a wine-dark sea, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is withering on the vine. His wife left him two years ago and he’s still in the drunk-dialing throes of despair. His novelist aspirations are dying an ugly death in ever-smaller publishing houses. Both oenophile and alcoholic, he drinks too much, eats too much, surveys the world in furtive glances, and cringes with self-loathing every time he looks in the mirror. He’s lugubrious, pedantic, bristling with negativity to the core. In sum, Miles is almost completely beaten down by life…so of course he attracts the attention of a smart, beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) who shares all his important interests and remains fond of him, even and despite his awful behavior.

If you can get past this one critical and wholly improbable plot point (and I did, eventually), Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a trip to California wine country well worth taking. The movie basically plays like an approaching-middle-age version of About Schmidt (right down to the unfortunate nude scene), but this seemed a more well-rounded and generous film than its predecessor. (I thought Schmidt derived too many laughs from turning Dylan McDermott’s character into a buffoon. That being said, I also think Sideways flinches from reality in the closing moments in a way About Schmidt didn’t.) And, while I’m about as far from a wine connoisseur as you can get (whites with chicken and fish, right?), Sideways also succeeds in making the subculture of oenophilia both accessible and reasonably engaging, a few ham-handed “wine-is-life” soliloquies notwithstanding.

Special nods go to all the actors involved here, and particularly Paul Giamatti for making it so easy to empathize with the easily unlikable Miles…I can’t think of many other folks who could have pulled it off so well (In fact, looking back I’d say Nicholas Cage pulled it off less well in Adaptation.) I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Thomas Haden Church, as Miles’ low-key, horny doofus of a best friend, and Virginia Madsen, as the previously noted underwritten muse of second chances, get some action come award time (which may end up meaning sour grapes for the Closer crowd.)

The True North strong and free.

For those of you who’ve considered moving to Canada after recent events, sorry…it looks like Dubya beat y’all to it. As with his recent trip to England, “Bush will not make a customary speech at the House of Commons in Ottawa where the sometimes raucous Parliament has been known to heckle speakers.” Well, you know how the Prez gets all kinds of incoherent in front of unscreened audiences, even with that strange bulge taped to his back.

University Blues.

Feeling oh-so-oppressed as usual, student conservatives at Berkeley decry the 7-1 Dem-to-GOP ratio among Humanities and Social Science profs nationwide. Tsk, tsk…they say it like it’s such a bad thing. Well, if you’d prefer that we lefties work elsewhere than academia — say, in government — y’all know how to vote next time.

Welcome to the Occupation.

So, in their first stop since Dubya Day, REM played the Garden last night. A good show, and they played my favorites from the new album (“Boy in the Well,” “High-Speed Train,” “The Outsiders”) But there was obviously a very strange and subdued vibe to the proceedings. Angela McCluskey, the opening act, struck an appropriately funereal tone with a swelling rendition of The The’s “Love is Stronger than Death.” And Stipe, for his part, seemed as staggered as most of the crowd, and barely spoke at all — (not that it much mattered…85% of the people there seemed to be waiting for “Losing My Religion” the whole time anyway.) All in all, I enjoyed last year’s stop more, but obviously those were happier times for both the band and the nation. Setlist below:

REM at MSG, W2+1:

1. It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine.) [Just in case you haven’t been keeping up with current events…]
2. Begin the Begin
3. So Fast, So Numb
4. Animal
5. Boy in the Well “This song takes place in Tennessee.”
6. Welcome to the Occupation
7.The Outsiders
8. Get Up!
9. High-Speed Train
10. Cuyahoga “This song takes place in Ohio.” [BOO.]
11. Sweetness Follows
12. The One I Love
13. I Wanted to Be Wrong “This is our State of the Union.”
14. Imitation of Life “This was a #1 single in Japan.”
15. Final Straw
16. Losing My Religion “I don’t know what to say tonight, so I’ve tried to say as little as I could and let the songs speak for themselves. There’s something about a well-constructed pop song…”
17. Walk Unafraid
18. Life and How to Live It
E1. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
E2. Drive
E3. Leaving New York “This song takes place in NYC.”
E4. Electrolite “This song takes place in LA.”
E5. Permanent Vacation (w/ Steve Wynn) “We’re REM, and this is what we do.”
E6. I’m Gonna DJ
E7. Man on the Moon “This song belongs to you.”