Minerva on My Mind
I had a lovely time tooling around in my new car today. I drove over to Red Hook, then Prospect Heights, then Ditmas Park. I fetched friends and dropped them off. I blasted Aretha with the windows rolled down, zipped in and out of traffic lanes, slid into spaces so small I wouldn’t have been able to fit my old couch in them, and shifted from neutral to fourth in the time that automatic cars take to rev into gear at all. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to cruise around on new wheels. Like, wicked OG.
I admit I struggled a bit in the first weeks after purchasing Minverva. I gave her a grand name–she’s the Roman goddess of wisdom, art, trade, and strategy–but found her dauntingly tiny for a larger-than-life female human like myself. Even her honk sounded more 
like a mew than a bellow. Then I remembered that I felt the same way about permakitten Gracie when she first moved in, so much so that I used to refer to her as the cat of my dearly departed calico Max. (This is my cat Max, I’d say as he trotted into a room. And this is his cat Gracie, as she bounded at his heels, a quarter of his size.) Now, though she’s still a microcat, she occupies as big a part of my heart as anybody or anything ever could. Which makes me realize: Minerva is the Gracie of cars. I think I’m going to call her Minnie for short–and BB-8 Microcar Castevet for long.
Holiday Movies: The B Sides
Lord knows tried-and-true holiday standards like “A Christmas Tale” can grow tiring (though I still recommend watching “Elf” on auto-repeat from now until New Year’s Day). But there are some films that fly under the radar this time of year because they’re either interestingly flawed or dark–two qualities I embrace in yueltide films, not shockingly.
“A Christmas Tale” (2008)
This may be Arnaud Desplechin’s best film, which is saying quite a lot given that he’s one of the best European directors working today. It is also one of the most overlooked holiday films of all time – perhaps because it’s even darker than “It’s a Wonderful Life.” About a fractured – and fractious! – clan reassembled for Christmas to find a bone marrow match for their leukemia-stricken matriarch (Catherine Deneuve), it stars such European greats as Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, and Chiara Mastroianni (Deneuve’s daughter, a star in her own right) as a bevy of hyper-entwined siblings, cousins, and lovers. As jumbled as it is gorgeous, this is an erotic and neurotic paean to love lost and found that remains deeply skeptical of blood bonds even as it celebrates the “ties that bind.”
“Christmas in Connecticut” (1945)
Unlike some of the films on this list, there’s a good reason why this Yule-time farce has been overlooked: Its plot is paper-thin. But it stars no less than Barbara Stanwyck, that grand dame of 1940s screwballs, and that’s motivation alone to blow the dust off the film canister (metaphorically speaking). She plays a “Diary of a Housewife” newspaper columnist whose holiday supper for an ailing war hero (Dennis Morgan) is compromised by the fact that she secretly doesn’t have a domestic bone in her body. Not only is “The Queen” in rare form but the cuisine porn – and mid-century fashion – is gloriously rendered. The hats alone will make you swoon. (For more overlooked Christmastime Stanwyck, also check out “Remember the Night,” in which she stars with Fred MacMurray in a sly-eyed holiday noir written by Preston Sturges.) Continue Reading →
The Beautiful Bowl Is Empty
It happens every year. I guess I thought this one would be different because I’ve worked so hard that maybe I’d just be grateful for the time off. But the minute I wrapped my assignment and walked out of the NY1 studios today—into the cold rain, admittedly—I felt a rush of sadness that I almost never feel except around what we called Christmas break when I was growing up. That feeling when school let out and I would know I was off the grid, unaccounted for and unsought, until the new year. I look forward to that quiet freedom as an adult–count down the days, even. And then when it arrives I feel an overwhelming loneliness. It’s the downside of living in the interstices of everything, even though that’s how I usually like it. It’s a sense of not belonging to anyone but myself—which, again, is something I usually embrace.
This is the only time of year when I wonder if I’m just making lemonade out of really rotten lemons.
Last year I didn’t feel my feelings until I attended a Christmas Eve service at the East Village’s beautiful-hearted Middle Church. There was something about the kind eyes foisted upon me as we passed the flame in the candle-lighting service that did me in. That’s bullshit, actually. From the minute the preacher began her sermon, from the minute we began singing “Silent Night” as a congregation, from the minute that someone recognized me and I felt ashamed about being alone, I was bawling. They weren’t bad tears, mind you. Actually, I think all tears are good tears. It’s useful to feel the sorrow we’re taught to ignore in our culture; otherwise, it leeches into our systems in ways that serves no one. Continue Reading →