Archive | City Matters

Get This Party Started Right

Lately Mondays kill me, they really do. It’s a terrible feeling, especially as I’ve never been this sort of person before. When I graduated college I swore two things: That I would find an occupation that didn’t require a separate wardrobe—“beware of all enterprises that require new clothes!”—and that I wouldn’t be a 9-5 Working Josephina.

Two decades later, I still wear whatever I please and I still work very off hours. On the rare occasions that I am forced to ride a rush-hour train I feel dismay of the “oh, the humanity!” variety. Aside from washing my clothes at the laundromat, nothing makes me feel so much like my life has failed to meet my expectations. Continue Reading →

Why Hollywood Loves Boston

Last month, “Black Mass,” the biopic starring a blue-eyed Johnny Depp as the notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, hit theaters to mixed acclaim. “Black Mass” is not to be confused with “The Departed,” Martin Scorsese’s 2003 cops-and-robbers opus loosely based on Whitey. Nor is it to be confused with “Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger,” the Whitey Bulger doc that came out last year, nor the other Whitey Bulger biopic that Ben Affleck was reportedly going to make after he finished the movie he’s adapted from the novel Live by Night by Boston screenwriter/author Dennis Lehane that is also about Boston gangsters. Then there’s “Spotlight,” the Michael Keaton vehicle about The Boston Globe‘s investigation of the Catholic Church cover-up scandal, which opens in wide release next month and has already generated serious Oscar buzz. In other words, Boston is all over the multiplexes, business as usual.

But why is this business as usual, especially since very few Hollywood actors can pull off that curious mix of dropped Rs and wide As that comprises an authentic Boston accent? (Lord knows Michael Keaton can’t.) Continue Reading →

Hard-Boiled Honey

Today I headed up upstate–L Train to the 4 Train to Metro North–for a lecturing gig with the delightful Westchester Cinema Club. It was a slog and a half for a Sunday morning but I had Jean Knight in my earbuds, a ginger tea in my paw, a hard-boiled egg in my pocket, and a harder-boiled expression on my puss. My game: Whenever another woman gave me the mean-girl once-over, I dropped her a big, juicy wink. “Oh, honey. Your female oppression is showing.”

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy